Chapter 34 #2
Sloane’s voice went quieter. “This is the big one.”
I leaned in, reading names until they blurred. I didn’t know them, but I recognized the pattern. Someone had built this to be repeatable. There were patterns inside patterns.
A part of my brain started categorizing it anyway, because that was what it did when faced with violence toward kids. It tried to make it make sense so it could kill it.
“Do any of these connect directly to Nate?” I asked.
Sloane clicked and opened a case photo: a teen boy in a hoodie, face blurred by motion as he walked past a gas station camera.
“Near the last place Nate was seen. Same month, same year, just over the city line.” She paused. “Same rabbit.”
My shoulders tightened. “So it wasn’t only him?”
“No,” she said.
I stared at the screen until it blurred, forcing myself to look away, and back to the coffee shop photo of Nate. The grin. The cup. The normal background. It made me want to break something.
“Before we go deeper,” Sloane said, “I need one more piece.”
“What?” I folded my hands over my chest.
“You mentioned Bass covered for you the night of the party. Call him. Ask him what he remembers. If you came home different. If anyone contacted your parents. Anything.”
I stared at her, my pulse kicking up. I didn’t want Bass to confirm it, but the list on the screen wasn’t going away. Neither was the fucking rabbit. I pulled my phone out and hit call before I could change my mind. The line rang and I tapped the speaker button.
Bass answered fast, voice clipped. “Ryker.”
“Hey, you’re on speakerphone with Sloane and me. I need you to tell me what you remember about the night I got my tattoo.”
Silence.
Then a slow exhale. “Why?”
“Because Sloane has a list,” I said. “And it’s not just Nate.”
Bass’s voice changed. “What kind of list?”
“The rabbit tattoo. Blackouts. Missing kids.”
Another beat.
Then Bass spoke, each word chosen carefully. “You came home wrong.”
My grip tightened. “Wrong how?”
“You weren’t drunk, but you were off. You were quiet. You went straight upstairs. You slept hard. Hard enough I checked your breathing.”
Heat drained from my face.
“And.” He paused, the silence heavy. “You said one thing before you went up.”
“What? Tell me.”
“You looked at me and said, ‘It’s done.’”
My blood went cold.
Sloane’s eyes widened, her hand lifting to her mouth for half a second before she dropped it again.
“It’s done,” I repeated, barely audible.
Bass’s voice sharpened. “Ryker, talk to me. What the hell is going on?”
I stared at Nate’s coffee shop grin again, at the rabbit under plastic wrap, at the way Sloane stood beside him with a fury that had never fully left her.
Then I looked back at the list of missing kids, and a feeling settled into place. Not peace. A knowing. “It wasn’t random. It never was.”
I ended the call before Bass could argue.
Sloane didn’t speak. She turned back to the screen and clicked once more, opening a file she had minimized.
A scanned photograph appeared. Old. Faded. A holiday snapshot. Two adults smiling too hard, a tree behind them.
And on the edge of the frame, a man standing close enough to count as family.
I didn’t recognize him. Not clearly. The photo quality was bad, and time had done what it did.
Sloane zoomed in, then typed a name into the search bar at the top of her folder.
A caption field popped up beside the image, her note from whenever she’d scanned it.
Hamilton Archer.
My muscles tensed. I didn’t remember him. Not in the way I remembered my parents, Or Kip and Bass. It was only a small involuntary pull as if the name had weight.
Sloane’s voice went careful. “Your parents’ best friend.”
“Ex friend.” My tone was short, but not towards her.
She watched me for a long second. “Do you know him?”
I stared at the name until my eyes burned. “Not really. I was young the last time I saw him.”
Sloane clicked into the file attached to Hamilton’s name. Not much populated. A few notes. Old addresses. A handful of dates.
Then one line that wasn’t a date at all.
“Ryker missing four days.”
My breath hitched.
Sloane’s gaze snapped to me. “You told me you didn’t remember much from when you were eleven.”
“I don’t.”
She didn’t let it go. “Then why is that note in a folder under Hamilton?”
I stared at the screen, at the line, at the fact that she’d built a structure strong enough to hold my entire life and then kept digging until she hit the parts everyone pretended weren’t there. “I don’t know.”
Sloane’s tone softened a fraction. “Ryker … do you want to sit down?”
“No.” I remained standing because sitting felt weak, and I couldn’t afford weakness with thirty-seven fucking names on a list and a second list full of kids who’d never made it home.
Sloane clicked again, and the cursor hovered over another note.
“Introduced through parents. Trusted. Around often.”
Trusted. The word made my head hurt. I looked from the screen to the board to Nate’s photo.
To the rabbit. To the notch at the ear that showed up on every single one.
Someone had marked me at seventeen. Someone had kept track of the mark.
And now, standing in Sloane’s war room with a second victim list on the screen and Hamilton’s name sitting in the middle of my parents’ past, I understood one thing with brutal clarity.
This wasn’t about Nate anymore.
This was about me.
And whoever started it had been patient enough to wait decades for the moment the threads finally tightened.