41. Ryker
RYKER
Over the next two weeks, Sloane and I spent most of our time together, digging into any new leads about the rabbit, Nate, and the one name that kept resurfacing in the wrong places.
Hamilton.
The more we dug, the more I understood why my parents had never offered information freely.
The name didn’t just bring back a person.
It brought back the way my house used to tighten around a conversation.
The way my father’s voice would change, like he was stepping on glass.
The way my mother would redirect, too fast, too cheerful, too practiced.
But none of that was proof. It was emotion and memory gaps. A pressure in my skull that flared every time I tried to look straight at it.
Sloane didn’t let me drift into the fog. She kept me anchored in facts. Screenshots. Dates. Search results. Patterns.
Finally, the information came through one night while we were at Sebastian and Ella’s place, sitting at the kitchen island with laptops open and coffee going cold.
Hamilton Archer.
Currently in Portland.
Runs a private research practice.
PhD. Not a therapist. Scientist.
Connections: grants, foundations, “education programs.”
Sloane had gone still beside me when I read it.
She didn’t ask what I was thinking. She already knew.
There was something else under that. Older.
The kind of rage that doesn’t announce itself.
It just sits at the base of your throat and waits.
I’d spent a year learning to keep it there.
I wondered if the flashbacks and my rage were connected.
They had been quieter since Sloane. I hadn’t figured out why. I’d stopped trying to.
She watched my face and waited for the part of me that still wanted to pretend my past could stay buried.
It couldn’t. Not with Nate missing and with someone circling Sloane. Not with that rabbit on my skin that shouldn’t exist and yet did.
So, I called. I asked for an appointment under the name Hamilton knew me by, Hal Whitney. I listened to the receptionist’s tone change when she put me on hold and knew before she came back that I’d been accepted too easily.
After two weeks of digging, the day had arrived. That morning, Sloane wrapped her arms around my waist while I stood at the sink, toothbrush in hand. She pressed her cheek between my shoulder blades, warm and steady, and for a second the world narrowed down to her body against mine.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
I set the toothbrush down and turned, catching her by the hips and pulling her closer.
“I have no idea what to expect. But I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
She searched my face and attempted to hide how tired she was.
“What about you?” I asked.
She let out a soft laugh that didn’t match the tension in her shoulders. “Nervous.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Ella already likes you.”
It was true. Ella had taken to Sloane fast, the same way she always did with women who carried quiet steel under their skin. Holland too. I’d watched Sloane around them the last time we’d all been together, and I’d seen it; the way Sloane didn’t have to pretend with them.
While I went to Hamilton, she’d go to them where she was as safe as possible.
I slid my hand up her spine. “I should go. Hamilton’s expecting me.”
Sloane rose onto her tiptoes and kissed me. It wasn’t sweet. It was deliberate. A reminder. A claim.
My body answered instantly, my cock hardened, and I squashed the urge to carry her to the bed and spend the day naked with her.
Unfortunately, there were other things that demanded my attention.
I forced my forehead to hers for one beat. “Text me when you get there.”
“I will,” she said.
“And if anything feels off, stay with them. Don’t leave.”
Her brows pulled together. “Ryker—”
“Promise me.”
A beat. Then she nodded. “I promise.”
I kissed her again, quick and hard, then stepped back before I did something I would regret.
Before I didn’t leave at all.
I hadn’t seen Hamilton Archer in almost thirty years. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that my mind didn’t give me a face to match the name. It gave me fragments.
A car door closing. A hand on my shoulder. The scent of cologne too sharp for a house with kids in it. The sound of my mother’s voice getting tight when she said his name, and my father’s voice going colder when he had.
Hamilton. When I’d said it out loud again, my parents had reacted like it had burned. Not with shock. With recognition. With the kind of instant dread that meant they’d spent years choosing silence on purpose.
That reaction was what I carried with me now. It wasn’t a clean memory, or a timeline I trusted. Only the certainty that the gaps were intentional.
The building he worked out of was glass and polished stone, the kind of place that used money and design to convince people it was safe.
The lobby was quiet. Controlled. It smelled neutral in the way high-end spaces always did with filtered air, fresh paint, and something faintly citrus that tried to soften the edges.
A woman in a blazer met me at the desk. Her smile was smooth, but she did a quick assessment, starting at my shoulders and ending at my hands.
“Mr. Whitney?” she asked. “Right this way.”
She didn’t offer any small talk, or questions about traffic, only efficiency. The woman guided me to a private elevator tucked behind a frosted glass wall. She swiped a badge, typed a code, and stood a precise distance from me while we waited for the doors to open.
I watched the cameras in the corner. Two quiet black domes.
The elevator doors slid open without a chime, and we rode up in silence. I kept my face blank, but my thoughts kept circling the same point: if Hamilton was willing to see me, it wasn’t because he was innocent. Innocent men didn’t invite consequences into a private office.
The doors opened on the top floor to a hallway with thick carpet and walls that looked too new. The lighting was soft, but it didn’t feel comforting. It felt designed, curated.
The woman walked ahead and stopped at a door with no plaque and no name. This space was quiet, unmarked, and most likely built for meetings that weren’t supposed to exist.
“He’s ready for you.” She offered me a curt smile.
I stared at the blank door for a half second too long.
My brain buzzed, a low static that had no business being there. It was the same sensation I got when I tried to remember those four days at eleven and met a wall of pain instead.
I pushed the door open.
Hamilton’s office was pristine in a way that made it feel staged. No family photos. No personal clutter. No life. Just a desk with a laptop, a leather pad, and a glass of water so untouched it looked ornamental.
Books lined one wall, spines perfectly aligned. Not a single paper sat out of place.
