18. Chapter 18
Cole
The problem with finally touching Kara is that it does not make me less careful. It makes me worse.
Every sound outside the cottage sharpens. Every passing tire on the crushed-shell lane becomes a possible approach. Every shadow beyond the marsh grass looks like a place someone could stand too long and watch the windows.
Before Kara, protection was a discipline. Now it feels like hunger with a purpose. That is dangerous.
I know it, and still when she moves quietly through the bedroom behind me, when I hear the rustle of fabric and the soft pull of a drawer, my body tracks her without permission.
She is safe. She is inside. The curtains are closed.
The locks are checked. Eli has a unit rotating past the inn every fifteen minutes, and Sloane has this cottage buried under enough false paperwork to bore a stalker to death.
None of it feels like enough.
My phone vibrates on the table. I pick it up. Sloane has sent a message.
We have enough to talk. Coming in five. Rafi on video. Kara needs to hear it.
I read the message twice. Then I look toward the bedroom.
Kara appears in the doorway before I call her name, wearing soft shorts and a T-shirt, her hair loose around her shoulders. She looks younger like this. Not in age. In aftermath. Like some shield has been lowered and she has not decided yet whether she regrets it.
She reads my face.
“What happened?”
“Sloane’s coming.”
Her hand tightens on the door frame. “Do they know something?”
“Yes. I think so.”
For one second, pain crosses her face so fast I almost miss it.
Then she nods. “Okay.”
Sloane arrives without knocking, which tells me he is either in a hurry or making a point. Probably both. He has a laptop tucked under one arm and a file folder in the other.
“Good morning, Kara,” he says.
“Good morning, Sloane.”
Sloane sets the laptop on the kitchen table, opens it, and turns the screen so Rafi fills it from The Beacon. He looks less polished than usual, sleeves rolled up, tie gone, three monitors glowing behind him.
“Kara,” he says gently. “I’m sorry.”
Kara’s mouth moves, but no sound comes out. She knows the team is bracing her for something.
I stand beside her, not touching. Close enough that if she reaches, I’m there. Far enough that she knows she doesn’t have to.
Sloane opens the folder. “We’re not presenting this as courtroom proof. Not yet. This is operational. It tells us how we move from here.”
“That sounds like I’m not going to like it,” Kara says.
“No,” Sloane answers. “You’re not.”
Kara’s chin lifts. “Tell me.”
Rafi takes over. “The first burner number, the one that sent the photo of your knife, was activated at a convenience store in Orlando. Camera footage is poor, but we pulled enough to identify the buyer as female. Red-brown hair tucked under a ball cap. Sunglasses. Cash purchase.”
The laptop image changes. A grainy still appears on the screen. My attention goes to Kara, not the image. Her face goes still.
“That could be a lot of women,” she says.
“Yes,” Sloane says. “It could.”
Rafi clicks again. “The rental car spotted near The Sandpiper road was picked up in Orlando using a prepaid card and an ID that does not cleanly verify. We found traffic camera footage near the service road east of your rental cottage. Same car. Same general physical profile behind the wheel. Red-brown hair. Ball cap. Sunglasses.”
Another image appears, and this one is better. Not clean enough for certainty. But enough to make the room change.
Kara steps back once. I move without thinking, then stop myself before I touch her.
“She wears baseball caps,” Kara says. “A lot of people wear baseball caps.”
“Yes,” Sloane says.
The answer is merciless because it refuses to argue. It simply allows the truth to stand there unfinished.
Kara’s voice thins. “What else?”
Rafi looks off-screen for a moment, then back. “We looked at the culinary school incidents you described. We couldn’t access private disciplinary records without more process, but public competition results and archived student press gave us a timeline.”
“No,” Kara whispers.
Sloane’s eyes soften slightly. “Kara.”
“No. Don’t make that part of this.”
“I wish we didn’t have to.”
Kara turns away from the table, one hand pressed against her mouth. “That was years ago.”
“It was,” Sloane confirms.
“It was over.”
“Maybe for you,” Sloane says.
Rafi speaks quietly. “You were scheduled for a regional culinary showcase in March that year. You withdrew after an ingredient contamination incident. The alternate from your program took your place.”
Kara’s hand lowers. She already knows. She says it anyway, like saying the name might make it not true.
“Vanessa.”
