Chapter 6
SLOANE
The refrigerator hummed above me, the open door washing me in cold light.
My stomach dropped the way it always did when the past decided it wasn’t finished with me.
I blinked once, twice, three times, then forced my attention higher, bracing myself.
My body locked up. Every instinct screamed move, but my feet stayed glued to the tile.
I saw it.
My head.
For a second, my brain refused to accept what I was seeing. Same cheekbones. Same mouth. The tiny mark near my hairline I covered without thinking. It wasn’t real. It was too glossy, too perfect, but my body reacted like it was.
My palms hit the floor as I pushed myself up. My knees buckled, and I caught the counter, breathing through my nose as though I could trick my lungs into working. The fridge swam in and out of focus, the shelves blurring, then sharpening again.
I reached toward it anyway. My hand shook so violently I nearly knocked over a jar of pickles. My fingertips brushed the “skin.”
Cold. Not human-cold. Plastic-cold.
Relief hit first. Then disgust. Then rage, hot and humiliating.
A corner of white paper peeked out from beneath the head.
I slid my fingers under it, and they snagged on soft fabric. Whoever left it wanted me to understand this wasn’t a prank.
It was a damn warning.
Replicas didn’t happen by accident. They happened when they got close enough to study every detail about someone.
“It isn’t real,” I whispered over and over, my voice sounding too small in my own kitchen.
The words didn’t help, but I said them anyway.
“Fucking hell.” Some of the shock eased as the tears flooded my eyes, and I wiped them away like they were evidence I couldn’t afford to leave behind.
When I peeled the note free from the lifelike doll that sat on the middle shelf, blood rushed through my head.
My heart pounded loud in my ears as my fingers struggled to unfold the paper.
It was the worst kind of mercy. The kind that lets you breathe for half a second before it presses its hand over your mouth again.
“This is what will happen if you keep digging.”
I crumpled the paper’s edge but caught myself. Evidence. Maybe a trace of DNA.
White-hot anger pulsed through my veins.
I wanted to smash something. I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.
He hadn’t just been in my house. He’d had time to move through it.
To leave something behind. The violation wasn’t the visit.
It was how comfortable he’d been. Breathe. Do not fall apart until after.
I smoothed it flat against the counter, squinting at the crisp, impersonal typeface.
No handwriting to analyze, no smudges or prints, just clinical words on department store printer paper.
I glanced at the lock on my kitchen door, it was still secure from when I’d checked it earlier.
The intruder had keys. Or picks. The worst part wasn’t how they got in. It was how confident they were.
The floor creaked as I moved to the refrigerator, shutting it with my hip. My pulse throbbed in my ears while I checked each window latch, then circled back to both doors, testing them one more time. I checked them like counting could keep the monsters away.
As an extra measure, the wooden chair waited to be wedged beneath my bedroom doorknob. I’d used it every night for years. I hadn’t ever slept like a normal person. “Normal” was a word for other people. Not me. Not after what I’d lived through.
My feet slowed at the end of the hall. The door on the left, supposedly the “guest room,” stood ajar. This wasn’t a guest room. It was a war room.
“Right,” I muttered, the sound thin in the empty house.
I didn’t go to the room because I wanted to. I went because my body needed somewhere to put the fear, somewhere I could focus.
The locks could fail. The windows could be breached. But the board … the board was mine.
If I looked at the pieces long enough, maybe they would stop being fragments. Maybe they would become an answer that I desperately needed.
The door creaked as I pushed it wider, revealing a desk with three monitors, stacks of papers, and a worn office chair with the imprint of my ass still pressed into the cushion.
No bed. No closet. Just my computer’s blue glow painting shadows across the walls.
My finger found the light switch. Under the sudden fluorescent glare, yesterday’s coffee mug sat beside a framed photo turned face-down, collecting dust. I couldn’t remember the last time I sat down in here without feeling haunted.
