Chapter 27
SLOANE
Eli stood on my porch, shoulders tensed, scanning my yard and street like he expected someone to step out behind him.
“I see you,” I whispered.
“Good. Open it. Keep the bat. Lock it behind me,” he ordered.
I unlocked the door and pulled it open enough to get him inside, then shoved it shut and clicked the lock back into place.
Eli’s gun was in his hands, alert and ready to fire if needed. His attention went straight past me, down the hallway. “You heard more than a scrape?”
“Yes.” My voice came out rough. “It was close.”
“Okay. Stay behind me.”
He moved immediately, not storming through the house, but taking the most direct path to control. Kitchen first. Back door. Sliding track. Window latch. He quickly checked the locks, then scanned the corners, the pantry door, the line of sight to the hall.
“Nothing moved when you came in?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
He didn’t look comforted by that. He looked more focused.
He moved into the living room next, checking the blinds, the corners, the space behind the couch. Then the hallway junction, where the bedrooms branched off.
He paused there, listening, holding still long enough that I could hear my own pulse.
“Bathroom,” he murmured.
He checked it, quick. Then the spare room. Then back to the hallway, where he looked at my closed bedroom door.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “If someone was here, they’re not walking around anymore.”
My grip tightened on the bat. “That doesn’t mean they’re gone.”
“No,” Eli agreed. “But it means we can document without you getting jumped with your phone in your hand.”
He gestured. “Show me, but don’t go in. Stay in the doorway.”
My skin crawled as we approached. Eli took point, opened the door slowly, and stopped at the threshold.
Even with the lights off, the rabbit was there. Ugly and unmistakable.
Eli went still for half a second. “Jesus.”
“I didn’t touch anything.”
“Good.” He didn’t take his focus away from the wall. “Now we document. Wide shots first.”
I raised my phone with shaking hands and copied his angles. Wide shot of the wall and bed. Another wide that caught the doorframe and floor. Then closer, but still from the threshold. The rabbit’s face. The drips. The thick edges where the blood had pooled.
Eli took his own set, too, at slightly different angles.
I recorded a slow video sweep, staying planted at the threshold. Wall to floor. Bed to closet. Window latch. Back to the hall.
When I finished, Eli shut the door again gently. “We check entry points next.”
We moved room by room together. Locks. Windows. Latches. Strike plates. Frames. The places you checked when you didn’t have the luxury of denial. Nothing was broken or forced. Nothing was stolen, which meant the rabbit was the point.
We ended back in the war room, and the second I stepped inside, I realized how exposed I’d been. How easy it would have been to stand in my hallway and listen to me dig into Nate’s case.
Eli gazed at the board, the red strings, the photos pinned like accusations. His focus landed on the pictures and then he looked at the rabbit thread I’d circled.
“This is about your case?” He looked at all the items on the board.
“It’s about my brother.”
Eli nodded, as if that distinction mattered. “Give me the timeline. Tell me what you did tonight. Not feelings. Just the facts.”
I dragged in a breath and forced my thoughts into a line. “I came home. Showered. Made coffee. Checked old files.” My fingers tightened around the bat handle even though I’d lowered it. “Then I remembered the last foster home Nate and I were in before we aged out. Chuck and Elaina Hall.”
Eli’s eyes sharpened. “The kind ones?”
“The ones who dropped us when the checks stopped.”
There was nothing kind about what they had done to us. They dropped us like we were a bag of shit that had been scooped off the pretty lawn and put in the trash.
Eli didn’t comment. He waited.
“I started looking at the dates,” I continued. “Nate changed while we lived there. Withdrawn. Quiet. It started after Chuck began taking him on trips. Camping. Fishing. Hunting.” My stomach clenched. “I didn’t connect it then.”
The corner of Eli’s mouth tightened. “And now you think it wasn’t safe.”
I folded my arms. “I don’t know. I just know my gut is screaming now.”
Eli glanced at the rabbit thread again. “And the overlap with Hal?”
I pressed my lips into a thin line. “He goes by Ryker now. His family lived in Minnesota before moving to the Pacific Northwest. They both lived there around the same timeframe. I learned that Ryker went missing for four days when he was eleven.”
Eli stayed steady. “That’s new.”
“His parents admitted it to him, so it was verified,” I said. “The parents think an old friend of theirs knows something.”
Eli went still for half a second, the way he did when he didn’t like what he was seeing. “So you pulled that thread tonight and got a rabbit in blood on your wall.”
“Yes.”
Eli paused before he responded. “This isn’t a ‘stop digging’ message.”
My brows pulled together. “What else would it be?”
“It’s a shove. Someone has very close eyes on you and wanted to scare you, steer you.”
My mouth went dry. “Toward what?”
Eli didn’t say Ryker’s name. He didn’t have to.
He looked at me like he already knew who I was going to call next.
My stomach dropped.
Eli’s voice went sharp. “If you contact him, you don’t do it from inside this house. We move first. We pick the place, and we control the exits.”
I fixed on Nate’s photo, craving the answers so badly it was physically painful. I also wanted to live long enough to get them.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Okay. What do we do right now?”
Eli stepped closer. “You need to make a police report. This house is compromised.”
“No cops. I can’t jeopardize the lead I have on Nate. Please, Eli. Promise me you won’t either.”
He blew out a big sigh. “Nothing sounds okay about that plan, but let’s try to get in touch with Jade again. Then we decide where you’re going until she gets in touch.”
I nodded, anger flashing through my fear. “Fine, but I need to take care of something else first.”
“Then I’m coming with you.” He wasn’t asking permission.
“You won’t understand why, but I’m going alone. There’s something I need to do before I stay with Jade.” I hadn’t asked if I could stay with her, but she would be thrilled to have me. She always complained she never saw enough of me anyway.
I packed what I needed while Eli stood watch. I knew he was right. The rabbit on my wall wasn’t going to be the last message. Not if I kept pulling threads.