Chapter 21
Mercer Development Site
The sharp crack of nail guns echoed across the hillside.
David Mercer stood near the edge of the framed structure, one boot propped on a stack of lumber as he studied the plans spread across the hood of his truck.
Below the ridge, the Tuckasegee River curved through the valley in a ribbon of silver.
It would be a beautiful development when it was finished.
Six custom homes. Mountain views.
He tapped the blueprint with a pencil.
“Move that retaining wall another two feet,” he told the foreman. “You’ll get a cleaner line on the driveway.”
The foreman nodded.
“Got it.”
David straightened and looked across the jobsite.
Framing crews worked steadily, compressors humming, trucks idling along the gravel access road. The smell of fresh-cut lumber hung in the warm afternoon air.
He’d built everything he had on days like this. Concrete and lumber and clean lines. Things you could point to when people whispered. Then he noticed the quiet.
Two workers stood near the equipment trailer.
Not working. Just watching him.
One of them held a phone.
David frowned.
“What?”
The younger man shifted uneasily.
“You seen this?”
He turned the phone around.
A video was playing.
A woman’s voice came through the tiny speaker.
“Eight years ago, a young mother named Caroline Simms vanished outside the quiet mountain town of Sylva…”
David’s stomach tightened.
He took the phone.
A studio microphone filled the screen.
Then a photograph appeared.
Caroline. Young. Laughing. Holding their son on one hip, his small hand reaching for the camera.
He hadn’t seen that picture in years, but his chest clenched the same way it had the first time he saw it.
David handed the phone back.
“Where’d that come from?”
“Podcast,” the worker said. “Vanished in the Valley. And now some other one. It’s all over the internet.”
Of course it was. One big show took a bite, and every hungry copycat in range showed up to see what was left.
David walked toward his truck.
He’d heard the rumors before.
He’d lived with them.
Gravel crunched behind him.
He turned.
A black SUV rolled onto the jobsite.
Then another.
Two women climbed out of the first vehicle, phones already raised.
A man stepped from the second with a camera slung over his shoulder.
The woman approached quickly.
“Mr. Mercer?”
He didn’t answer.
“David Mercer?”
Now half the construction crew was watching.
Men he’d had on payroll since his first subdivision went still, nail guns silent in their hands.
He set the blueprints down slowly.
“What can I do for you?”
The woman lifted her phone.
“We’re with the Fading Away podcast out of Atlanta.”
Of course.
Vanished in the Valley did the careful narrative work. Fading Away showed up after the fact with cameras and sharp questions and a production schedule to feed.
“We’re investigating the disappearance of Caroline Simms,” she continued. “Do you have any comment?”
David looked at her.
“That was eight years ago.”
“Did you kill her?”
The question landed like a hammer.
For one second, David forgot how to think.
Then the murmur spread through the workers.
Now half of them had stopped working entirely.
No. Hell no.
The words slammed into the back of his teeth.
“I cooperated fully with the sheriff’s department,” he said. “That investigation is on record.”
“But you were the last person known to see her alive.”
He’d spent years building things people could see. Framing. Foundations. Houses that would still be standing when he was gone. Ten seconds with a microphone and suddenly none of it seemed to matter.
“That’s not… accurate,” he said. “She dropped our son at my parents’ house. My mom, my dad—and my brother, for a bit—saw her there. Plenty of people saw her that night.”
The camera zoomed closer.
“Then who was?”
A flicker of his parents’ kitchen flashed through his mind—Caroline kissing Davie’s forehead, his mother fussing over the diaper bag, Danny coming through the door still half in uniform.
None of that would fit into a sound bite.
David opened his mouth—
Stopped.
For a second, something shifted behind his eyes.
He folded the plans once.
“This is a private jobsite. You’ll need to leave.”
The woman held her ground.
“Mr. Mercer, Caroline’s parents believe you know what happened to her.”
