CHAPTER TWENTY
Bill stared at the dining room table, tracing a faint coffee ring on the placemat in front of him.
Even the familiar warm light from overhead emphasized those dark circles beneath Riley’s eyes, the tightness around Gabriela’s mouth, the hollowed look of April’s cheeks.
Four people sitting together, connected by one missing – the empty chair where Jilly should have been marking an absence that pulled at them all.
After he and Riley had finally returned home, no one felt like having the late dinner that Gabriela offered.
Still, they’d gravitated to the dining room table, none of them ready to face the solitude of their bedrooms despite their bone-deep fatigue.
Four people sitting together, connected by one missing – the empty chair where Jilly should have been marking an absence that pulled at them all.
“We need to establish some ground rules,” Riley said, her voice sandpaper-rough from too many hours of questioning, too little sleep. “Hogue’s team is handling the investigation, but that doesn’t mean we’re helpless.”
Bill nodded, though the motion felt mechanical. “There’s still a patrol car outside. That’s not changing.”
“And April doesn’t go anywhere alone,” Riley continued, turning to her older daughter. “Nowhere at all without Bill or me or an armed officer we’ve approved in advance.”
April’s replied softly, “What about the rest of the semester? My professors—”
“I’ve already emailed them,” Riley said. “They understand. You can complete your coursework remotely until...” She faltered, the remainder of that sentence unspoken.
Until we find Jilly. Until this is over. Until we know if she’s alive or dead.
Bill watched Riley struggle to regain her composure, wishing he could reach across the table and take her hand. But something held him back—a new distance had formed between them that felt somehow impenetrable.
“We can’t just sit around waiting for something to happen,” April said, her voice now unnaturally steady. Bill recognized that tone—it was the same one Riley used when she was keeping herself together through sheer force of will.
“We’re not,” Bill assured her. “Every available resource is being deployed. Van Roff is trying to find Leo’s digital accomplice. The FBI’s cyber division is analyzing Leo’s digital footprint.”
Gabriela, who had been silent until now, finally spoke. “And what about us? What do we do while they search?”
Bill found the question unanswerable. What could any of them do except wait, except hope?
“We take care of each other,” Riley said finally. “We stay vigilant. And we trust the team that’s working the case.” Bill caught her glance, a flicker of something—resentment? frustration?—crossing her features.
He understood. Being sidelined while someone else searched for Jilly felt like having a limb amputated. Both of them were accustomed to action, to being the ones who solved the puzzles and caught the killers. Now they were reduced to waiting for updates, for shared information.
“I think we should try to get some sleep,” Bill suggested, knowing even as he said it that sleep would likely elude all of them. “It’s been over forty hours for some of us.”
April nodded, rising from her chair with the careful movements of someone much older than her years. Gabriela followed suit, reaching out to squeeze April’s shoulder.
“Would you like some tea before you go to bed,” she asked April. “The chamomile? Would that help?”
“No, but thank you, Gabriela.”
As she and April started to head away, Gabriela turned to Riley and said, “Thank you for the sedative. I will use it. It will help me sleep.”
Bill watched them leave. Gabriela’s motherly concern for April felt like a knife-twist reminder of the family’s fracture.
He could see the slight tremor in Gabriela’s hands, the way she held herself as though physically keeping her grief contained.
April walked with her head down, shoulders curved inward, making herself small as if trying to disappear.
When they were gone, Riley slumped back in her chair, her show of strength crumbling now that her daughter was out of sight.
“I’ve been wondering,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, “if this is what it felt like for the families of all those victims over the years. This... helplessness.”
Bill started to respond, but Riley’s phone vibrated on the table, the screen lighting up with Van Roff’s name. She snatched it up, putting it on speaker.
“Van, you’re on with Bill too. What have you got?”
“Maybe something,” Van’s voice crackled through the speaker, his usual irreverence muted. “I’ve been dropping breadcrumbs on some dark web forums. Places where elite hackers hang out. I’ve been casually mentioning ShadowCipher and some of the FBI cases I’m working on.”
Bill leaned forward. “And?”
“Someone’s been nibbling. A user called ‘QuantumGhost’ responded to one of my posts with a quote from Alice in Wonderland about the Cheshire Cat. That’s been ShadowCipher’s calling card in the past—Lewis Carroll references.”
Riley gasped, “You think it’s him?”
“Can’t be sure yet. But I’m getting warmer. If it’s ShadowCipher, and if I play this right, I might be able to reach him. These guys usually have an ego the size of Montana.”
“How long will that take?” Bill asked, already calculating days, hours—time Jilly might not have.
Van’s sigh rustled through the speaker. “Unknown. Could be tonight, or tomorrow, or next week. Could be never. These guys are paranoid for a reason.”
Bill shared a glance with Riley, seeing his own disappointment mirrored in her eyes. Another maybe. Another waiting game.
