4. Graham
4
GRAHAM
Five years ago
For a man who doesn’t believe in body-snatching, the last twenty minutes have done a hell of a job convincing me otherwise.
I don’t remember making the decision to buy her coffee.
I don’t remember the moment I stopped seeing her as a face from the past and started thinking in terms of possession.
But here I am, standing in the middle of the coffee shop downtown, my fingers flexing restlessly around my cup, my pulse beating at an unfamiliar rhythm. Like my body hasn’t quite caught up with the fact that she was here. And now she’s gone again.
Gone .
Fuck me, that word chafes.
I exhale sharply, rolling my shoulders back, trying to shake the feeling that I just let something slip through my fingers that I wasn’t supposed to.
It’s ridiculous. It’s been five years.
A lot can happen in five years—a lot has happened.
I built Aegis Network from the ground up, turning a two-client operation into one of the most in-demand cybersecurity firms in the country.
Beau and I are poised to start a new venture—a racing circuit at the abandoned Avalon Falls Speedway. Nothing official yet, but the pieces are lining up.
I renovated my three-story maisonette into a fortress and convinced my brother to update the shared space. We bought a block of maisonettes—one for me, one for Beau, and one in the middle that we share.
I’ve spent more nights than I can count staring at three massive monitors, writing security patches, tracking breaches, following digital trails that most people wouldn’t even notice. I’ve handled high-profile clients, shut down hacking rings, buried secrets for people powerful enough to make those problems disappear entirely.
I’ve done everything I set out to do.
Over and over again.
But the one thing I haven’t done?
I haven’t forgotten about her.
I should have. That’s the logical thing. The normal thing.
But nothing about this has ever felt normal. Instead, I’ve spent every passing glance, every unfamiliar blonde in a crowd, every stray thought in a quiet moment looking for someone I never thought I’d see again.
And now? Now I have more information.
Something pulses beneath my skin, hot and electric, a high I haven’t felt in a long time.
The chase.
It thrums through me, steady and insistent, like something primal, something intrinsic, something woven into my very DNA. For a second, my thoughts stutter—logic sparring with instinct, hesitation colliding with inevitability. I debate what to do for all of two seconds.
Fuck it. Normal is overrated anyway.
I tighten my grip on my coffee and stalk toward the door, my pulse still drumming at an unfamiliar tempo.
“Graham, is that you?” The voice is warm, familiar, and just curious enough to grate at the edges of my impatience.
I pause one step away from the door, exhaling slowly before turning to face Mrs. Dunlap. Mid-seventies now, but still sharp as ever. She sits at her usual spot by the window, her cup of tea steaming between her hands, a knowing gleam in her blue eyes.
“You weren’t going to leave without saying hello, were you?” she muses, her eyes sparkling with genuine amusement.
I relax my jaw, forcing my fingers to unclench around my cup. “Mrs. Dunlap. I didn’t see you there.”
Her smile is warm, friendly. The same as it always was.
I was eight years old, sitting at the back of her classroom, struggling to make sense of things that came so easily to the other kids. She’d never made me feel stupid. Never sighed in frustration or dismissed me.
Instead, she’d stayed after school, almost every afternoon for a year, patiently going over math problems and reading passages, walking me through it until something finally clicked.
Even now, decades later, I can’t bring myself to brush her off. Not after everything she did for me.
She gestures toward the counter, her eyes twinkling. “Making new friends, I see?”
I tip my head slightly, giving her a little smirk. “Something like that.”
Mrs. Dunlap hums, taking a careful sip of her tea. Too knowing. Too damn perceptive.
“You know, Avalon Falls isn’t that big,” she muses. “Word gets around quick when someone new moves into town.”
I arch a brow. “Okay?”
“And,” she says, smiling like she’s already won this conversation, “it won’t take those wolves you call friends long to snatch her up.”
A flicker of something sharp slides under my skin.
I don’t have many people I actually consider friends. I have associates, acquaintances. Guys I kept in touch with after college. Guys I see at The Alley—what we started calling the old Avalon Falls Speedway. Some friends of my brother’s.
And yeah, those guys don’t deserve to share the same air as Francesca.
My grip tightens around my coffee. “She’s just visiting.” Even as I say it, uncertainty weighs down my brow.
“Still.” Mrs. Dunlap sets down her tea with a soft clink, tilting her head in that way that used to mean I’d gotten an answer wrong on a math test. “You’re too good a person to let her get eaten alive by them.”
She pats the edge of her table, already moving on from the topic, like she hasn’t just thrown a lit match into a gasoline-soaked thought.
