Oliver
Twelve hours earlier.
The first person I call when I see the accident isn’t the cops. Most people would. I’m not most people. Not after they failed her once. Not when they failed me my whole life.
I call Lyra’s father.
He answers immediately, knowing there is no reason I would be calling at two a.m. unless it is regarding his daughter. “What’s wrong?”
I get straight to the point. “Lyra’s missing.”
A strangled sound comes through the line. “Missing. What the fuck does that mean?”
“Her phone pinged on the far end of the island. Her car is wrecked. She isn’t here.”
I hear another voice in the background—her mother.
“Are the police involved?” he asks.
“No,” I grit out.
“Okay. I’ll handle that part when I’m on the ground. You find my fucking daughter, Oliver. Do you know who could have taken her?”
The worst part is that I don’t know. If Molly isn’t responsible, then we are at square one. “I’m looking into Molly, but…”
“What!”
“She didn’t tell you she has a stalker, did she?” A choked sound comes from the line, and I know it’s her mom once again.
“No,” Dean grinds out. “She never did.”
“I'll tell you when you’re here. I have to go.”
“We’re leaving now,” he adds. “Do not stop looking.”
“I won’t,” I say, and the line goes dead. I stare at the screen for half a second before I pocket the phone and look back at the wreck again. I don’t let myself imagine her on the ground. I don’t let myself imagine her screaming.
“She fucking has a stalker?” Blaine demands, following behind as I get back into my car.
“Not fucking now.” I run a hand through my hair. I need to think.
“I say we track down Molly first,” Callan decides. “Her phone was last in your room.”
“Mine, why?” Blaine asks.
“I don’t fucking have time for idiotic questions.” I take a deep, calming breath. “Callan, call Archer, find out Molly's phone location now.”
“On it.” He begins typing. I stare out, going over everything I know. Every message, image, threat, note. Dissecting it piece by piece.
“They were taunts,” I say more to myself.
“Molly is pinging on campus, not in the dorms.” I don’t hesitate to put the car in drive and speed toward campus.
We find Molly near the garden not long after. Blaine rushes to her, hands pressing to her stomach, while I look around, trying to find anything. Callan calls an ambulance while I watch Blaine break down over someone who hurt my Dollface.
That’s when we call the authorities. Not for procedure but for manpower.
Within two hours, the island is crawling with search teams. The campus goes into panic, rumors spreading faster than any official statement ever could.
The only thing that matters is that Lyra is out there somewhere, hurt and alone.
Her family arrives. I don’t ask how they got here so fast. I don’t ask what strings were pulled or how much money was thrown at a pilot at this hour. The families of Willow Hill have deep pockets and even deeper connections.
Their faces are wrecked with worry and the sick sense of déjà vu. I hand over the last ping from Lyra’s phone. “This is where her tracker died.”
Jess, Lyra's mom, takes the paper, trembling. “She’s out there alone, Dean, our baby.” She sniffs but straightens her shoulders. He wraps his arms around her.
We all split up. Callan takes Roxy and Sam to look around campus and her dorm. Dean, James, and I go back to the wreck to see if we missed anything. Charlie brings his mom and Vienna to a diner to wait for news.
An hour turns into two, then three, then four, and still nothing. When the sun rises the next day, my emotions are fucking fried.
My phone buzzes. I answer before the screen even finishes lighting up.
“I got something,” Archer rushes out. I grip the phone so tight I hear a crack. “It’s the burner. One of the numbers that’s been sending her messages. It came back online. I've been watching them to see if I could get a location, but they were switching and disposing of them so much that…”
My blood runs hot and cold at the same time. “Where?”
“Coastal tower. North end of the island. It pinged eight minutes ago.”
“I need coordinates.”
“I’m narrowing it,” he fires back. “Listen, it’s not a clean dot. It’s a radius. I don't know exactly, but I’m getting aerial imaging pulled up to narrow down a possible hiding spot.”
I’m already heading to my car. “Send it.”
“The area has dead pockets, which means caves and ravines. And Oliver.” There is a slight hesitation. “Bring a jacket. If she’s hurt, with the cold temps, wind chill, and sea air, she’ll be freezing.”
I reach my car and yank the door open. “Oliver.”
I pause. “I know it doesn’t matter now, but—”
“What?”
“I got Jade Hamilton’s file back. It was locked up tight since she was a minor. Oliver, it's fucked up.”
“How so?” I bite out.
“Foster homes. Hospital visits. A failed adoption. She bounced around a lot until she suddenly landed in the same school as Lyra. And then she…stuck.”
My jaw tightens. “Stuck?”
“Same classes. Same sports. Same circles. It’s like she kept forcing overlap.
It only changes when Lyra leaves for Italy; then the pattern breaks.
That’s not all. I think I know why she went after her.
This could help or not, but she was in the same home as her brother James.
He was adopted; she was put in the hospital for sexual assault. ”
“Oliver!” I turn to watch James striding across the lot, face tight, hair a mess. Behind him is Dean, expression grim.
“Let me know if you find out more.”
“Be careful,” he says before hanging up.
James plants himself between me and the driver’s seat. “Where are you going?”
I don’t look away from my car. “Move. Or I'll move you myself.” I meet his eyes head-on.
“Not until you answer,” he says, voice shaking.
Dean’s gaze flicks to my phone. “Was that Archer?”
“Yes.”
James narrows his eyes. “Did he find her?”
“He found a ping. One of the burners Lyra has been getting messages from.”
Dean steps closer. “Were you not going to tell us?”
“No.”
James’s eyes flare. “She’s my sister! You were going to, what, look yourself? What if you found her? Who would be there to help?”