With a quick sweep of the space, I realized nothing had been moved. Maybe he hadn’t bothered to search any rooms and only left the warning. I could hope.
A bulletin board swallowed the entire wall, a web of red string connecting newspaper clippings, police reports, and scribbled notes. Four photographs anchored the center.
Had the stranger seen this? Even though nothing looked disturbed, it would have been easy enough to snap pictures of what I’d found so far.
I traced my finger over the first one, my pulse hammering so hard I could barely breathe. The man’s smile taunted me. The haunted look in his eyes screamed for justice. He was the unsolved case that ripped me from sleep every night, drenched in sweat.
Bile scorched my throat as I stared at the image, my brain tearing through the facts for the thousandth time, desperate for the thread I’d missed. Nothing. Again.
The emptiness was its own kind of violence.
Quiet. Endless.
Personal.
Raw fury and crushing regret devoured me, and I fed on it like fuel. I had to. The department had buried the file. The world had forgotten him. Only Eli, Jade, and I still cared enough to keep him alive in a room. But even they had surrendered to the inevitable.
Yet, the stranger and note had warned me to stop digging, which meant I was getting closer to the truth. And me? I would never forget. I swore to God, I would die first. It wasn’t a vow. It was a fact.
I wiped tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand and forced my gaze away before the past could swallow me whole.
I picked up the gray sweatshirt off the back of the chair, inhaling while I buried my face into it.
It was the last time I’d seen him. He’d left his sweatshirt here.
I kept it because it still smelled like safety. But safety had been a lie.
I hated that I needed a piece of fabric to convince my body to stop shaking. I slid the oversized hoodie over my head and twirled one of the strings around my fingers.
The third photo snapped me back to the present.
Hal Whitney at Velvet Vortex. The first time I’d seen him. He sat perched on a barstool, leaning toward the bartender with an easy smile. I’d been halfway through my burger when he stretched and rolled his sleeve past his elbow.
The fork slipped from my fingers, clattering against the plate.
That rabbit, ink black against his skin with its neck twisted at an impossible angle, made my pulse spike like a warning siren. Those empty eye sockets somehow found me across the room. My legs tensed, ready to cross the bar. To grab his collar and shake him until answers spilled out.
I looked at the last picture. Hal again, but a tall, shadowy figure stood behind him.
I’d caught the glint of a knife. Hal was laughing, so I knew he wasn’t in danger, but what the actual fuck?
What had I stumbled on? It was then that I started to look into who Hal was, but he was almost as difficult to learn about as a fucking ghost.
Less than a week later, he was attacked, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. And now …
My stomach fluttered with the thoughts of the new Hal.
Tall, muscular, brown hair, and sure of himself.
Nothing like the man I’d seen at the bar who’d been stoned off his ass.
And my body hated me for remembering how good he’d felt.
“Calm down, girl.” If I were honest with myself, I welcomed the distraction.
I released a heavy sigh, but the tension didn’t ease from my shoulders. I needed another brain to help me figure out what I was missing, but I couldn’t risk anyone seeing the pattern I’d found. Hal fit it. If I confirmed what I thought it meant, I would destroy him. The cost wouldn’t matter.
Anger ripped through me, stealing my breath.
One thing I did know was this: whoever had been in my house tonight knew about the case. It had been nearly three years since he’d vanished and the case was opened, and I still hadn’t been any closer to the truth. Then, Hal showed up.
Once I realized that he barely existed on social media or anywhere for that matter, I knew I had to get close to him.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket, and I removed it and glanced at the screen. Someone had triggered my Ring camera, but all I saw was their back.
My thumb hovered. After tonight, I didn’t trust a single shadow outside my door.
I hurried out of my office, turned off the light, and closed the door behind me. One of these days, I needed to invest in a doorknob that would only open with my fingerprint. It wouldn’t keep someone from knocking the door down, but it would stop anyone from snooping.
Before I touched the locks, I tapped my screen and talked through the Ring.
“Who’s there?”