I exhale. “Right. Well, I better get back to work.” I give her a small nod and turn for the door.
“She went right, dear,” she calls out as I push it open.
My chest goes tight. I glance over my right shoulder, already knowing she won’t be there. But I can’t resist the pull.
And just like I thought—she’s already gone. But lucky for me, I’ve gotten really fucking good at finding things.
The drive home is a blur, my mind looping the last twenty minutes on repeat.
Francesca. Here. In Avalon Falls.
Five years later, and somehow, she’s even more beautiful than I remember. More vibrant. More alive. And just as fucking untouchable.
I grit my teeth, knuckles flexing against the steering wheel as I pull into my driveway. My house rises in front of me—all sleek lines, dark wood, and massive windows. It does nothing to calm the restless energy buzzing beneath my skin.
I park in the garage, slamming the door behind me as I stride toward the kitchen entrance, my phone already in my hand. Thumbprint. Unlock. Screen brightens.
“It should be easy,” I murmur. “A few clicks, a couple of searches, and I’ll have her information tonight.”
There are only a few minor roadblocks—her last name, where she lives, literally any other details.
But I’ve done more with less before.
I step inside, the quiet settling over me like a weighted blanket. It should be grounding. Instead, it just feels off.
I take the stairs two at a time, climbing all three stories until I reach the top floor.
One of the best things about these three-story maisonettes is the footprint—spacious, open floor plans with ten-to-twelve-foot ceilings and entire walls of windows.
The third floor has four rooms: my office, the primary bedroom with its en-suite bathroom, and an extra bedroom with a guest bed.
It’s a ridiculous notion, considering my entire family lives in Avalon Falls, and the shared apartment next door sits empty half the time if anyone actually needed a place to crash. Plus, there’s always Beau’s place.
But when I hired an interior designer to handle the final details of the renovations, she couldn’t quite grasp my complete lack of need for a guest bedroom. So I let her have that one.
Everything else? I got exactly the way I wanted.
I head straight for my office, shedding my jacket as I step inside. The glow from my monitors pulses against the walls, casting faint shadows over my meticulously organized desk.
Three extra-large screens, each displaying something different. A live security feed. A rotating set of encrypted files. A task list I should get through—sorted by priority, waiting for my attention.
All that will have to wait.
I settle into my chair, fingers tapping absently against the edge of my desk. “Alright. Where to start.”
The logical choice is the local newspaper’s obituaries. I pull up the Avalon Falls Gazette, scanning the section for any recent deaths in town.
Nothing really stands out. The only women listed were too old to be her aunt—well into their seventies or eighties. Not the right fit.
“Okay.” I drag a hand over my jaw, trying to recall everything she said, hunting for a clue.
If I wasn’t so blindsided by her, I would’ve paid more attention. I’m sure of it. But one look at her, one hit of her scent, and I was a goner.
Even now, I swear I can still smell her—sugared lemons and soft cream. It makes my fucking mouth water.
I shake my head, a physical attempt to get my brain in the game. I crack my neck, shifting my approach, then reach for my phone, tapping open my playlist.
A low hum of bass thrums through the room, filling the silence. Instrumental—just enough to drown out the quiet without distracting me.
“Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that recent. Maybe her aunt passed away weeks or even months ago, and she’s just here for . . . I don’t know what.”
My head nods absently as my fingers fly across the keyboard, already extending the search parameters.
“Talking to yourself again, bro?” Beau’s amused voice cuts through the music, startling me.
My fingers slam into too many keys at once, an annoyed huff slipping from my throat.
“What did I tell you about sneaking up on me?” I grumble, my heart slamming inside my ribs.
“I called your name like three times.” Beau chuckles, his voice closer now.
“Didn’t hear you.” I glance over my shoulder, unsurprised to find him standing right next to me.
“Yeah, no shit,” he snorts. “Too busy stalking the obits now, bro? Didn’t think you were that hard up for a date.”
My brows pull together. “I don’t even know what the hell that means.”
Beau laughs, clapping a hand on my shoulder as he leans toward my monitors. “I don’t know either. Sometimes you think too hard, yeah?”
His gaze flicks across the screen. “Seriously though, what’s got you combing through obituaries in . . . Avalon Falls?” He looks at me. “You got something local happening?”
A beat of silence stretches between us. I feel it then—the weight of something proprietary settling inside my chest. The quiet urge to keep this to myself.
To keep her to myself.
“Something like that,” I mutter.
“Huh. Who died?”
“My . . . client’s aunt.” The lie tastes awkward, but outwardly, I keep my expression neutral. “I’m trying to find, uh, confirmation of it.”
