Chapter 64
SLOANE
Morning didn’t feel gentle yet, but it didn’t feel hostile either. That was progress.
Nate had claimed the room down the hall without needing to say the words. A hoodie on the chair. A glass of water on the nightstand, and his phone charging. The small, stubborn signs of someone planning to wake up tomorrow and keep going.
Ryker sat on my couch with one leg bent, the other stretched out.
I sat close enough that our knees touched. Because distance still felt like a door someone could walk through.
Ryker’s hand rested on my thigh, warm and steady.
I glanced at my laptop on the coffee table.
Tomorrow, I’d said. Tomorrow was here.
Ryker tracked the screen for a moment, then looked at my face. “You’re doing it.”
I nodded. “I’m doing it.”
He didn’t try to stop me. He didn’t tell me to leave it buried. He just watched me like he was bracing for impact. “That’s your call.”
“It’s our life,” I corrected.
Ryker’s mouth tightened. A tiny nod followed, like he accepted the correction even if it scared him.
I opened the county records portal first. Then the state crash database. Then the archived case lookup Bass had mentioned months ago, as if it was a casual thing people did when they weren’t living inside nightmares.
Name searches didn’t give much. They never did. The world protected itself with red tape and dead links.
I pulled the accident report number from a buried reference in one of the older files and requested the PDF.
When it opened, my stomach dropped before I even read a line. It looked wrong in the way paperwork looks wrong when it’s been handled too many times. A photocopy of a photocopy. Edges cut off. A page number that skipped. A timestamp that didn’t match the dispatch time listed on the first page.
I scrolled slowly, my fingers cold on the trackpad. The officer’s name was typed in a font that didn’t match the rest of the report. A signature line had been replaced with a blank. One photo page was missing entirely.
Ryker sat up a fraction, attention sharpening. “What is it?”
“It’s been touched,” I said quietly.
“Touched how?”
“Edited,” I corrected. “Tampered with.”
Ryker didn’t speak. His silence was a weight I could feel in the room.
I kept scrolling, scanning for the thing I was afraid to find. The report listed two fatalities. One adult female. One male child. I absorbed the information. I forced myself to keep reading, because stopping would make the fear bigger than the truth. Names appeared further down.
Evelyn.
Gavin.
Same vehicle. Same crash. Same date.
My vision narrowed from the way reality sometimes tried to tilt when you didn’t want it.
Ryker’s hand slid up my thigh, his grip steadying me.
“You see something,” he murmured.
“Yes,” I said.
He didn’t push. He waited.
I didn’t say the names yet. I needed something stronger than a report that had already proven it could lie.
I opened a new tab and pulled the coroner’s case lookup. The interface was ancient and ugly, like it hadn’t been updated since the early two-thousands. It took three tries to load.
When it finally did, I typed in the last name.
Two case numbers populated. One for Evelyn. One for Gavin. I clicked the first.
Date. Time. Location. I clicked the second. Same. My lungs forgot how to work for a moment.
Both names were there. Both filed. Both final.
I pulled the 911 computer-aided dispatch summary last. Dispatch time. Location. Units responded. Tow called. Hospital notified.
No story. Only the data.
The kind of data that didn’t care about grief. The kind that didn’t get edited unless someone wanted it to. I sat back, laptop warm on my knees, and stared at the screen.
Ryker’s fingers tightened on my leg. “Sloane.”
I finally turned my head.
His face was blank in the way men forced it when they were trying not to fall apart.
“They were in the same crash,” I said softly. “Same car. Same night.”
He didn’t blink.
The muscle in his jaw jumped.
“So it’s real.” His voice was flat.
“It’s real,” I confirmed.
His shoulders didn’t sag. He didn’t crumble. He sat there like his body had been bracing for a blow and finally took it.
I reached for his hand and held it hard. “I’m sorry.” The words felt too small for the size of what I’d just handed him.
“Don’t,” he said.
He looked away as if he couldn’t stand being seen that clearly.
“I’m not pitying you. I’m mourning what you had to bury.”
Ryker went still at that.
A familiar pressure hit behind my ribs. I’d been here before. Not this exact story, but loss that came out of nowhere and split your life into before and after.
I kept going anyway, because this wasn’t a moment for flinching. “I know what it’s like.” My voice cracked. “To have someone ripped out of your world and still wake up the next morning like the sun didn’t get the memo. When Nate and I lost our parents.”
Ryker finally looked at me, recognition in his expression.
He watched me for a long beat. “I never wanted to push you. You don’t talk about how you ended up in foster care. I didn’t want to pry.”
My lungs stopped working for a beat.
Ryker’s fingers tightened around mine. “You know what loss feels like. You knew it before Nate. Before me.”
“My parents died in a plane wreck.” Even after all the years that had passed, I still choked up talking about them. “It was supposed to be a normal trip. They were gone, and suddenly it was just me and Nate.”
Ryker didn’t fill the silence.
“We landed in foster care. House to house. Different rules. Different faces. People who meant well and people who didn’t.
A lot of being told to be grateful. A lot of pretending you’re fine because no one likes a sad kid.
We aged out. And I promised myself, no matter what, I wouldn’t lose him too.
I’d lost everyone else, but not my little brother.
