Chapter 23
RYKER
The moment we drove away from my family’s house, I stepped on the gas. A part of me wanted to stay there forever and hide like I was a little boy again, the other wanted to yell and scream for keeping me in the dark for so goddamn long.
“Don’t think you fucking know who I am after eating breakfast with my parents.”
Sloane shook her head as if I baffled her. I didn’t give a shit what she thought. Liar.
“The same goes for you, asshole. I don’t need your pity any more than you need mine. Just call it even.” She crossed her arms over her chest. I’d hit a nerve. A big one, and I wanted to pick at it until she bled all over my car.
Sloane sat quiet beside me, and I was aware of every inch of space between us in a way that had nothing to do with threat assessment.
Three days. That was all it had taken for her presence to rewrite the air in whatever room I was in.
I didn’t like what that meant. I liked even less that I was already thinking about the deafening silence after I dropped her off.
I signaled, merged onto I-5, and made myself drive the speed limit. Maybe I thought discipline would make the questions shut up—four days missing, and an old friend of my parents I barely remembered tied to it somehow. Or maybe he was nothing, and my parents wanted a name to point at.
My mom had texted me the number before I left their house. I needed to decide the right time to reach out to him. It wasn’t now, though. Not while Sloane could overhear the conversation.
A ridiculous thought ran through my mind, sharp enough to make me almost laugh. A church. That’s where I’d hidden her car. Like God was running security for me.
Three and a half days since I’d taken her, and it was still parked a few miles from Red Thread, out of sight, out of mind.
I’d moved it myself, and changed the plates too.
Even if no one stumbled across it, I’d learned to cover my tracks.
Or I thought I had. If I really covered my tracks, I wouldn’t be in this fucking position with her as a witness to a murder.
And the longer I kept her, the bigger the problem got—search parties, missing posters, friends who didn’t stop asking questions. Noise I couldn’t afford. So, I made the only move that kept the heat off me and the blood off her.
“I’m taking you home. You’re free to go.” I was pretty sure I’d lost my fucking mind, and it was the worst idea I’d ever had. But she had friends, and friends checked in on each other.
She remained quiet for a few fleeting seconds before she said, “I don’t know why I’m saying this, but I won’t tell anyone that I saw you kill a man in cold blood. Clearly, I’ve lost my fucking mind, but you’re the key to my brother. Nothing comes for free. Everything comes with a price.”
Sloane nailed that one for damn sure.
“You have my word that for now, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
I heard what she said. “And after? After we find your brother and figure out the rabbit?”
“We’ll see.” Her tone dropped as if she were debating the truth of her words.
“Then we’ll see how long you live after all of this shit is over.” My tone was steel even though my resolve wasn’t.
Over the next forty-five minutes, silence packed the car as she stared out the window. Sloane had given me her word, and my gut said I could trust her. She had something to lose too. Just not the same thing I did. If she talked, I’d lose everything. Prison. A life erased.
She’d lose a lead on her brother, maybe the last one. And even she had to know there was a chance he was already dead. She needed answers, but she wasn’t about to burn down Red Thread or her home to get them.
I hope to hell you’re doing the right thing.
I neared the overgrown lot behind the church and parked my car.
“Your car is a few hundred feet back. You won’t be able to see it from here.” I opened the door and climbed out. “I’ll walk you to it.”
She raised her hand, reminding me she was chained up and couldn’t get out yet.
I reached over and released the cuff. My thumb caught the inside of her wrist before I pulled back, dragging over the marks the metal had left.
Red. Bruised in places. My doing. I should have pulled away.
I didn’t. She drew in a quiet breath, and I felt her pulse jump under my thumb. I let go before I decided to keep her.
She stretched her neck and shook out her arms. “Are you sure you’re not letting me go just to hunt me down?”
My brow arched at her question. “You want to return to the games or …?” I wasn’t sure if she was being serious since there had been a slight hint of playfulness when she asked.
“No. I was asking if you were going to kill me once I walked away.” She began walking in the direction of her car.
My boots stepped on the tall grass, smashing it down as we walked side by side. “No. You gave me your word, Sloane. I’m hoping it’s worth something.”
“It is.” Her voice was reassuring.
We reached her car, and I pulled her phone from my pocket.
“Here.” I handed it over but kept the keys, reaching past her to unlock the door and grab the screwdriver from beneath the back seat.
“I need to swap your plates back too.” I gave her a little smirk as I crouched down to switch them out, then stood and dropped her keys into her palm.
I hadn’t admitted that I’d placed a tracker on her car. Hopefully she was too exhausted to even consider it. If not, then I could continue to keep an eye on her. I needed that.
“Guess this is goodbye for now.” She climbed into her car and started it.
“I’ll be in touch. I’m going to see what other leads I can find.”
She placed her hand on the door, ready to close it. “I’ll text if I find anything new.”
“Same.” I crossed my arms over my chest as she closed the door, pulled a U-turn in the field, and headed to the main road.
I dragged both hands down my face. “Fucking hell. What did I do?” Let her go. Fucking let her go. I’d just risked everything. Not only my life but my friends’ lives too. I had to be right about her.
“She has friends that will be looking for her. You had no choice,” I muttered to myself as I walked back to my Audi. There was no denying this situation sucked. I was taking a chance either way, keeping her or letting her go.
Reaching my car, I hopped back in and grabbed my phone from the cup holder. I tapped the screen, big eyes returning my stare. My chest tightened before I forced myself into the tracker app.
Sloane hadn’t found it yet.