“Oliver. If you go alone and something happens, we lose time. We lose her. Let us come.” I stare at Lyra’s father. A person who loves her almost as much as I do.
My chest feels too tight for my lungs. Archer’s pin appears on my screen. “Fine.”
Dean reaches into his coat and pulls out his phone. “We are calling it in. I know that you don’t trust them, and I understand why. But trust me. This is the right move.”
I hold his stare and nod once. “If we find her, I’m killing whoever did this.” And I have a sick idea of who that person is.
“I wouldn’t expect less.”
I slide into the driver’s seat. James gets in the passenger side, and Dean climbs into the back.
It takes too long to find the cave. The air is damp.
The cave is dark, but the ceiling has fractured in places, letting strips of sunlight cut through like blades.
Dean follows closely as James stays behind at the entrance, keeping watch.
The passage narrows as we pass a bend that takes us out of sight of the opening.
The world behind us falls away. I hear her before I see her, as a shot rings out, grazing my left shoulder, but it’s as if I didn’t feel it.
I grunt, more annoyed than hurt. She’s fast, but I’m faster.
Grabbing her wrist and twisting, I feel the sickening snap, turning my smile into a satisfied grin. Her scream follows a second later.
“You know,” I say, eyes locked on hers, “shooting people isn’t very nice.”
I shove Jade to the ground hard enough that her head snaps back and hits the ground with a crack. She clutches her broken wrist, tears streaking down her cheeks.
I straddle her, planting one hand around her throat, pressing just enough to restrict her breath, and grab her unbroken wrist with the other. She thrashes beneath me like a wild animal, but she isn’t strong enough. Dean stands behind me, horror painting his features.
“Where is she?” I tighten my grip around her neck.
Her eyes snap to Dean. The second she registers him, something shifts. Her body freezes. “You remember him?” I ask, glancing back. “The man you so badly wanted as a father?”
Jade goes still. He stares back, not showing his confusion. “How about you, Dean…remember her?”
“Not even a little,” he says coldly. And just like that, she crumbles.
“You were supposed to pick me,” Jade whimpers, voice cracking under her own delusions. “They told me you wanted another girl…” It would be almost sad if it weren’t so fucking deranged.
I figured it out the moment Blaine said it couldn’t be Molly. I’d already been almost certain, but seeing her in front of me sealed it. The messages stopped after the vigil for just a few days, and then, all of a sudden, they started again.
If Jade had been hurt, she would’ve been focused on surviving. There was a significant amount of blood left at the scene, enough to force her into hiding. Jade’s “death” was the perfect cover. A dead girl can’t be questioned. She removed herself from the board entirely.
It gave Lyra a false sense of security, made her believe the danger had passed. And once that worked, once Lyra relaxed even a little, the messages started again. Only then escalating to trying to frame her.
Every message was a game. A deliberate misdirection. Each one nudging Lyra toward a different suspect—me, then Leo, then Molly, even Serena.
It would’ve been clever.
If it hadn’t been done to my fucking girl.
Dean’s voice turns to stone. “You tried to take my daughter from me. Not once. But twice.”
She doesn’t even deny it, just stares up at me with those empty, lifeless eyes. “How do you know she isn’t already dead?”
I feel something sink in my chest. She’s not. Lyra can’t be dead. I’d know. I’d feel it. Because if she were gone…there wouldn’t be anything left of me on this earth to live for.
Jade’s grin twists, eyes glassy and unhinged as she pants beneath me. Her wrist hangs, broken, and her throat is bruised from my grip, but she still looks proud of herself.
“I’ve been taking things from her for years,” I say nothing. Just stare. My silence is more dangerous than anything else. Jade licks her cracked lips, tears streaking through the dirt and blood on her face. “First, I took her knee.”
I stand up, keeping my booted foot over her smashed wrist. “You done?”
“You’re both insane!”
“And you’re about to be irrelevant. You know I've killed before. You're just another one on the board, and I don’t think Lyra would mind this kill.” I grin at her, done with this. Pulling the gun out of the back of my jeans, I point the barrel.
“You know what your biggest mistake was? You thought you could hurt her.” I smile. “You underestimated her.” Then I fire.
I knew Jade was different the moment I met her. Not because she said the wrong thing. Because she didn’t say anything wrong at all. She watched. She calculated. She held herself the way people do when they’re used to rooms being dangerous.
I recognized it.
Broken people hurt others to make themselves feel.
It’s what Jade’s been doing. Someone hurts you long enough, and you either become soft in all the places that matter, or you learn how never to be caught off guard again.
You learn control. You learn detachment.
You learn how to look human while feeling nothing.
Jade and I weren’t born monsters. We were assembled.
Trauma by trauma. Lesson by lesson. The difference is that she let it turn into a religion.
She decided the world owed her blood, and she was going to collect.
And I would’ve understood that. I do understand it.
Some choose the worst version of themselves and called it survival.
The only variable that ever changed my outcome was Lyra Sloane.
Not because she fixed me. She didn’t. Not because she made me good.
I’m not. But she made me aware. She made me feel something I couldn’t dismiss, bury, or outrun.
She made the numbness inconvenient. She made the emptiness I felt before her loud.
Made me want to be more than what was done to me.
I became something else because I wanted her.
And once I wanted Lyra, I couldn’t tolerate the idea of becoming the kind of man who destroys what he loves.
We search for an hour. Then two. Shouting. Searching. Her whole family meets us, along with the police search party and what feels like every student at Willow Hill.
And then I hear it. So faint I think I’m hearing her voice in my mind. Imagining it. But it comes again.
“Here!”