Beau sends me a sidelong glance, his smirk slow and knowing. “Sure. Maybe try the county clerk instead. Much easier way to sort information, isn’t it?” His smirk deepens. “Unless you can’t hack it?”
I roll my shoulders back, leveling him with a flat look. And he knows how much I can’t resist a challenge. Joke’s on him—that was already my next stop.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I mutter. “Of course I can get into the county clerk’s office. They barely even have a fucking firewall.”
Beau laughs as he straightens up. “That should be your pitch to them: ‘Hire me because you barely even have a fucking firewall .’” He drops his voice, pitching it both deep and nasally. Jesus, what a bad imitation of me.
“You make me sound like a Muppet,” I grumble, pulling up my software program, Sentinel. I originally built it years ago, but I’ve been tweaking and refining it so I can easily grow it into something much larger. But for now, it’s exactly what I need. It’s fast, efficient, and so good it should be illegal.
But it isn’t. Which is an important distinction.
Sentinel scans the backend of portals, websites, and databases, mapping out every weak spot or outright hole in their security. Firewalls, outdated encryption, exposed admin credentials—it highlights the fastest way in, making my job a hundred times easier.
I pull up the county clerk’s internal database—the system that stores digital records of deaths, births, marriages, and property transfers. It takes less than a minute to find an entry point into their portal. Amateurs.
I filter by recent deaths, female, age forty-five and older. Only a couple of hits come back. I drag them to an open list on one of my screens, scanning the names.
None of them feel like the right one. But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep looking.
“So, did you find her?” Beau asks.
“Maybe,” I hedge, skimming the files again. “Not sure yet.”
I exhale sharply, fingers flexing against the desk. Avalon Falls isn’t a one-stoplight town, but it’s not a bustling metropolis either. If someone died, chances are, everyone knew about it by the next morning. At least, that’s the way it feels.
I widen the search, pulling records from the three surrounding counties. Sentinel runs the parameters in seconds, spitting out seven more names.
“That’s not a lot,” Beau murmurs, his gaze flicking to the screen. “How do you know you found the right person?”
I exhale, buying myself a minute to figure out how much I actually want to divulge.
Beau’s my little brother, my best friend, and I trust him with my life. But this isn’t just my life.
Oracle is everyone’s life. It’s something I’m still developing, but it can take basic parameters and scrape every inch of available data online to create a well-rounded file on someone.
From every time you paused for five seconds on an ad on social media to every store you’ve purchased from online. To every newsletter you’ve ever signed up for. Deleted forum posts, archived website snapshots, and forgotten accounts buried under years of digital dust.
If it exists somewhere, anywhere, I can find it. At least in theory, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
I enter the parameters, running each name through Oracle, cross-referencing it against Francesca.
My jaw locks as I wait.
Nothing.
I exhale through my nose, shifting in my chair, rolling my shoulders back. I crack my knuckles one by one, then flex my fingers.
Still nothing.
I stare at the monitor like the results are going to change. No hits. No connection between any of these names and my girl.
The muscle in my cheek tics as I lean back, fingers drumming against the desk. I stare at the screen, unseeing, unsettled.
This doesn’t make sense.
“What happened?” Beau asks, tossing the apple core into the trash. I don’t even know where he got that from. I don’t leave fruit hanging out inside my office, not when I have expensive equipment in every corner.
I exhale sharply. “It didn’t find anything.”
Beau shrugs, unconcerned. “Maybe you need to tweak something in your code.”
I scrub a hand over my jaw. “Yeah, maybe.”
Beau rocks back on his heels, studying me. “Or maybe she’s the kind of person who doesn’t want to be found. Maybe she gave you a fake name.”
The words settle uneasily in my chest. I don’t like not having answers.
And I sure as hell don’t like the idea that she’s somewhere out there, but just out of reach.
I could keep digging. Run deeper searches. Expand my parameters. Start tracking things I shouldn’t.
Instead, I open a new script, fingers moving before I fully register the decision. If I can’t find her today, I’ll let the software do the work for me.
I attach a notification web to all the names I pulled, linking it to every system Oracle can scrape. And if, at any point, one of them connects to the name Francesca? I’ll know.
I lean back, exhaling slowly as I watch the script run.
Beau squints at my screen. “You done?”
I click out of the program, the notification system already working in the background. “Yeah. For now.”
I close out of the program, clearing the screen before shoving away from my desk.
“She’s out there,” I mutter under my breath.
Somewhere.
And one day, I’ll find her.