“Keep us posted,” Riley said. “Directly.”
“You got it. I’ll call the minute I have something solid.”
The call ended, leaving Bill and Riley in silence. Bill studied the grain of the wooden table, not wanting to meet her gaze, afraid of what he might see there—or what she might see in his.
“I should...” Riley began, then trailed off, as if she couldn’t decide what she should do.
“Yeah,” Bill agreed to nothing in particular.
The silence stretched between them, thin and brittle. They’d faced countless horrors together over the years, had seen each other through the darkest moments of their lives up until now. But this—this felt different. This was Jilly. This was personal in a way no other case had ever been.
“What if we never find her?” Riley’s question came out in a rush. “What if we never even know if she’s alive or dead? What if this hangs over us for the rest of our lives?”
Bill reached for her hand then, finally breaching the distance between them. Her fingers were cold in his.
“We’ll find her,” he said, the words hollow even to his own ears.
Riley pulled her hand away. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.” She stood, pacing the small kitchen. “Leo has won. I don’t even understand the game he’s playing, but he’s won it.”
“Riley—”
“No, I’m serious, Bill.” She turned to face him, her hazel eyes fever-bright in her exhausted face.
“I’ve built my entire career on my ability to get into killers’ minds, to understand how they think, what drives them.
But Leo—he’s in my mind. He’s in your mind. He knows us better than we know him.”
Bill stood too, needing to be on her level. “You’re not thinking clearly. We’re both exhausted.”
“Don’t tell me I’m not thinking clearly,” she snapped. “Don’t patronize me.”
The flash of anger surprised him, though it shouldn’t have. They were both raw, flayed by stress and fear and the horror of Susan Martinez’s death—another life lost because of Leo’s obsession.
“I’m not patronizing you,” Bill said, keeping his voice even with effort. “I’m pointing out that neither of us has slept in two days. We’re not at our best.”
Riley’s shoulders sagged, the fight draining out of her. “I know. I’m sorry. I just...” She rubbed at her eyes. “I keep seeing Susan’s face. The way she looked at me right before...”
Her voice caught, and a silence ensued.
“Mike said these would help us sleep,” Riley finally said, pulling a small bottle of pills from her pocket that she and Bill had picked up at a drugstore on the way home from the police station. She shook one out into her palm. “Gabriela took one, and I’m going to take one. You should too.”
In spite of his own earlier observation that they all needed sleep, Bill shook his head. “I don’t want to drug myself… “
“What do you want to do, then?” Riley challenged. “Sit up all night staring at the wall? That won’t help Jilly.”
The truth was, Bill didn’t know what he wanted to do. His mind felt foggy, disconnected from his body. The exhaustion was bone-deep, but the thought of sleep—of surrendering consciousness, of perhaps dreaming of Jilly in danger, of Susan bleeding out—was unbearable.
“I’ll be up later,” he said, avoiding a direct answer.
Riley studied him for a long moment, then swallowed her pill with a sip of water from a glass on the table. “You’re making a mistake,” she said softly. “We both need to be functional tomorrow.”
She turned to leave, hesitated, then moved toward him. For a moment, Bill thought she might embrace him, might bridge the strange new gap that had formed between them. Instead, she merely touched his arm, a brief pressure of fingertips.
“Try to rest,” she said, and then she was gone.
Bill stood alone, listening to the sounds of the house. Normal sounds, domestic sounds, incongruous with the horror of their situation.
He sank back into his chair, suddenly too tired to remain standing. His thoughts circled like vultures, returning again and again to Susan Martinez, to Jilly, to his own inadequacy in the face of Leo’s perfect planning.
Riley was handling this better than he was. She was shaken, yes—devastated, even—but still functioning, still thinking clearly enough to know they needed rest. While he was... what? Falling apart? Coming undone at the seams?
The last time he had felt this untethered was after Lucy Vargas’s death, after he had mistakenly shot Stanley Pope.
He remembered sitting alone in his apartment, his service weapon heavy in his hand, the barrel cold against his temple.
He had come so close then—closer than he had ever admitted to Riley, even during those painful sessions with Mike Nevins.
Now he found himself wondering: how much would it take to push him back to that edge? How much more loss could he endure before the abyss opened beneath him again?
Not much, he feared. Not much at all.
His phone rang, the sound startling in the quiet room. Bill glanced at the screen. Unknown Caller. His finger hovered over the decline button, but something—intuition, perhaps, or resignation—made him answer instead.
“Jeffreys,” he said, his voice rough.
“Hello, Special Agent Bill Jeffreys.”
The voice was calm, pleasant even, with the faintest hint of amusement threading through it. Bill had never heard it before, but recognition slammed into him like a physical blow that knocked the air from his lungs.
Leo Dillard.