Chapter 1
SLOANE ~ ONE YEAR LATER
I glared at the file on my desk, the cheap metal legs vibrating with each thump of bass from “Best Behavior” by Jessie Murph, Lil Baby blasting through my small Bluetooth speaker.
I threw my head back, eyes screwed shut, and screamed the lyrics until my throat burned.
Every word ripped out of me, anger and grief clawing through my chest, my fists clenched white-knuckle tight.
I wasn’t singing. I was trying to burn the noise out of my head before it swallowed me.
A face kept flashing through my mind. A warning I didn’t deserve.
“Good god. Is there a cat dying in here?”
My eyes shot open, the fluorescent light stabbing my retinas. The door hadn’t clicked. No knock. No warning. My chair scraped back an inch before I realized I’d moved.
“Fuck! Eli Sumner, I nearly had a goddamn heart attack!”
He jumped back, his hands flying up in surrender. “Don’t blame me! I practically kicked the door down coming in. If your music wasn’t blasting the paint off the walls—and whatever that banshee wailing was you call singing—you might have actually heard me.”
My pulse sprinted. I pressed my palm to my chest, desperate to silence it.
Stupid. Careless. I’d dropped my guard for one second, and in this line of work, one second was all it took to end up in a body bag.
I hated how fast fear owned me. I hated even more that routine was the only thing that worked to help me manage it.
If I followed the steps in the right order, I could pretend I still had control.
Pretend I could keep the past from consuming me.
Rules I could follow when my brain wanted to spiral.
I’d learned the hard way that hesitation got people hurt.
I tapped the pen against my knee, too fast, too hard. When I stopped, the silence felt loud.
Eli stalked across the small room that hosted Red Thread, his footfalls heavy with purpose. He was a few years older than me, medium build, the kind of man whose presence didn’t demand a room but held it anyway. Steady. Like he’d seen enough to stop being surprised by anything.
Red Thread was my baby. An underground network of civilian investigators with more sources than the cops wanted to admit.
Eli was one of the few people I trusted enough to let inside.
Some days I would catch myself wanting to tell him everything, rehearsing the words in my head.
Then, I would picture him when he heard it.
The moment the respect drained out of his expression.
I couldn’t afford to lose anyone else in my life, so I kept my damn mouth shut.
He raked his fingers through his light brown hair, shoving it back from his forehead as he swept files aside and perched on the table’s edge.
The wood groaned in protest. That table would break beneath him one day, and I would be picking splinters out of his stubborn ass after warning him a thousand times.
“Got something.” He slapped a manila envelope on top of my notebook. The one marked with the red X I’d hand-stitched onto the spine myself. My fingers found the stitches without me thinking. Thread over the wound. Needle over the regret. I kept trying to sew the same hole shut.
His expression was grim. “Don’t ask how I got it. All I can say is that a nurse who hates that place and owes me a favor helped me out.”
“Glory Box” by GoldCry started to play in the background, and I turned the volume down so I could focus on what Eli was saying.
“What is it?” I lifted the flap and removed a few pieces of paper, frowning.
“I know you’re focused on another case and probably haven’t realized what day it is.” His tone was understanding.
I tore open the flap, yanking out the papers. “What the hell is this?”
“An update. I figured you’d lost track of the days again.” His voice dropped to a whisper that chilled my spine.
“I know what day it is. It’s Saturday.” The black words swam before my eyes.
“Jesus Christ.” My skin prickled, every muscle seizing—shock snapping through me before my conscious mind caught up.
The paper slipped through my trembling fingers, pages fluttering to the linoleum.
“They actually let him out? They released Hal Whitney from Oakridge Inpatient Rehabilitation Hospital?”
My stomach twisted into a hangman’s knot as memories flooded back to that night last year.
I’d grabbed a stale turkey sandwich and lukewarm coffee at Manny’s Diner, then cut through the potholed side lot on my way to Red Thread.
That’s when I heard it—shouting, followed by that wet crack of bone that still jolted me awake at three in the morning and left my sheets damp with sweat.
Rain, old grease, and iron. Blood had a smell I would never forget.
I froze behind the rust-pitted dumpster, my pulse hammering in my ears while they worked him over. Four leather-jacketed shadows against one crumpled form. What was I supposed to do besides hold my breath with each sickening thud and swallow back bile?
If I barged in, we’d both die on the pavement. If I called 911, they’d hear my voice, see the flare of my screen, and then I’d be next. The choice had been stripped away from me. So had that man’s life. I had to wait it out.
I told myself I was being smart. The truth was uglier. I chose myself first, and I’d lived with the sound of that choice ever since. Survival tasted wrong afterward. It still did.
When they finally left, he was sprawled out, a broken marionette, blood spreading in a dark halo under the streetlight.
I dropped to my knees beside him, fingers shaking as I fumbled for my phone.
His hand clamped around mine with surprising strength, as if I were the last thing tethering him to this world.
And the weird part? For some strange reason, I wanted to be that tether.
Wanting it scared me. Wanting meant attachment.
Attachment meant pain. I needed to be someone’s hope after what I’d done, but I wouldn’t be able to save this man either.
