Chapter 4
SLOANE
I arrived home an hour later and twisted the shower knob until it squeaked, watching the steam billow up in thick white plumes that fogged the bathroom mirror.
Pressing my wrist to my nose, I caught the lingering notes of cedar and salt that weren’t mine—his cologne, expensive and heady, clinging to my skin.
My hands hesitated at the frayed hem of my black tank top, trembling slightly.
Usually after the Ritual game, I would have already changed at the club and scrubbed away all evidence in those industrial showers with harsh fluorescent lighting.
Not today. Today I’d pulled my sweat-dampened clothes back on and zipped my jacket to my chin, preserving every trace.
If I scrubbed him off, I’d have to admit I wanted him back. And wanting anything felt unsafe.
As I stepped out of my clothes, five distinct purple-blue shadows bloomed across my hips where his fingers had dug in, each one a perfect print against my pale skin. I should have been angry about the marks. Instead, I stood there counting them.
I winced as I stretched, feeling the delicious burn radiate through my thighs and lower back. I hummed “I Like How I Look” by Jessie Murph, the melody catching in my throat.
I traced the tender constellation on my skin one more time, pressing just hard enough to reawaken the dull throb beneath. The ache should have made me sick, but the part of me that used to flinch had gone quiet. I didn’t know if that meant I was healing or unraveling.
That was what scared me. Not that he’d caught me. That my body had welcomed it. Welcomed the punishment. I told myself it was just hormones. Just heat. The lie didn’t stick.
I leaned closer to the steamy bathroom mirror, my breath creating ghostly patterns on the cold glass.
“Idiot,” I whispered, even as my lips betrayed me with a crooked half-smile that reached only one corner of my mouth.
“You’re not supposed to like it. You’re not supposed to still be thinking about him, either.” He felt permanent in a way I didn’t understand. And I couldn’t afford another man taking up residence in the already overcrowded space of my thoughts.
I wiped the condensation away, leaving a smeared arc across the foggy mirror. Mud still streaked my collarbone, a leaf caught in my hair, and mascara smudged beneath my eyes.
The Hal Whitney I’d tracked for months existed only in grainy police images from a year ago. His face was swollen and mottled purple-black after his brutal beating. What was interesting was that there was absolutely no trace of him on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok.
That battered, hollow-eyed victim bore little resemblance to the man I met today; broad shoulders stretching the fabric of his heather-gray henley, biceps and forearms rippling beneath his skin with every slight movement.
Hal Whitney had transformed in a way I hadn’t ever anticipated.
Gone was the skinny, red-headed nerd. In his place stood a man chiseled from granite, radiating raw power, and, God help me, hot as the end of a welding torch.
Everything about him had metamorphosed. His once red hair was now a light brown, the soft angles of his jaw hardened into sharp, shadowed planes, and that once playful, ornery glint in his amber eyes vanished.
It had been replaced with a steely gaze that suggested he could peel back my skin and examine my organs with clinical precision.
When he’d caught me, his stare had sliced through me, methodical and assessing, cataloging my weaknesses without a flicker of warmth. My stomach tightened, but it wasn’t excitement. With recognition. Men who looked at someone that way didn’t ask permission.
I ran variations of his name through every platform I could find, stared at empty white search bars that never yielded results, and dug through news archives that offered little more than that single headline from the accident, until the words blurred together after the hundredth read.
He was almost a ghost, a digital phantom, but that never stopped me from looking into someone before.
Regardless, whoever Hal Whitney was when he died and was resuscitated, broken and bloodied on rain-slicked asphalt, wasn’t the same person I met today during the game, all lean muscle and cocky smiles.
I kept telling myself to stay curious, stay sharp. My body didn’t care about my rules.
I turned away, droplets of water still clinging to its foggy edges of the mirror. The afterimage of him remained branded behind my eyelids like a sun I’d stared at too long.
I chided myself, hands gripping the cold granite counter, but after he’d fucked me senseless, I would have to work harder to put him out of my mind.
And stupidly, I’d asked if he would be back next week, my voice betraying a neediness I despised.
My body was already planning and craving the weight of him.
Which was insane, because my life was a crime scene.
