Chapter 24
SLOANE
The second I stepped inside and locked the door; my legs gave out.
I slid down the wood and hit the floor hard enough to rattle my teeth.
My back pressed to the door like it could keep the last three days on the other side if I held it there long enough.
My hand found the deadbolt without thinking.
Checked it. Then checked it again. Locked.
I knew it was. I’d just locked it. My fingers checked it a third time anyway.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Home. My house. My air. My walls. At one point, I’d been certain I would never see any of it again.
Tears burned, and I swiped at them as if that could fix anything. As if I could erase the truth that I’d been somewhere underground with cuffs on my wrists while a man with dead eyes decided what happened next.
“You were held hostage for three days by a murderer.” Saying it out loud didn’t make it smaller. It made it real.
I tipped my head back against the door and stared at the ceiling until the room steadied.
Ryker was a monster. I’d seen it in the woods. I’d felt it in the bunker. In his rules and his threats and the way he could go still as stone and make you believe he’d never been human.
But the man who drove me here and let me go … He was hurt. Confused. Hollowed out by something he couldn’t remember. It didn’t mean he was safe. Just … not the same kind of killer I’d witnessed under the trees.
A shaky breath ripped out of me. The tears came anyway, ugly and unstoppable. I let them. Because if I didn’t, I’d hold them in until they turned into something worse.
Even after our three-day deep dive, we weren’t closer to finding Nate. That should’ve been the only thing I cared about. It wasn’t. That was the fucking problem.
Somewhere between the bunker and his mother’s kitchen, between coffee and warmth and a woman calling me sweetheart as though I hadn’t done anything wrong … I’d changed. I’d walked into Ryker’s world, and I wasn’t walking out the same person.
I hated that the thought of him sitting at that table with his jaw tight, hands steady, and expression too stern, made something inside me ache.
I didn't miss the chains. I missed the certainty. I missed the way he looked at me—knowing I mattered enough to control.
I pressed the heel of my palm to my forehead and forced myself to breathe through it.
This wasn’t romance. It was damage making a home in the wrong place.
I pushed myself up and made it to my bedroom on legs that didn’t feel like mine. The moment I saw the faint bruising on my wrists where the cuffs had been, nausea rolled through me. It would feel good to scrub. To erase. To get him off my skin.
That thought turned sharp fast. It wasn’t entirely true.
I grabbed clean clothes and went to the bathroom, turned the shower on hot enough to fog the mirror. The sound filled the room.
My stomach flipped as the memory of his parents’ kitchen hit me again.
The smell of cinnamon and coffee. A fire popping in the other room.
A family.
Not perfect. But real enough it had nearly split me open right there at the table.
I’d always wanted that for Nate and me. We weren’t bad kids. We weren’t unlovable. We just kept getting shoved through hands that didn’t want to hold us.
When someone lived through being beaten, raped, and hiding, they learned what the world paid attention to. I’d learned to lie. I’d learned to fight.
The system didn’t give a shit why someone was fighting. They moved a kid and called it fixed.
I’d given my word that I would protect Nate. I’d kept it until he disappeared.
The steam thickened. I needed the water. I needed something simple and physical to drown out the memories.
I stripped and stepped under the spray.
“Oh, God.” My hand hit the tile for balance. My shoulders shook as everything finally landed, the fear, the anger, the fucked-up confusion. Leave it to me to end up forced into an alliance with a cold killer and come out of it … wanting him.
No. Not wanting. That word was too soft. Craving. Craving the way he filled a room. The way his control wrapped tight around chaos and didn’t let it breathe.
It couldn’t happen. I was a detective. Used to be but still.
I reached for the shampoo and lathered hard, as if scrubbing my scalp could clear my thoughts. Maybe the hot water could rinse the last three days out of my bloodstream.
Nate. Nate. Nate. He was the only thing that mattered.
Unfortunately, grief didn’t care what mattered.
It punched anyway, sudden and brutal. The last time I saw him replayed in a loop I couldn’t shut off—his voice, the anger, the pleading, the way I’d promised him I would never let anyone take him again.
I rinsed, grabbed the body wash. Didn’t stop until my skin tingled.
Ten minutes later, I killed the water and wrapped a towel tight around myself like armor. I dressed, brushed my teeth, ran a comb through my wet hair, then stared at my reflection.
I looked hollow. Hollow as if something had been cut out of me and I hadn’t noticed until now. I desperately needed sleep. I should crawl into bed and crash.
Then the message flashed across my mind:
TOO LATE.