” Tears pricked my eyes, and I blinked several times to hold them back.
Ryker stroked the back of my hand with his thumb, soothing me.
“And then I did.” My words came out smaller than I meant them to. “I lost Nate.” My voice shook. “I lost you. Not on paper, not officially, but in that place inside your chest where you start preparing yourself for the call that destroys you.”
Ryker’s gaze held mine, dark and steady.
“I kept functioning.” I looked away. “I kept moving. I kept making plans because if I stopped, I couldn’t breathe.
And when you both came back …” My breath caught.
“It didn’t erase it. It didn’t undo it. It just meant I had to learn how to live with the knowledge that it can all be taken away again. ”
Ryker looked away briefly. “You shouldn’t have had to do that alone.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t. Ella, Cami, and Holland were there too. I felt alone anyway.”
Ryker lifted my hand and pressed his mouth to my knuckles. Not romantic. Not performative. A vow. “I’m here.”
I nodded, because it was all I could manage.
Ryker let out a slow breath, and it sounded like something inside him giving way.
I reached for his hand and held it hard.
He looked away, like eye contact might crack him open.
I forced myself to relax my shoulders, and then I turned the laptop toward him and pointed to the spots that didn’t match. The font. The missing page. The jump in timestamps.
“This report was altered. The deaths weren’t faked. The crash happened. They died. But someone wanted the details buried,” I continued. “They didn’t want you tracing anything back. They didn’t want you asking why your son mattered to them.”
The word son made the room feel smaller.
Grief and anger filled Ryker’s voice as he said, “The Pied Piper knew he was mine,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
“I think you’re right. Once they found out, they made sure ….” I couldn’t finish my sentence.
Ryker’s hand curled into a fist. “I never pulled it. I never wanted to see it on paper.”
“I get it. You needed to know the truth, though. Not the version they left behind.”
Ryker focused on the screen again, and his face hardened into something I recognized. Control. The kind you built when you couldn’t afford to break.
I closed the computer slowly. “Okay,” I whispered.
Ryker turned his head. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I repeated. “That hole is closed. It’s real. It’s done.”
His gaze held mine for a long beat.
Then it drifted to my hand, where my fingers still gripped his.
Suddenly, like my mind had been waiting for the next thread to tie off, my attention caught on the inside of his forearm when his sleeve shifted.
The rabbit. Small. Inked. Familiar. Something triggered in my brain. I’d seen it a hundred times, but never with my brain trained to read it as a tag instead of ink. Not until now. I reached out before I could second-guess it and brushed my thumb along the edge of the tattoo.
Ryker’s muscles tightened under my touch. A reflex.
I looked up at him. “The rabbit.”
His eyes went distant for half a second, then came back. “That’s what you want to talk about?”
“Yeah. I keep thinking it was never just a tattoo.”
Ryker’s mouth pressed into a line. He stared at the wall, as if he was deciding how much truth I could hold without shattering.
Then he exhaled. “It wasn’t,” he said quietly.
I waited.
Ryker turned his forearm slightly, offering it like evidence. “The Pied Piper explained it. It’s a marker. A brand.”
The word made my stomach turn. “A brand for what?”
“For their system. For access. For keeping track of the males they marked.”
I held his arm with both hands, gentle, careful, like the ink could bite.
“The Pied Piper put it on you,” I whispered.
Ryker nodded.
“It isn’t just ink?”
“No. It was never meant to be. Nate and I were both marked.”
I shook my head. “How did it work?”
Ryker’s jaw tightened. “There’s a tag under it.”
I froze.
“A tag,” I repeated.
He nodded. “Small. Under the skin. You don’t feel it. You don’t see it unless you know what you’re looking for.”
My skin went cold. “Tracking?”
“Not a dot on a map,” he said. “Not like that.” “It’s for verifying. Transfers. Doors. Proof-of-identity. The rabbit is the visible mark. The tag is the function.”
I stared at him. “They cataloged you and Nate.”
Ryker’s gaze lifted to mine. Dark. Steady. “Yeah.”
A wave of nausea rolled through me, and I forced it down. “They branded you.”
Ryker didn’t deny it.
I slid closer and pressed my forehead to his shoulder, careful of his healing wrists, careful of everything.
“Ryker,” I whispered.
His hand moved to my hair, slow and gentle. “I’m here, little fox.”
“They don’t get to keep you.” My voice was muffled against his shirt. “Not with paper. Not with ink, and not with anything under your skin.”
Ryker’s hand tightened slightly, a silent agreement.
I lifted my head and looked at him, my eyes burning with unshed tears.
“We’re going to keep living,” I said. “You hear me? We’re going to build a life that’s ours. Even if it looks different than we imagined.”
Ryker stared at me like he was trying to decide if he deserved that. Then his fingers brushed my cheek, warm and sure. “I want that.”
I reached for his other hand and held them, palms to palms.
“No disappearing inside yourself,” I said.
Ryker’s gaze sharpened. “No.”
“No carrying it alone,” I added.
“No.”
I nodded, sealing our deal.
Down the hall, a door opened and closed. Nate moving. A soft thump of footsteps.
Ryker looked toward the sound, then back at me.
What we bought wasn’t peace, but it was breathing room.
And for the first time since this started, that felt like something we could use.