All yellow tape and unanswered questions.
Yet here I was thinking about Hal’s thick, long cock and how it had filled me completely.
Once I showered and brushed my teeth, I left my connected bathroom and entered my bedroom, blowing out a breath that tasted of mint toothpaste.
The king bed dominated the space, its charcoal sheets and cloud-white duvet stretched so taut you could bounce a quarter off them.
Two mahogany nightstands were on either side of the headboard: one cluttered with a dog-eared paperback, tortoiseshell reading glasses, and a water bottle with condensation still beading on its plastic.
The other nightstand was polished to a gleam, pristine except for a silver frame. Inside it, Mom, Dad, and me at Coney Island, my gap-toothed smile impossibly wide beneath a mop of dark curls. I hated that photo. I kept it anyway. It was proof that I once was a person who used to laugh.
My pulse hammered against my neck as something jagged and cold unfurled beneath my ribs. For a second, I was back there, too young to understand what was happening.
Too old to forget.
It wasn’t long after that trip that everything had changed. That was the last day I remember feeling safe. The last day I believed adults when they promised things.
A memory surfaced, razor-edged and sudden. A reminder that the past didn’t decompose quietly because I shoveled dirt over it.
“I’m not giving up.” I crossed over to my dresser. A vanilla-scented candle was nudged to the corner. I’d burned it that night everything had changed.
My breath hitched.
It seemed so long ago. Before Red Thread. Before I started letting men with new names catch me in the woods. If I held on to the guilt, it would only stop me from moving forward and solving the one case I had never moved past.
I dropped the towel and tugged on a soft T-shirt and cotton shorts, the fabric dragging lightly over my hips. My muscles pulled as I moved, a pleasant ache that made heat curl low in my belly.
My footsteps echoed in the silence. Every surface gleamed. Books were perfectly aligned on shelves in the living room, there wasn’t a dish in the sink, and vacuum lines were still visible on the area rug.
“Look at you,” I muttered. “You have a nice, normal house with totally well-adjusted choices.”
It looked normal enough to fool a stranger. It didn’t fool me. It was staged for a life I didn’t actually live. Outside these walls, I spent my nights with my heart in my throat and strangers’ footsteps pounding behind me in the dark.
I caught my reflection in the hallway mirror. I’d just been hunted like an animal, and I was totally okay with the idea. I shook my head. “Right. Perfectly normal.”
Warm lamplight spilled from the living room, catching the edge of the charcoal sectional and the stack of files I’d abandoned on the coffee table. A cold mug sat beside them, a brown ring dried to the lip of the ceramic. Dinner. Coffee and adrenaline again. Very balanced.
I padded down the hall past the kitchen, not bothering to flip on the light. The stainless steel and quartz could lecture me about vegetables tomorrow. Right now, I didn’t need the glare.
The last door at the end of the hall caught my attention. A thin line of light glowed under it, the low hum of the computer pressing against the wood as if it wanted out.
“Not tonight,” I told it. Told myself. “You get me all day tomorrow.” Tonight, I needed sleep more than answers. Tomorrow I would go back to chasing them until my vision blurred.
Red Thread. The cases. The one that haunted me.
They were always there, waiting, patient and hungry.
The work didn’t just steal my sleep. It stole the parts of me that could still feel.
If I opened that door, I would be up until sunrise, eyes burning, brain chewing on timelines and dead ends while my body replayed the feel of Hal’s hands on my skin.
“Definitely not supposed to like that.” But my smile didn’t go away. For the first time in a few years, I had a distraction from the hell that was my reality.
I hummed “Dark Heaven” by Rob the Sun as my bare feet landed quietly against the hardwood floors while I made my way to the kitchen.
Outside, Portland, Oregon rain tapped against my windows, each drop a tiny drummer keeping time with my song.
As a kid, I used to press my palms against the cool glass, feeling the soft vibrations.
Now, my shoulders tensed at the memory of sirens cutting through similar rainfall.
I stretched my neck, focusing instead on the pleasant ache between my thighs.
I retraced my steps, ended up in the kitchen, and flipped on the light. Click. Nothing. Click-click-click. My skin went cold. The house didn’t feel empty anymore.
It felt attentive.