31. Keira
KEIRA
I can’t outrun it. Her name. Her face. That dream.
Riley.
She clings to me like a bad omen. I can’t breathe right as I pace back and forth across the floor in my room.
The phone vibrates in my hand like it’s alive—panicked, pulsing.
Unknown number.
My thumb hovers. Unknown numbers usually carry threats, not pleasantries, and after last night’s demons I’m in no mood for more ghosts. But curiosity is a rotten little hook, and it sinks deep. Especially when this time, it’s a call rather than a message.
Swipe.
“Keira Bishop speaking.”
A man answers—voice clipped, precise, the kind of tone that bleeds authority and keeps comfort at bay.
“Ms Bishop, Detective Hawthorne, King County PD. We need to discuss your father’s disappearance.”
Disappearance. Such a tidy word for a man who painted the bedsheets red.
“I’ve already spoken with the police,” I say, pacing faster. The chandeliers overhead cast shifting bars of light that look like prison bars sliding across my skin.
“New information’s surfaced. We’d like to meet in person.”
“What sort of information?” My pulse hammers against the bruises on my heart. Silence sizzles back at me—pure bait. I bite my lip until iron blooms on my tongue. “I’m… out of town,” I lie, voice shaky but still walking the knife-edge. “Not sure when I’ll be back.”
“Where are you, Ms Bishop? We can come to you.”
A floorboard creaks. I glance up.
Jayson looms in the open doorway, arms folded over the black ink coiled on his forearms, eyes the color of a brewing storm. The single word “police” must have summoned him like some hellbound guardian. He mouths: Give. Them. The. Address.
My spine chills. I swallow splinters before I shoot off the address.
“We’ll be there within the hour.”
The line dies.
I lower the phone, fingers shaking. Jayson doesn’t move. The chandelier hums above us, sounding too much like a swarm ready to feed.
“Go on,” I mutter, voice rough as gravel. “Say whatever brilliant thing you’re thinking.”
“They’d have sniffed you out anyway.” He stalks closer, the hallway shrinking beneath his shadow. “Better we set the board.”
“I’m not your pawn.”
“No,” he says, tilting my chin up with a knuckle. “You’re the queen. And queens don’t hide.”
Heat—equal parts fury and relief—flares in my chest. Because as twisted as it is, standing next to this monster feels like slipping into armor I never asked for but desperately need.
An hour later, we watch from the great bay windows as an unmarked cruiser noses up the winding drive, tires crunching over gravel.
I turn away before the engine even cuts.
By the time the knock lands on the heavy oak doors, Jayson and I are already there—side by side, the picture of polite wariness.
I don’t look at him, but I can feel the heat rolling off him like warning flares.
He’s in charcoal trousers and a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, ink winding up his forearms like a warning label.
His stance is relaxed. Controlled. But every inch of him is ready for war.
The door swings open.
A man steps forward, flashing a badge. “Detective Hawthorne, King County PD. This is Detective Lopez.” His gaze flicks between me and Jayson. “We spoke on the phone.”
Detective Hawthorne is in his mid-forties, military posture, wedding band glinting. Beside him, the much younger Detective Lopez eyes the place like she’s never seen anything quite like it.
“Come in,” I say, voice flat.
I don’t offer coffee. The truth is, I don’t know what they’re here to say. But whatever it is, it won’t be good. And I want to get this over and done with as soon as possible.
We settle in the blue sitting room—its velvet cushions and warm lighting do little to soften the suffocating press of the walls. Everything feels too quiet. Too staged.
Detective Lopez flips open a slim black notebook while Hawthorne stays standing, hands by his side like a soldier bracing for impact.
“We weren’t aware you had moved residences,” he says, tone light, but probing.
I sit straighter. “Is that relevant to your investigation?”
“We had a hard time tracking you down,” Lopez cuts in.
“You had my number,” I reply, voice clipped. “How hard could it have been? ”
Lopez doesn’t flinch. “We’re actually here on two active cases now. Your father’s disappearance… and Riley Kincaid’s.”
The air is sucked clean from the room.
Ice floods my spine. “Riley? I thought her case was closed.”
“Not anymore,” Hawthorne says. “It’s too coincidental that you’re now connected to two missing persons.”
I feel Jayson stiffen beside me.
My fingers curl into fists. “What are you trying to say?”
“The pattern is... interesting,” Lopez murmurs, her pen tapping a slow, accusatory rhythm against the page.
A heavy silence creeps in. Jayson doesn’t move, but his stare is locked on Hawthorne like he’s calculating the exact force it would take to knock him through the window.
“We’re reopening the investigation into Riley Kincaid’s disappearance,” he says.