He’d seen the way her father had looked at him in those first weeks—like he wanted David to tell him where she was and wanted to kill him for not being able to.
“I said leave.”
The foreman stepped forward.
“You heard him.”
The reporters backed away slowly, but the camera kept rolling.
One of them called out as they reached the SUV.
“The internet’s reopening the case, Mr. Mercer!”
David stood motionless as the vehicles pulled away.
The jobsite had gone silent.
The foreman glanced at him.
“You okay, boss?”
David didn’t answer.
He reached into the truck and grabbed his phone.
Three missed calls.
One from his attorney.
Two from a board member.
New gravel crunch sounded on the access road.
Another vehicle turned in—a State Highway Patrol cruiser easing up the drive.
For a heartbeat, David’s shoulders tensed.
Then he saw the driver.
Danny.
Trooper Danny Mercer climbed out, hat in one hand, eyes narrowing slightly as he took in the quiet site, the lingering stares, the dust still hanging in the air from the SUVs.
“Everything all right?” he called.
The foreman stepped back automatically, giving the brothers space.
David set the phone down on the truck hood.
“Fine,” he said. His voice came out rough. “Just had some uninvited guests.”
Danny’s gaze flicked toward the road where the podcasters had disappeared, then back to David’s face.
“Reporters?”
“Podcasters,” the foreman muttered. “Fading Away, they said.”
Something in Danny’s expression shifted—protective more than anything.
“Yeah,” he said. “They’ve been buzzing around town since that Vanished in the Valley episode dropped. Dispatch has gotten a couple calls already.”
He shifted his weight, the easy Trooper posture at odds with the way his eyes stayed sharp on his brother.
“They give you a hard time?”
David gave a short, humorless laugh.
“They asked if I killed her. In front of my crew.”
Danny’s mouth flattened.
“They’re not here for the truth. They’re here for a headline.”
One of the workers pretended to check a nail gun, listening without looking.
Danny lowered his voice a notch.
“Best thing you can do is not feed ’em,” he said. “Don’t answer questions on a jobsite. Don’t try to explain yourself to a camera.”
David looked down at the screen of his phone.
Lila Grant’s podcast art still filled it, episode title blazing up the charts.
“Kind of hard when they show up where I work,” he said.
“I know,” Danny said. “But you start talking to them, they’ll cut it however they want. Let the sheriff’s reports and your lawyer do the talking. That’s what they’re for.”
He clapped a hand once against the side of the truck, a small, solid sound.
“You need me to run them off next time, you call,” he added, a hint of dry humor in his voice. “Might as well let me earn my paycheck.”
David managed a thin smile.
“Thought you stopped by to write me up for OSHA violations,” he said.
“Tempting,” Danny said. “But MiMi would tan us both if I hauled you in off a job.”
Some of the tension eased out of David’s shoulders.
Across the valley, the mountains were turning blue with evening.
Eight years of trying to build something solid enough that people would see lumber and concrete instead of headlines when they heard his name.
He opened his podcast app.
Vanished in the Valley sat at the top of the charts, Lila Grant’s episode art front and center. Below it, Fading Away’s latest release pinged up the rankings on its coattails.
Danny watched him for a second, then tipped his chin toward the screen.
“Don’t let that thing eat your whole life,” he said. “Go home. See your boy. Call your lawyer.”
A local Facebook page had already posted a picture of him standing beside the jobsite. Someone had circled his face in red.
THERE HE IS.
#MercerMurderer
#JusticeForCaroline
The comments underneath were worse.
lock him up
he knows where she is
check the foundations
rich men always get away with it
One comment had already been shared hundreds of times.
Bet he buried her under one of those houses.
David locked the screen.
MiMi had said almost the same thing the night the first episode aired—only she’d added a name. Call Eleanor Harper, David. Before this starts again.
He started the engine.
If this was coming back…
He was going to need a lawyer.
And this time, he already knew who his mother expected him to call.
Eleanor Harper.