Hamilton stood behind the desk when I entered, his posture relaxed. Older than whatever my mind wanted to give me. Silver at his temples. Warm eyes. A smile that didn’t reach them and a neatly trimmed beard.
Thirty years of silence around a name, and this was what it amounted to. A man in a good suit behind a clean desk—ordinary in the way dangerous things dressed up. I was ready to dismantle the image and meet the monster I knew damn well resided beneath the skin.
He spread his arms slightly, welcoming me. “Hal, or should I say Ryker? I hear you go by that now.”
My name in his mouth did something unpleasant inside me. Like my body recognized a threat my memory wouldn’t confirm. I filed it away, suspecting that it would serve me later.
“Hamilton,” I replied.
His smile held. “I heard you were back in Portland.”
I didn’t move toward the chair. “How did you hear?”
That caught him. A flicker, a micro pause he couldn’t quite hide.
“I keep up with people I care about.”
That meant a call. A record. Or someone watching the hospital discharge list. The pieces were moving, slow and deliberate, sliding into slots I hadn’t known were empty. I kept my face neutral and let him keep talking.
“You haven’t seen me since I was a kid.”
“That doesn’t mean I stopped caring.” His smile seemed genuine, but I didn’t trust it for one fucking second.
I looked at him until the silence grew heavy.
He gestured to the chair again. “Sit. Please.”
My feet didn’t move.
A faint line tightened at the corner of his eye. He corrected it fast. “What do I owe this unexpected visit to?”
I held his gaze. Let the quiet stretch until it became pressure. I moved slowly around the room, taking in the details. Everything was too perfect. Perfect was a choice.
A protocol. A room built to control variables.
Hamilton tracked me without turning his head much. Predatory in a polished way. Not hunting. Measuring.
“You … And me. When I was eleven.”
He smiled again, gentler this time, like he was trying to soothe a child who had just skinned their knee.
“Ryker, I don’t know what your parents have told you, but I didn’t hurt you.”
I stepped closer until the edge of the desk was under my hands. “Where was I? For four days.”
His gaze dropped to my hands, then returned to my face. He took his time doing it, like he wanted to show me he wasn’t scared. “I don’t know.”
“I suspect you do,” I replied. “I can see it.”
He let out a sigh, almost sympathetic. “You were a difficult child. You ran away. Your parents were terrified.”
“I didn’t run away,” I snapped. “I adored my parents.”
His brows lifted slightly. “Then what happened?”
There it was. The trick. He offered a blank space and waited for me to fill it in.
If I gave him a story, he could pick it apart.
If I gave him emotion, he could label it.
If I gave him uncertainty, he could own the narrative.
I didn’t give him any of it. I gave him something he couldn’t reframe.
“When I was seventeen,” I said, “who put the rabbit tattoo on me?”
His attention landed on me, fast.
My skin went cold.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Don’t lie.”
His smile thinned. “I’m not.”
I pushed up my sleeve and showed him the rabbit.
Hamilton’s expression tightened. The first real reaction. He reached for the water and took one measured sip. He was stalling.
Then he set the glass down carefully as if he wanted to prove his hands were steady to support the bullshit that was coming out of his mouth.
“Ryker, I haven’t thought about your childhood in years.”
I watched him, waited for the smallest slip. “You thought about it enough to put me on someone’s radar.”
He tilted his head slightly. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you talked about me,” I said. “You bragged. You made sure someone important noticed. The special classes. The projects outside of school. My parents couldn’t afford half the things I was handed.”
“Yes, I helped your parents navigate opportunities. I helped you get access. That’s what adults do when they see potential.” His attention moved over me, slow and assessing, and I hated the familiar instinct in my body to brace under it. As if he used to study me.
That thought hit and my stomach turned.
“You seem upset,” Hamilton said.
The word almost made me laugh.
My hands curled around the edge of the desk until my knuckles paled.
I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t give him a performance.
I stared straight at him and let the threat sit quietly between us, undeniable.
Then I said, “I’m here because something is happening now, and it has your fucking fingerprints all over it. ”
“I don’t know what you’re involved in as an adult.” He paused for half a beat. Then he shrugged, casual. “You grew up.” His smile returned. “I remember a bright boy who didn’t like rules. I get the impression that hasn’t changed.”
I swallowed down the anger and made myself focus.
“You were around before I went missing. You drove me places. You brought things to the house. You talked to my parents about me.” I didn’t remember shit, I was just regurgitating what my parents had told me in conversations over the last few weeks, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Of course I did. I was a family friend. I was trying to help your parents. They were overwhelmed and had a lot on their plate. I wanted to be there for them. For you.”
I didn’t know how or when they met. That was the part my parents had never explained, and I hadn’t pushed. I was pushing now. “Why,” I asked. “Why were you so interested in me?”
Hamilton folded his hands in front of him. “Your parents wanted the best for you. They asked for advice. I gave it.”
“Advice,” I repeated.
He nodded. “About education. Programs. Opportunities.”
The word programs landed wrong. It landed with the same sterile feel as the hallway and this room, the building, and the blank door. The way he watched me instead of listened. He wasn’t a family friend. He was a man who ran experiments and called them opportunities.
“Did you know another scientist?” I asked.
Hamilton blinked once. “What? Of course I do. I know a lot of them.”
“A scientist,” I repeated, slower. “Let me be more specific. Did you know a scientist who worked with kids?”
Hamilton’s smile didn’t drop, but it froze. “That’s a strange thing to say.” He smoothed his cuff.
He was irritating the shit out of me, and my patience was about to snap. “Then let me rephrase my question. Did you know a scientist named Markham?”