The dot was moving, steady, toward what looked like home. When I’d dug through her files, her address had been blacked out, but I knew this part of town. I could read enough from the route to narrow it down. If she pulled into the right driveway, I’d have my answer.
I needed to go home. Shower. Put distance between her and my head long enough to think.
Three days with Sloane. The “too late” message. My parents finally admitting I’d gone missing as a kid. It all kept circling, stacking, tightening until my thoughts felt like they were grinding.
I had to sort through it before I did something reckless.
Hamilton could wait. Not forever, but long enough for me to walk in armed. I still didn’t know if the rabbit and my disappearance were connected. Finding out was step one.
My thoughts ricocheted between Sloane and the fucking rabbit the whole drive home. My head was overloaded, and without weed to blunt the edges, I could feel the spiral starting.
I needed another mind on this. Someone I trusted. Someone who could take the facts and cut through the noise.
I pulled into my driveway and killed the engine, then texted Sebastian. Most of the time he stayed calm. He thought straight when I couldn’t.
I needed that right now.
Me:
You free?
Black dots bounced on my screen almost immediately.
Bass:
Yeah. Whatcha got.
Me:
Can you come over? I need to bounce some things off you. Parents dropped a bomb on me today.
Bass:
Yeah. Give me thirty.
I gave his message a thumbs up, got out, and locked the car behind me. At my front door, I paused and listened. Nothing.
The long, brutal year of recovery had sharpened me. Made me better at catching the small shifts—the ones that meant trouble. Getting the life beaten out of you did that.
I unlocked the door, slipped inside, and locked up again. Then I stayed in the entryway, still, listening one more time, but nothing felt off.
If the cameras had caught movement, my phone would’ve lit up. It hadn’t. But alerts didn’t mean safety. Someone smart enough could disable a system before it ever pinged. I knew. I’d done it myself.
I went to the kitchen and set my phone and keys on the counter. My stomach growled, so I grabbed a couple protein drinks from the fridge, downed them, and tossed the empties.
Then I opened the tracker app again.
Sloane had made it home. The address matched what I’d been able to piece together from her files. Ten minutes from me. All this time, and I’d practically been living in a detective’s backyard. Go fucking figure.
The screen dimmed back to the saver, and I didn’t close it. I allowed myself to stare into that face.
The face that haunted my dreams.
The lighting in the image was warm, natural.
Daylight. The kind that made skin glow and caught tiny details my brain didn’t deserve to remember: the soft curve of a cheek and long dark eyelashes.
Dark hair that refused to behave. Big eyes lifted toward the camera like the person behind it was the only safe thing in the world.
The background was blurred, but I could still make out the color—green grass. A sunlit patch of yard. A normal life. Ordinary. The kind of normal that ripped me apart because it didn’t exist for me anymore. It never fucking had.
My chest tightened so hard it felt as if my ribs tried to fold inward. I didn’t blink. If I blinked, I’d have to admit it was real. That I existed in a world where that face could be captured in fucking perfection … and still be gone from me.
A thin pressure gathered in my head. I rubbed my temple, but it wasn’t the kind of ache you could knead away. It was deeper. Like something in my skull was shifting out of place.
I dragged in a breath through my nose, but the air tasted wrong. Metallic. Like pennies. Like blood.
My grip tightened around the phone until my knuckles ached. I didn’t even feel the pressure. All I felt was the image. It was too bright, sharp, merciless, and the way my brain reacted like it was a memory it hadn’t agreed to carry.
My vision shimmered at the edges.
“Stop,” I muttered to whatever part of me kept detonating when I saw that face. The pressure in my head punched forward.
White flashed across my vision. It was too sterile.
For a second, my kitchen wasn’t my kitchen. It was fluorescent lights overhead. A ceiling that didn’t belong to me. The faint, steady beep of something counting time I couldn’t control.
The smell hit next; antiseptic, sharp enough to claw at the back of my mouth, and my stomach rolled hard.
A sound threaded into my ears that wasn’t in my house. A soft shoe squeak on waxed floor. A muffled voice saying something I couldn’t quite catch.
My pulse hammered against my eardrums.
The pain spiked.
A hot, vicious lance shot from my temple down the side of my face and into my neck, and my knees turned weak as if my body had decided we were done.
“Fuck.” The word scraped out of me.
I slapped the phone down on the counter like I could pin the nightmare in place and keep it from following me. The screen stayed bright. That image stayed there. Watching.
I braced both hands on the granite and tried to breathe. My arms shook as the kitchen tilted anyway.
Another flash—hands on a bed rail. Cold metal under my palm. My fingers white-knuckled as if holding on could change an outcome that had already happened.
A small weight in my grasp. The beep kept going. Steady. Indifferent. My body went rigid.
No. Not that. Not now.
I dragged myself upright and stumbled toward the sink, twisting the faucet on full blast. Cold water rushed over my hands. The shock should have anchored me, but it didn’t. It just made the present feel farther away.
Black dots crawled into my vision, multiplying, bouncing like static. My hearing narrowed until all I could catch was my heartbeat and that phantom beep, and the kitchen hum felt wrong.
I turned my head, because even if I went down, I needed to look at the counter again.
At the phone. The image. At that face.
The pain punched once more—harder, deeper—and the world snapped as if someone flipped a switch and cut the power to my body.
I stumbled over and grabbed my cell, gripping it in my hand as my knees buckled. The tile slammed into my shoulder, then my cheek, cold and brutal. Somewhere behind me something clinked, and I couldn’t even flinch. My arms wouldn’t answer. My tongue felt too thick to form a word.
The phone vibrated in my hand. Once. Twice. Footsteps that were heavy and fast hit my entryway right before the world turned black.