68. Holden
SIXTY-EIGHT
HOLDEN
Knox calls me. He doesn’t say hello.
“Get to the apartment. Now. Bring everyone.”
I’m at the station, halfway through a shift report. Something in his voice tells me this is deadly serious.
“What happened?”
“Just get here.”
He hangs up. I stare at my phone for two seconds, then I’m moving. Badge clipped, jacket grabbed, out the door before anyone can ask where I’m going. I text the group chat from the car.
Me:
Knox called. Something’s wrong. Sage’s place. Now!
Milo:
On my way. I’ll tell my boss I have diarrhea.
Eli:
Ten minutes out.
Micah:
I’m close. Be there in five.
I make it in seven. I take the stairs two at a time and the door to Sage’s apartment is open, which is wrong in a way that makes my hand go to my hip before I’m conscious of doing it.
Inside, I stop.
The noose is hanging from the ceiling light fixture in the center of the living room.
It’s perfectly coiled, a clean wrap. Whoever tied it knew what they were doing—or studied it until they did.
It’s swaying in the draft from the open door, a slow, lazy pendulum.
Underneath it the room is untouched. Nothing tossed.
Nothing broken. Just the noose and the silence.
Knox is standing between Sage and the rope, a pissed-off wall of muscle and murder. Sage is on the couch, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, face white. She’s gone somewhere inside herself, her brain deciding the safest response to horror is to simply leave the building.
“Don’t touch anything,” I say. My cop brain kicks into gear as I analyze the scene. “When did you find it?”
“Right before I called you.” Knox’s voice is granite. “We walked in and it was here. Note’s attached.”
I cross to the noose without touching it. The note is a piece of plain white printer paper, folded once, hanging from the rope by a paperclip. It has block letters in black marker. No flourish, no signature.
YOU’RE NEXT
I pull out my phone and start snapping. I capture every aspect of the apartment. The noose. The note. The room from four angles. The door, the lock, the windows. Evidence collection on instinct, even though I know none of this is going through official channels.
We’ll murder whoever did this.
Micah comes through the door and stops dead, his eyes going straight to the rope. The color drains from his face. He doesn’t say anything as he moves to the couch and sits beside Sage, pulling her into his side without a word.
Milo arrives thirty seconds later. He takes one look at the noose and his jaw locks. No jokes. No quips.
“Seven coils,” he says, circling wide around the noose. “Same as ours.”
“I can see that.”
“So either someone knows what we do, or this is a coincidence. And I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Neither do I.
Eli is last through the door. He scans the scene, methodical, controlled. But when his eyes land on Sage, something cracks. He crosses to the couch, crouches in front of her, and puts both hands on her knees.
“Hey, little savage. Look at me.”
She does. Her eyes are glassy but present.
She’s not gone—she’s processing. Fighting it, the way Sage fights everything.
I watch her hands unclench from her knees and reach for his, and the way he holds them—firm, grounding, deliberate—makes something tighten in my chest that I don’t have time for right now.
“Okay,” I say. “Nobody touches the noose. Nobody touches the note. I’m going to process this like a scene, because that’s what it is.” I pull a pair of nitrile gloves from my jacket—I always carry them when I’m on the job, occupational habit—and snap them on. “Knox. Walk me through it.”
Knox does, in his usual economy. They came back from the diner. Door was locked. No sign of forced entry. Walked in, saw the noose, called me. He checked the apartment—bedroom, bathroom, Amy’s room, the hallway closet. Nobody inside. Windows locked. Fire escape clear.
“So whoever did this had a key,” I say. “Or picked the lock clean enough to re-lock behind them.”
“Or was already inside when we left this morning,” Micah says quietly.
That thought lands like a brick in the center of the room. Sage makes a small sound and Micah pulls her closer.
“Who has keys to this apartment?” I ask.
“Me,” Sage says, her voice thin but steady. “You guys. Amy. Possibly Tyler.”
Tyler.
“Tyler’s gotten in Sage’s face about Brock,” Milo says, reading my mind. “You think he’d go this far?”
“I think he’s an angry guy who thinks he deserves more answers than he has,” I say. “But would he work himself up to this as a scare tactic? Maybe. Hanging’s been all over the news since Hudson was found—it’s possible that’s where he got this idea.”
“But the seven coils,” Milo presses. “That’s specific. Tyler wouldn’t know—”
“Tyler could Google ‘how to tie a noose’ and get a hundred tutorials. Seven coils are traditional. It doesn’t mean he knows shit.”
Milo doesn’t look convinced, but he nods. I appreciate that he trusts my process even when he wants to argue.