My chin trembled, and I attempted to stay calm. That was what he needed, not a sobbing person begging him not to die. Inwardly, I snapped to attention, forcing myself to be the rock that he could cling to. I would deal with my feelings later.
His amber eyes, one swollen nearly shut, locked on mine, pupils dilated to black pools in the streetlight.
The ambulance siren crescendoed from a distant whine to an ear-splitting shriek that vibrated through the slick asphalt beneath my knees.
Red and blue lights strobed across his face as I whispered apologies for reaching him too late. The words dissolved in the night air.
Then they heaved his mangled body onto the gurney, and his limp arm swung, revealing it in the harsh fluorescent light. A goddamn bunny tattoo—faded blue-black ink against his pale skin. The rabbit’s neck was snapped. Its ears were long and alert, its eye a hollow circle staring back at me.
That rabbit wasn’t new to me.
It was the same one I’d been chasing in the case they took from me.
The one I wasn’t “allowed” to touch. The one that kept my desk lamp burning until dawn and turned my kitchen trash can into a graveyard of empty whiskey bottles.
The one that ended with my badge and credentials in a supervisor’s desk drawer, my gun turned in, and a file I wasn’t supposed to have burned into my memory.
Later, after I’d scrubbed the crusted blood from beneath my fingernails and combed my hair into submission, I buttoned myself into a cream silk blouse and marched past the nurses’ station. A nurse badged in, juggling a chart. I followed, pretending I belonged there.
“I’m his sister,” I announced, the lie tasted as bitter as aspirin on my tongue.
The young doctor’s expression crumpled before he even spoke—fractured skull, a temporal bleed blooming dark beneath the scans; ribs not just broken but splintered, one having torn through the pleura; femurs twisted at impossible angles, realigned with titanium driven through the marrow.
And those were only the certainties. The uncertainties—nerve damage that might leave a strip of his thigh forever numb, brain trauma that could steal names and faces, infections that could quietly take him apart from the inside.
I became obsessed with uncovering who he really was and why someone had tried so hard to erase him.
His wallet, a worn leather billfold with frayed edges, had still been wedged in the back pocket of his dirt-crusted jeans, the denim stiff with dried mud and darker substances.
They hadn’t even bothered to take his money or platinum debit card that gleamed under the harsh lights.
The beating wasn’t about greed. It was blatant, raw rage.
It seemed personal. Someone wanted to pulverize every trace of his existence and make sure he felt each reason why.
My stomach heaved, acid clawing up my throat as the memory hit.
“Yup. As of today. You know what this means.” Eli’s voice was flat, emotionless.
I understood exactly what it meant, my fingers curling into trembling fists. “One year? One goddamn year? I still see his blood pooling across that parking lot concrete every time I close my eyes. That expanding crimson halo around his shattered head.”
I’d been too late once. I wasn’t doing late again.
Eli’s gaze darkened with concern, the lines on his face deepening like cracks in weathered stone.
He’d been on the other end of my three a.m. phone calls, listening to my ragged breathing while I clutched the receiver, my cotton nightshirt soaked through with cold sweat as that blood-soaked night haunted me alongside a lifetime of other regrets.
He squeezed my shoulder, his calloused thumb pressing gently against my collarbone. “For him, it’s been an eternity.”
“And I’ve wasted too much of it already.” The words came out hard. Under them was a softer truth I refused to speak. I needed him alive. I needed him to remember.
I crammed the dog-eared papers back into the envelope, the edges cutting into my fingers as I jumped to my feet, and the chair skidded across the linoleum. “I’m going after him. Now.”
Eli’s grip snaked around my forearm, digging into the soft flesh beneath my sleeve. “Sloane, for Christ’s sake. This guy nearly died once. Whoever did it might come for you next if they connect you to him. Stay away.”
I met his gaze that was silently begging me to abandon my dangerous fixation.
“I need to do this. If he even suspects who I am, he’ll vanish. After what happened, he trusts no one.” He’d been a ghost for a year. I’d been hunting the outline of him the whole time, chasing whispers and shadows.
Eli’s grip loosened on my arm, his hand falling away. “I know you’re right. Hal’s our best lead. But at what point do you walk away from this obsession?”
My eye twitched violently. “Walk away?” My voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ll fucking die first.” The sentence didn’t scare me. What scared me was how true it was.
I stood and snatched my worn leather coat from the back of the creaking chair, the scent of old rain rising from it.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I watched a man nearly lose his life in that alley.
There’s nothing about what I saw that didn’t imprint horror on my brain.
But I have to see where this leads. If he’s able to speak or write, then I need answers.
” I flipped my long black hair out from beneath the collar of my coat, then pulled on my cream-colored knit cap, frayed at the edges from nervous tugging.
“Then I’m coming with you.” Eli’s jaw set.
I walked toward the door, floorboards protesting beneath my boots, and paused as I glanced at him still sitting on the edge of my cluttered desk. My lips curved into a tight smile. I didn’t need to say anything to him. He understood. I had to do this alone, wade into the darkness by myself.
One thing was clear: Hal Whitney was the key. I just had to survive turning it. The moment it clicked, I would be unlocking the door to hell itself.