34. Jayson
JAYSON
“ S he’s gone, caro.”
Nina’s voice cuts through the quiet like a blade. For a beat, I don’t respond. I just stare at the phone in my hand, her words sinking in.
Gone.
“She slipped away from the fitting room,” Nina adds, her tone tight. “Lionel didn’t even see her go.”
Of course he didn’t. Keira’s smart. Smarter than most people give her credit for. And when she wants something—like escape—she doesn’t make noise. She just disappears.
I drag in a slow breath, steadying the hammer of my pulse. There’s no room for panic. Not now.
She’s been gone long enough to get a solid head start. Which tells me this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision—it was calculated. She waited for her chance. Waited for Nina and Lionel to be just distracted enough.
This wasn’t about slipping away for air. This was a mission. And grief’s behind the wheel now, pushing her straight into the dark, away from me.
I grab my phone, unlocking the tracking app I installed on her phone.
The dot appears instantly. Her signal pulses back at me from a street I know too well.
Her childhood home. My jaw tightens. That house again.
She keeps going back like it’s calling her home. Like it still has a hold on her throat.
What the hell are you doing back there, Keira Bishop?
I stare at the screen, breath caught somewhere between relief and dread.
She’s still within reach.
Still close enough to bring home—before the past pulls her under for good.
I nose the Aston to the curb half a block away—engine off, hazards black. The street is a postcard of quiet suburbia: trimmed hedges, porch lights glowing like low‐grade halos, not a curtain stirring. Perfect cover for whatever nightmare Keira’s chasing.
I pop the door, scan the street, then start toward the Bishop property. Autumn leaves crunch under my boots, each step a metronome for the pulse beating in my throat.
Why are you here again, Keira? What do you hope to find?
I round the corner just in time to see her tear down the side walkway—hair flying, breath ragged, eyes huge. She doesn’t see me until impact.
She slams into my chest, hard enough to punch the air out of the both of us. I lock my arms around her to keep her upright.
“Easy,” I murmur, smoothing a hand over her hair. She’s vibrating—terror, adrenaline, the whole cocktail. “Talk to me.”
“It’s not… empty,” she gasps between gulps of air. “Someone’s inside. I heard them—floorboards—my name?—”
I lower my head until my forehead rests against hers, anchoring her. Breathe with me. She follows the rhythm after a few shaky tries, but the panic never leaves her eyes.
“There’s someone inside the house!” she hisses. “I came out through the window.”
Leaving her out here feels wrong. Taking her back in feels worse. But the unknown sitting inside that house is an open blade.
“Stay beside me,” I tell her. “Don’t wander, don’t talk, don’t touch anything.” I pull the Glock from my shoulder holster and thumb the safety off. “If I say drop, you hit the floor. Understood?”
She nods, jaw clenched.
We move. Down the side path—her boots scuffing, mine silent—to the back door hanging half-open.
“I closed it when I got here,” she whispers.
That detail settles in my gut like a warning. I push the door wider with the muzzle and step inside first. There’s no sound but the steady drip of the fridge’s ice maker.
We sweep room by room. Up the stairs, hallway left, hallway right. Bedroom— that bedroom—empty except for the ghosts that linger there like a bad omen. All other rooms and bathrooms stand just as empty, just as unforgiving.
Twenty minutes later we’re back downstairs. I re-safe the Glock but don’t holster it. My body’s still wired for a fight that won’t materialize.
We collapse onto the living-room sofa, both of us breathing like we’ve run ten miles through barbed wire.
Keira’s knees are up, arms wrapped around them. She stares at nothing, seeing everything.
Finally she turns her head. Her voice is small. “I know I didn’t imagine someone in the house, Jayson.”
I study her—smudged mascara, torn hoodie sleeve, bracelet of faint scratches on her hands where she scraped her skin climbing out of the window. She’s a mess of fear and fire and stubborn hope, and somehow the most fragile thing I’ve ever seen.
“I think,” I say slowly, “you heard something. And given the last few weeks, your instincts are worth trusting.”
“But we found no one, Jayson.” Her laugh is a cracked thing. “What if it’s all in my head?”
I want to feed her easy lies. But I don’t. Instead I tell her what I should’ve told her days ago.
“I don’t think you’re imagining things, Keira. Two nights ago, someone breached the grounds at my place. Professional. Avoided every sensor to get close to the house. He vanished before I could catch up with him.” I shake my head. “I thought it was a one-off. Now I’m not so sure.”
She goes still. “You think it’s the same person?”