A tremor climbed my spine and settled between my shoulders. Who left it? How did they know Ryker was digging?
My thoughts spun in circles, each question producing three more. Sleep wasn’t happening, not with that feeling sitting in my chest like a warning siren.
Sighing, I headed to the kitchen and started a fresh pot of coffee. The smell of ground beans filled the air, steadying my nerves in a way that made me angry. I didn’t want steady. Steady was what made someone too comfortable.
“You’re home,” I whispered to the empty room, as if it was a reminder my brain needed.
A few minutes later, I filled a mug and walked to the war room. The board glowed under the overhead light with the red threads, photos, notes, and Nate’s face staring back at me. Ryker’s name was there too now.
“Where are you, buddy?” My voice sounded wrong in the quiet.
If Ryker had been gone for four days at eleven years old … did it connect to Nate? Or was I reaching for a thread that didn’t exist?
I sat at the computer and wiggled the mouse.
The screen lit up. The dark web was Ryker’s territory, and mine was an old law-enforcement infrastructure.
A login that hadn’t been properly revoked.
A friend’s credentials I shouldn’t have.
Illegal access. I didn’t give a shit about that, though. I just opened the door.
I pulled up Nate’s case. Nothing. No new tips. No sightings. No movement at all only the same dead end I’d been stuck on for too damn long.
Suddenly, a memory crawled out of the back of my mind as if it had been waiting. My chest cinched tight, like a belt pulled one notch too far. The last foster home before we aged out.
Charles and Elaina Hall. Chuck.
They’d been different. They’d seemed kind. That was the trick.
Chuck took Nate fishing. Nate was five years younger than me, still young enough to light up over small things. Chuck taught him to clean and cook the fish as though he was proud to show him a skill.
Elaina handed me romance and thriller novels from her massive library and asked what I thought when I finished. I helped her cook and clean. She helped me get a part-time job after school. We were there long enough that we hoped we’d never leave.
Then it ended.
A lame excuse: money. No more state checks. We can’t afford you. I’d offered to work full time, and help pay rent, buy groceries. Anything.
They refused. It fucking broke Nate. It broke me too. I’d thought we finally found it. A family. It turned out we’d only been a paycheck.
On our last day, we packed duffle bags and headed for the bus station.
I’d saved enough to rent a one-room apartment that smelled of mildew and regret.
We needed a thrift store stop for the basics.
I remember standing on that sidewalk and making a promise that changed me.
Never again. Never trust anyone. It was him and me against the world.
Nate had thrown his arms around my neck and looked at me as if I was the only safe thing left.
My stomach clenched hard enough to make me lightheaded. I gritted my teeth against tears.
“I’ll make it right, Nate. I swear.”
Except now that I had distance, now that I had years behind me … something about that house didn’t sit right.
I’d been so hurt back then, so focused on surviving, that I hadn’t allowed myself to question the details.
Loose puzzle pieces clicked in my head. There were stretches where Nate went quiet. He had been withdrawn and barely spoke to me for days. I’d told myself it was puberty. Mood swings. Our past. But now…
I grabbed the notebook and pen beside the keyboard and started writing dates.
The year with Chuck and Elaina. The summer.
The camping trips. The fishing trips. The way Nate changed after that first summer.
How he’d come back from a weekend with Chuck and stared at the wall like he’d left part of himself in the woods.
“Shit. Please let me be wrong.” My fingers flew over the keyboard as I punched back into missing persons databases and cross-referenced boys around Nate and Ryker’s ages.
Kids went missing every day. It was a fucking sickness in this country.
But patterns existed.
I narrowed it to Minnesota and surrounding states. Chuck and Elaina had lived in Minnesota. From what I’d learned digging into Ryker… so had he. I’d plugged in three addresses. Ours, theirs, and the Whitney place from an old record, and let the map do the math.
My pulse started to pound as I pulled addresses and timelines and watched the distances populate on the screen.
Twenty minutes. Nate, Ryker, and I had been twenty minutes apart.
Alarm bells screamed in my head. It was only a hunch. A nasty little itch under my skin, but I’d learned the hard way that you didn’t ignore instincts.
I had to talk to Ryker. I needed to know if his family had ever known Chuck and Elaina … if that friend’s name they’d dropped connected to anything … if any of it overlapped.
Realizing my phone was still in my bedroom, I shoved back from the desk and moved fast down the hall, pulse hammering with possibilities.
I slowed as I hit the doorway because the room felt wrong.
The air was colder than it should’ve been.
I took one step in.
And stopped.
A scream ripped up my throat.