“Where’s Amy?” I ask.
“Probably at work. Or with Tyler.”
“She said she needed space from him this morning,” Milo provides.
“You think that could push him to do something like this?” Micah asks.
“It could,” I say. “A guy like Tyler gets rejected, gets scared, gets pissed off, starts deciding fear is leverage.” I glance at Sage. “But I’m not marrying that theory yet.”
I move to the door first. Lock intact. No splintering around the jamb. No fresh scratches obvious at first glance, but this isn’t the kind of lock that would show much if someone competent picked it. I crouch, angling my phone flashlight over the keyway.
“Milo. Do me a favor. Check the building entry if you can—camera coverage, neighboring Wi-Fi, smart doorbells, anything that might have caught the hall.”
“On it.” He’s already pulling out his phone, thumbs moving.
I inspect the windows next. Latches engaged. Dust on the sill mostly undisturbed. Fire escape outside is rusted enough that a fresh shoe print might show if somebody used it, but Knox already said it looked clear. I trust his eyes almost as much as mine.
Micah keeps one arm around Sage while Eli stays crouched in front of her, still anchoring her with his hands. Knox stands near enough to kill God if he needed to.
I straighten. “All right. I’m going to talk to the neighbors. See if anyone saw anything unusual today.” I look at Knox. “Stay with her. Nobody leaves until I’m back.”
“Not going anywhere,” Knox says, in a tone that suggests he might also never go anywhere again.
I leave the apartment and work the floor. Badge out, notebook open, the version of me that gets answers through authority and patience rather than rope and retribution.
The building is old and nosy, which works in my favor. There are four units on Sage’s floor, two more above, three below. I knock on every door.
Unit 2A, directly across the hall, is a retired woman named Dorothy who watches television with the volume cranked so high I can hear the game show from the landing. She opens the door on a chain and squints at my badge with undisguised suspicion.
“We’re investigating a potential break-in across the hall. Did you notice anyone unfamiliar in the building today?”
Dorothy thinks about it with agonizing slowness. “There was a young man,” she says finally. “This afternoon. I heard him in the hall. Thought it was the girl’s boyfriend—the loud one.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Tallish. Baseball cap. Carried a bag. I didn’t get a good look—he was already at her door when I came out for my mail.”
“What kind of bag?”
“A backpack. Dark colored. He let himself in with a key.”
“What time was this?”
“Before my shows. So . . . two? Two-thirty?”
“Did you see him leave?”
“No. I went back inside. My shows were about to start.”
I thank Dorothy and keep moving. 2C is empty. 2D is a guy who works nights and was sleeping all day, heard nothing.
Upstairs and downstairs give me nothing useful. But Dorothy’s description circles in my head. Tallish. Baseball cap. Backpack. Let himself in with a key.
Tyler is tallish. Tyler could have Amy’s key.
Could also be someone else, and a baseball cap and a backpack aren’t overly descriptive.
When I get back to the apartment, the scene hasn’t changed much.
Sage is up now, pacing the kitchen, which I take as a good sign.
Eli is at the table with his hands clasped, running through something in his head.
Milo’s moved from his phone to his laptop.
Micah’s making coffee, because Micah always makes something when things are falling apart, and Knox hasn’t moved from his position between the living room and the front door.
“Neighbor saw someone,” I say, and lay out what Dorothy gave me. “Tallish, cap, backpack, let himself in with a key. Two, two-thirty this afternoon.”
“Tyler,” Milo says immediately.
“Maybe. Could fit a lot of people.”
“Could fit Tyler specifically.”
“It could. And it could fit someone we haven’t considered yet.” I hold up a hand before the argument starts. “I’m not ruling him out. I’m saying we don’t move on assumptions. That’s how mistakes happen. The kind that put us all in a cell.”
Milo’s jaw works, but he backs down.
“Tell me you’ve got something on camera,” I say to Milo.
He doesn’t look up from the laptop. His jaw is tight.
“I’ve got nothing on camera, because there are no cameras.
This building has a shitty intercom from 1987 and a landlord who thinks a deadbolt is cutting-edge security.
” He shuts the laptop. “You know what would’ve caught this guy strolling in with his backpack and his borrowed key?
The cameras I installed at the start of all this.
” His voice flattens. “Creepy, I believe was the word. Overbearing. Invasive. And now our best witness is a woman named Dorothy who was three feet from him and watching Wheel of Fortune.”
Nobody argues, because he’s right—and Milo being right while everyone else was wrong is a specific flavor of misery he’ll savor later, once we’re not standing under a noose.