My blood starts roaring, loud enough to drown the clock ticking over the fireplace. The room seems to shift—floorboards groaning, air thickening, the walls pressing closer. The timing of this news is…odd at best.
I let out a breath, shaky and sharp. “It’s about bloody time.”
Lopez watches me, hawk-like. “You don’t seem shocked.”
“I’m not,” I say. “She didn’t just walk off. She wasn’t a runaway. I wondered how long it would take you to realize that.”
“Yet you were the last one to see her alive.” She tilts her head curiously, trying to read me.
“And your father?” Hawthorne asks, stepping forward, his gaze narrowing. “He’s been missing for two weeks. No calls. No trace of him. Why haven’t you reported him missing? Why haven’t you made a single effort to find him?”
The words hit like a slap.
I blink once. Twice. “Because I wasn’t close to my father.”
“Close or not,” he presses, “he’s your blood. You didn’t even try? ”
My throat tightens. The room swims slightly, blurring at the edges. “He wasn’t the kind of man you go looking for,” I say, the words barely a whisper. “He was the kind you run from.”
Lopez’s pen stills. “What does that mean, exactly?”
I fold my arms across my chest, tipping my chin defiantly.
“You look like a smart woman, detective. I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“I still find it hard to believe that you didn’t report him missing.”
I open my mouth, then close it again. There’s too much in the air—Riley’s voice echoing from the past, my father’s shadow clawing at my skin.
“You think I did something to him?” I ask, quieter now.
“We don’t know what to think,” Hawthorne replies.
There it is. The quiet accusation. The unspoken suggestion that I’m the common denominator between two missing person’s cases.
Jayson shifts beside me, moving slowly, deliberately, until he’s eye-level with the detective. No words. No theatrics. Just presence. Solid, unmoving, unbothered.
The air thickens between them, a silent standoff.
He doesn't need to say a thing. His stance does the talking— You don’t intimidate me.
“You don’t get to come into this house and strong-arm Keira,” he says, stepping slightly in front of me—not shielding, exactly, but drawing a line in the sand with his body. “You don’t get to sit here and make accusations against her.”
“No-one is making any accusations,” Lopez says, sliding her eyes in Hawthorne’s direction. She closes her notebook with a faint thud, but the sound lands like a warning shot.
“We’ll be in touch,” Hawthorne says, his eyes still pinned to me. “We’ll be speaking to anyone who might help… fill in the blanks. ”
He doesn’t say what blanks. He doesn’t need to.
The air in the room changes like a weather front rolling in. Energy rolls off Jayson, tight and heavy, more dangerous.
“No,” he says, voice low and final. “The next time you get “in touch”, you can’t speak to her without a lawyer present.”
Lopez raises a brow. “Excuse me?”
Hawthorne squints. “I didn’t quite catch your name.”
“You don’t need it,” Jayson replies coldly.
Lopez eyes him like a puzzle she’s not sure she wants to solve. “And you would be…”
I cut her off before she can get another word in. I step forward, hand wrapping gently but firmly around Jayson’s forearm. Possession.
“Jayson’s my husband.”
Silence. For a beat, no one breathes.
Lopez blinks. Hawthorne straightens, then blinks rapidly as though he’s been blindsided.
“You’re… what?” Lopez finally asks, her voice dropping an octave.
“We’re married,” I repeat, letting the words settle like dust between us.
The pause that follows is thick with implication.
Jayson doesn’t speak. The look he gives Hawthorne is the kind of quiet that promises ruin.
Lopez’s pen is back in her hand before I’ve even finished the sentence.
“Well,” she says, more to herself than anyone else. “This is an unexpected turn.”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” I murmur.
And for the first time since they arrived, neither of them knows what to say.
Because in their eyes, I’ve just become something worse than a witness. I’ve become a complication. And people like Hawthorne and Lopez don’t know what to do with complications.
The detectives exchange a look—frustration, suspicion, maybe fear. Hawthorne slips me a card.
“If you remember anything,” he says, eyes softer for a beat, “call. Cold cases don’t stay cold forever.”
When they leave, I watch the cruiser vanish down the drive, heart hammering. Jayson stands casually beside me, his hands in his pockets.
“You think they’ll come back?” I whisper.
“Absolutely.” He glances toward the cellar door I once thought led only to wine. “Question is, what do we want them to find when they do?”
A shiver zips through me—half dread, half thrill. Because I’m no longer certain I don’t want the police to go snooping around. Some truths deserve to be unearthed. Others need to stay buried with the men who birthed them.
I slip the detective’s card into my pocket, feeling its sharp corners against my fingers. The game just changed squares.
And I’m not sure which side I’m on anymore.