Chapter 3
Vanished in the Valley
The livestream numbers ticked upward in the corner of the screen.
Twenty-eight thousand. Thirty-two. Forty-one.
Lila didn’t look at the courthouse anymore.
“Clip that,” she said.
Micah adjusted the boom mic, sunlight flashing off the metal.
“The ‘Sheriff owes answers’ line?”
“No.” Her smile returned. “The defense attorney saying ‘Yes.’ Confidence converts.”
Behind them, Main Street buzzed. Shop owners were already posting about the sudden rush of foot traffic. Hashtags multiplied in real time. A passing truck blared its horn, spiking the audio for a split second before the crowd swallowed it again.
She’d been building this for months.
Lauren Pierce. Cold-case remains. Sara Parker’s rescue.
Thread by thread.
Vanished in the Valley hadn’t trended by accident.
Today was ignition.
Micah leaned closer. “You went hard on Charleston.”
“She went harder,” Lila replied. “No flinch.”
“That DA, though,” Micah said. “His optics are perfect. He’s going to test well.”
Lila’s eyes flicked toward the courthouse feed on the monitor. The replay looped again—Reid standing just beside Eleanor, shoulders squared, moving closer the second Lila pressed.
“Did you see that?” she asked.
Micah frowned. “See what?”
“The way he moved in when I went for her.”
“Calloway?” Micah glanced at the screen. “He’s the DA. He was doing his job.” A beat. “But yeah. Maybe.”
If she didn’t know better, Lila would say Eleanor Harper had a type.
Men across the aisle.
Men who could tilt a case if they leaned the right way.
“In Charleston, it was the ADA,” she said lightly. “Now it’s the DA. Opposing counsel really does bring out her best work.”
Micah shot her a look. “You cannot be serious.”
Something colder slipped into her smile.
“If it’s a pattern,” she said softly, almost to herself, “Eleanor Harper just handed us the next chapter.”
She looked back at the screen.
“A defense attorney with a secret and a DA who wants to protect her?”
Her smile widened.
“That’s not a story, Micah. That’s a blockbuster.”
The numbers climbed again.
Fifty-six thousand.
Then sixty.
Across the square, a rival podcast crew angled their camera toward the courthouse steps—scavengers waiting to pick at the scraps.
Lila lowered her voice.
“We need something bigger before they do.”
Micah hesitated. “Bigger how?”
“Immersive,” she said.
“We’ve been telling the story. Now we let the audience step inside it.”
Micah blinked. “You mean a reenactment?”
“Not a reenactment.”
“Then what?”
Lila studied the mountains behind the courthouse.
“Think about it. Every case that grips people, they don’t just listen. They hunt. They share. We give them something they can actually chase.”
“You’re going to make the sheriff furious.”
“Good,” she said lightly. “That’s momentum.”
She tipped her head toward the frozen image of Eleanor Harper on the monitor.
“Besides, in Sylva, the women who come home all seem to have something in common.”
Micah frowned. “Which is?”
“Badges,” she said. “Or men with badges.”
She started counting them off on her fingers.
“Sara Parker wore one. Tessa Quinn dates a deputy. Caitlin West is with the sheriff.”
Micah went quiet.
“Lauren Pierce didn’t have that,” Lila said. “Caroline Simms didn’t either.”
She looked back toward the courthouse.
“One vanished after dropping her baby off at David Mercer’s house. The other disappeared on a college campus and stayed missing for three years.”
The comments poured upward too fast to read.
Emojis. Theories. Names. Half-finished accusations.
“You’re talking about a stunt,” Micah said.
“I’m talking about focus.”
“They’re already running with it.”
“They always do.”
Lila adjusted her mic and looked once more at the frozen image of Eleanor Harper on the screen.
“Because if there isn’t a pattern,” she said softly, “people will keep looking until they find one.”
The chat exploded again.
And once a story was told well enough, people stopped asking if it was true.