18. Justin
JUSTIN
Silas doesn’t announce himself. He doesn’t fill the space with noise the way he usually does when he’s about to deliver bad news. He closes the door behind him with deliberate care, like sound itself has suddenly become dangerous.
I’m already seated at my desk, hands folded together, posture still. Waiting. All I’ve been doing is waiting. He’s back from Maybrook two days after I sent him there, and nothing about the way he moves suggests this was a wasted trip.
He stops in front of me and pulls a thick manila envelope from under his arm. It lands on the edge of my desk with a dull, heavy thud. He looks at the envelope for a beat longer than necessary, then lifts his eyes to mine.
He doesn’t sit.
“Before we start,” he warns, voice low, “you need to understand something.”
I don’t speak.
“Once you read what’s in that envelope,” he continues, “there’s no going back. Not for you. Not for her. So consider very carefully what we do here, Justin. Because you’re about to walk yourself straight into a moral dilemma you won’t be able to pretend your way out of.”
Something tightens behind my ribs.
Silas doesn’t dramatize things. Ever. If he’s warning me, it’s because this crosses a line even he doesn’t want to step over.
“Tell me,” I say.
He exhales through his nose, slow and controlled.
“The reason you couldn’t find anything on Rowan Hale,” he tells me, “is because she didn’t want to be found.”
I don’t blink. This, I already knew.
“She learned early how to leave no footprints. No digital residue. No paper trail beyond what was strictly necessary to exist.”
“That doesn’t explain Missy,” I say. “And why we couldn’t find anything on her.”
“No,” Silas agrees. “It doesn’t.”
He reaches into the envelope and pulls out a single photograph—the one I lifted from Rowan’s apartment. He sets it face-up between us.
“The girl in the photo is her sister. Mississippi Hale. Older. Deceased.”
The word gut punches me. It lands the wrong way - heavy, final, ugly.
“There were court-mandated suppression orders put in place after her death,” Silas continues. “A total media blackout. The records were sealed. Her case was never meant to see daylight.”
My fingers curl slightly against one another.
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“I’m saying someone high enough to make the problem disappear did exactly that,” he replies. “That’s why you can’t find Rowan or Missy anywhere. Their names were scrubbed. Redacted. Buried. So no one would ever look too closely at what actually happened.”
A slow, cold awareness spreads through me, creeping in piece by piece. It burns and freezes at the same time, a clash of fire and ice sliding through my veins. My body reacts before my mind fully catches up—muscles tightening, breath sharpening, instincts snapping into place.
“What happened?” I ask.
Silas doesn’t rush as he speaks.
“The girls were attacked ten years ago as they were walking home after a birthday party. Rowan managed to get away. Missy didn’t.”
The room feels smaller. I almost feel it shrink to a size where it no longer fits me.
“Rowan identified two of the three men who attacked them. She never stopped talking. Never stopped pushing. But no one listened.”
My jaw tightens.
“There was a third man that was never identified. And because of the suppression order, the names of the others were sealed.”
I already know the answer to my own question even before I ask.
“Let me guess. Rich boys from prominent families.”
Silas nods once. “Your guess would be right.”
I lean back slightly in my chair, the weight of it pressing down now. Pieces start slotting into place. Rowan’s discipline. Her restraint. The way she moves through the world like visibility is a threat.
“How did you get this information?” I ask.
“None of it is public,” Silas says. “Every official channel was a dead end. Every request hit a wall. Until I found Geena Morris.”
The name doesn’t ring a bell.
“She was married to the sheriff at the time,” Silas explains. “He tried to do the right thing by the girls.”
My chest tightens. “Tried?”
“He wound up at the bottom of a lake.”
I still. “He drowned?”
Silas shakes his head slowly. “He had no business being there. He was a careful man and a strong swimmer. Geena Morris swore up and down that he never went out swimming on his own. A series of…irregularities happened before his death. Enough that his wife believes he was murdered to keep him quiet.”
A cold thread of anger winds through me.
“What happened after?” I ask.
“The case was closed. Pretty damn fast.”
Silas reaches into the envelope again, pulling out a stack of copied documents. Notes. Photographs. Old reports yellowed with age.
“Morris kept everything. Her husband’s notes. His private files. She handed them over to me. It’s all in there.”
He pushes the envelope closer to me.
“But Justin,” he adds, voice lowering, “depending on what your investment is in this girl, I would seriously reconsider opening that file.”
I look at him properly this time, really taking him in. The angle of his shoulders. The careful stillness in his posture. The way his expression gives nothing away, as if he’s already decided what he’s willing to reveal and what he isn’t.
“Why?” I ask, the word slipping out quieter than I intend, threaded with confusion.
“Because one of the perpetrators,” Silas picks his words carefully, “was William Scott-Evans.”
The name hits like a physical blow. The room goes quiet in a way that feels wrong. Dangerous. I stare at the envelope, my hands still folded, unmoving.
William Scott-Evans.
The same William Scott-Evans who ended up in hospital on Alumni Weekend with suspected poisoning. The case I dismissed as inconsequential. A blip. A nuisance incident shaped by old habits that refuse to die.
Now it’s anything but.
It’s relevant in ways I never could have predicted—threads looping back on themselves, tightening with purpose, pulling toward something sharp and intentional. This isn’t coincidence. It never was.
Rowan Hale didn’t arrive on this campus by accident.
The unease that’s been coiled in my chest since the moment I learned her name finally clicks into place. It isn’t intuition. It isn’t paranoia.
It’s recognition.
She isn’t searching for answers.
She’s circling the truth—methodical, patient—waiting for the moment when it’s exposed enough to tear into. And without realizing it, I didn’t just cross her path.
I stepped directly into her line of fire.