Fading Away (The Vanishing #3)

Prologue

Charleston, South Carolina

Three years ago, Lila Grant had been recording in the corner of her apartment with a borrowed microphone and a true-crime channel nobody in Charleston cared about. One case changed that.

Now Vanished in the Valley was one of the biggest true-crime podcasts in the country.

Networks had tried to buy her. Streaming services had called. People recognized her in airports. Women cried when they met her. The men she exposed hated her. Small towns feared her.

Lila preferred it that way.

She leaned toward the microphone, fingers wrapped around a ceramic mug gone cold. The Vanished in the Valley logo faced the camera—a mountain peak fading into a heartbeat line.

Behind the glass, Micah held up three fingers.

Three minutes to hook them.

Lila let herself feel the tiniest beat of nerves—then smoothed it away. She smiled.

Please. She only needed thirty seconds.

“Good evening,” she said, settling into the smooth, intimate voice that had turned a Charleston side project into a media empire. “I’m Lila Grant, and this is Vanished in the Valley.”

A photograph flashed onto the monitor.

Deputy Sara Parker.

Freckles. Green eyes. The kind of face people printed on flyers and prayed they would not need.

“Three months ago, a patrol car was found idling on a mountain road outside Sylva, North Carolina. Driver’s door open. Radio silent. No sign of the deputy who was supposed to be inside.”

She let the silence stretch.

The listener count jumped.

“Two weeks later, the mountains took another.”

A second photograph appeared.

Special Agent Tessa Quinn.

“An SBI agent. Armed. Trained. Experienced.”

Lila paused.

“And still not enough.”

Micah pointed toward the secondary monitor.

The live comments were moving so quickly they blurred.

wait—is this the same place??

i’m sorry but this is creepy as hell

why is nobody talking about the other women?

“Both women were eventually found alive,” Lila said, her voice sharpening. “The town exhaled. The headlines moved on. But that is not where this story begins.”

She hit a key.

The screen changed.

Lauren Pierce. Missing three years. Caroline Simms. Missing eight years.

“Because before Deputy Sara Parker.”

Click.

“Before Agent Tessa Quinn.”

Click.

“There was Lauren Pierce.”

Another click.

“And Caroline Simms.”

Their photographs appeared beside Sara and Tessa.

Four women. One community. Two came home. Two never did.

The studio went silent.

“Why did the searchlights only burn bright for the women with badges?” Lila asked. “Why were Lauren and Caroline allowed to become old stories?”

Micah pushed the talkback button.

“The analytics are exploding,” he said. “Reddit picked it up. TikTok already has a map of Sylva. There’s a Facebook group with three thousand members and climbing.”

omg not Sylva again

why is nobody talking about Lauren Pierce??

#JusticeForLauren

this is giving cover-up vibes

I’m only 2 hours away—I’d go

Lila didn’t look at him. She didn’t have to. She watched the comments cascade, not a conversation but a feeding frenzy—the hashtags, the heat, strangers choosing villains from behind their screens.

All it took was Lila Grant turning her attention to a town, and, overnight, it became a spectacle. News trucks. Podcasts. TikTok theories. Tourists with cameras. People who had never set foot there suddenly convinced they knew exactly what had happened.

Then came the part where lives fell apart.

There has to be a serial killer. Who keeps protecting these people? Why does every case keep leading back there?

“In a town that small,” Lila said softly into the microphone, “everybody knows more than they admit.”

She had seen the name earlier that afternoon in one of the articles Micah had pulled.

Eleanor Harper.

Defense attorney. Sylva, North Carolina. Formerly Charleston.

Lila had said nothing then.

But the name had been sitting under her skin ever since.

For a moment, she wasn’t in a climate-controlled studio. She was back in the Charleston courthouse hallway, floor wax and rain in the air, the metallic scent of wet pavement drifting in every time the doors opened. The crush of reporters. The girl’s mother crying. Cameras. The verdict.

Eleanor Harper—the woman Charleston had either worshipped or hated, depending on which side of the verdict you stood on.

And Eleanor Harper on the courthouse steps in a cream suit, calm and beautiful and untouched, as flashes popped and microphones crowded in. The case that had changed everything for Lila had ended with Eleanor walking down those steps like she had won.

“You know her?” Micah asked quietly.

Lila stared at the screen.

“Oh, I know her.” More than she ever wanted to.

Her pulse kicked once.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

Because if Eleanor Harper was in Sylva, then this hadn’t started with a missing deputy or an SBI agent. It had started years ago—with a Charleston case Lila had never really left behind.

Lila leaned toward the microphone one last time.

“Next month, Vanished in the Valley will broadcast live from Sylva during Mountain Mystery Week.”

Micah’s head snapped up.

“Lila—”

For a heartbeat, she hesitated. She thought of the girl’s mother in Charleston, the way her sobs had echoed off marble and cameras, and did nothing to change the outcome.

Then she saw the audience surge again, the live count rolling upward so fast it barely seemed real.

She was already there.

She could see the satellite trucks lining Main Street. The podcasters and YouTubers crowding the sidewalks. The courthouse steps. The tourists. The true-crime fans in matching T-shirts. The town dividing into sides.

Lila stared into the camera.

“Next month, we’re going to Sylva. And maybe, together, we’ll finally learn what happened to Caroline Simms.”

The live comments exploded.

I’m in.

Road trip.

#JusticeForCaroline

finally someone is paying attention.

I knew there was more going on up there.

“We’re going to ask why women keep disappearing in Sylva,” Lila continued. “Why no one has been held accountable. And whether the truth has been buried in those mountains for years.”

The hashtag appeared on the monitor.

#WhatHappenedInSylva

Within seconds, it was trending.

By morning, the whole town would know her name.