“I don’t know.” I keep my tone even. “Either way, you can’t be careless with your safety, Keira.”
She drops her gaze to her hands, fingers twisting in her lap, knuckles pale with tension. There's a heaviness in her posture now—shoulders curved inward, like she’s trying to fold into herself.
Guilt rolls off her in waves. She doesn’t say it, but I can see it in the way she won’t meet my eyes. The regret is written all over her—etched into the tight lines around her mouth, the way her knee bounces once, twice, then goes still.
She knows she messed up. That sneaking off, ditching Nina and Lionel, wasn’t just reckless—it could’ve gone sideways in a hundred different ways.
And if I hadn’t found her when I did… I don’t finish the thought. Because the alternate ending to today has her hurt. Missing. Gone. And I won’t let that become our reality.
Her lip trembles, but she nods. “I just needed answers. ”
“I know.” I reach out, thumb brushing against hers. “But you don’t get them if you’re dead.”
Silence stretches between us—raw, ugly, honest.
I tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear and rest my palm at the nape of her neck, grounding her the only way I know how. Inside, the fear’s still there, clawing at my ribs. Fear of losing her. Fear she’ll chase the next shadow before I can drag it into the light.
She blinks, and I catch the shimmer in her eyes—grief clashing with something sharper, more volatile. Rage.
Her fingers unclench, and she holds something small between us.
A bracelet.
Pink cords braided with silver, the charm catching the slant of light coming through the curtains. It flickers against the walls like it’s trying to be seen—trying to be remembered.
Her voice is low, but I don’t miss the tension thrumming through it.
“I found this in the cellar,” she says. “It’s Riley’s. We made them together. Matching bracelets.”
She swallows hard, knuckles tightening around the delicate thing like it might vanish.
“She was wearing it the night she disappeared.”
Her eyes meet mine, and I see it—what’s left of the little girl who thought home meant safety.
“Everything he told me about being protected… it was a lie. A lie my father sold me so I wouldn’t see what he really was.”
And just like that, I understand—she’s not just grieving. She’s waking up to the full weight of betrayal. And it's shattering her.
A muscle jumps in my jaw. Her eyes search mine. Whatever she finds softens something deep. She shivers, shaky.
The fight leaves her all at once. Her shoulders collapse, breath catching in her throat—and then she’s pulling me down by the collar, grounding herself in the only thing solid in the moment.
Me.
Her mouth crashes into mine.
It’s not soft or careful. It’s salt and desperation and everything she can’t bring herself to say. Don’t let go.
I answer with a hand on her jaw, thumb brushing her cheek, the other anchoring us against the sofa. I don’t take it further. I don’t push. I just hold on, matching the storm without feeding it. Fierce, but steady.
When she finally pulls back, our foreheads rest together. Her breath fans across my lips, shaky and warm.
“I wasn’t running from you,” she whispers. Her voice is rough with emotional exhaustion. And somehow, she already knows what I was afraid of—the second I realized she’d slipped away from Nina and Lionel.
“Good,” I murmur. “Because you wouldn’t get far.”
That earns me the ghost of a smile, barely there, but enough.
She tucks the bracelet into her hoodie pocket—tight, like it might be stolen again. Then she nods. Just once. “Can we go?”
I rise and help her up, keeping a hand on her back until I’m sure her knees will hold.
Together, we move through the house one last time—my eyes sweeping every room, hers trailing after memories.
She locks the cellar. I make sure the back door latches tight.
No alarms went off, no signs of entry. But someone was here. I believe her.
And whoever it was, he’s gone now.
Outside, the sun is too bright. Too ordinary. It casts long lines of gold across the manicured lawn, the trimmed hedges, the familiar sidewalk. A perfect neighborhood pretending everything’s fine.
We walk side by side to the Aston parked discreetly up the street, the midday sun making the air shimmer above the blacktop. She hesitates by the car, glancing back over her shoulder, then slides into the passenger seat without protest. I round to the driver’s side, get in, and start the engine.
We ease away from the curb, tires whispering over the road. She keeps her eyes on the rearview mirror for a long time, watching the house shrink behind us.
Only when it disappears around the next corner does she let out a long, shaky breath.
“I thought I was ready to see it again,” she says softly. “But it still holds demons.”
I reach for her hand. She takes it.
“You don’t have to go back there,” I tell her.
She nods, quiet but sure.
The city hums around us—life moving on. But inside this car, everything has shifted. Whatever happened in that house today changed something in her.
And I’ll burn the whole damn world before I let it break her.