Rafi nods. “Vanessa Moreau placed second. After that, her profile in the program rose. Three months later, she was featured in a local food blog as one of Orlando’s emerging culinary voices. The article mentions you too.”
Kara’s laugh is small and awful. “Let me guess. Rising star derailed by pressure?”
Rafi does not answer. He does not need to. Kara closes her eyes.
I want to break something. Not because evidence is ugly. Evidence is often ugly. But because someone hurt her once, then stood beside her while she bled and called it loyalty. That kind of cruelty deserves a darker word than jealousy.
Sloane slides a page across the table. “There’s more. Old public posts. Interview language. A pattern of comparison between the two of you. Vanessa as talented but overlooked. Kara as magnetic, modern, camera-ready. When your streaming career took off, those comparisons got sharper.”
Kara does not touch the paper.
“She was proud of me,” she says.
Her voice is barely there.
“I believe part of her may have been,” Sloane says.
Kara looks at him then, eyes bright with tears and anger. “That’s worse.”
“Yes,” Sloane says. “It is.”
My phone buzzes. I glance down at an unknown number. It’s a text. I go cold before I open it.
Tell her to answer Vanessa. She always answers Vanessa.
No image this time. Just words.
Sloane reads it over my shoulder. “Forward it to Rafi.”
I do.
Kara hasn’t seen it yet, but she knows. She knows from our faces.
“What?”
I turn the phone toward her. She reads the message. All the color leaves her face.
“She always answers Vanessa,” she repeats.
No one speaks. There is nothing to say that will not hurt more. Then Kara’s own voice, small and shaking, breaks the silence.
“She has my house code.”
Sloane goes still. So do I.
Kara looks at me, horror widening in her eyes as the realization opens beneath her. “Vanessa has my house code. I gave it to her when I went to Atlanta last year and she watered my basil.”
“Did you ever change it?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“No.”
Sloane nods his head. “That explains no forced entry.”
“It doesn’t explain the system bypass,” Rafi says from the laptop.
“No,” I say. “But it explains how she got inside long enough to learn the system.”
Kara looks like she might be sick.
“She was in my house,” she says.
The words are flat. Hollow.
“She touched my clothes. My photos.”
I step toward her. This time, she reaches first. Her hand closes around my forearm, hard enough that her nails bite through fabric.
Good. Let it hurt. Let it be somewhere I can feel.
“She took my knife,” Kara whispers.
Sloane’s phone rings.
He answers immediately, turning slightly away. “Archer.”
I keep my attention on Kara. She is breathing too fast now, but not collapsing. Not yet. Her grip on me is iron. Her eyes stay open, fixed on some point beyond all of us.
The old truth is dying in front of me. No blood spilled, but still brutal.
Sloane ends the call. “Eli just got confirmation from Orlando PD. They contacted Vanessa’s restaurant. Staff says she left yesterday afternoon for what she called a supplier emergency. She hasn’t been back.”
Kara’s grip loosens.
“She told me she was at the restaurant.”
Rafi says, “Her last public post from the restaurant was uploaded yesterday, but metadata suggests the image was taken two weeks ago.”
Kara makes a sound. One small sound. It is not crying. It is the moment a person hears the floor give way. I catch her before her knees buckle.
She does not fight me. She folds forward, hands gripping my shirt now, face pressed against my chest. Her whole body shakes once, violently, then goes still.
“She lied,” she says into me.
I wrap one arm around her back and keep the other free. Always one hand free. Even now.
“She lied,” Kara says again.
“I know.”
“She let me call her. She let me tell her I was scared.”
My jaw clenches so hard it aches.
“I know.”
“She told me to call Dr. Vale.”
Sloane’s eyes sharpen. Kara lifts her face, tears in her eyes now but not falling. “She knew what that would bring up. Culinary school. The old sabotage. She wanted me thinking about anxiety and trauma and patterns, but not her. Not ever her.”
The room goes quiet again. This time, it is not shock. It is alignment. The pieces are turning into a very ugly picture. But we all see it clearly. Most of all, Kara is seeing it.
Rafi leans closer to his camera. “Kara, I need to ask you something. Did Vanessa know Dr. Vale’s name before this week?”
“Yes.” Kara wipes at her cheek with the heel of her hand. “She was the one who drove me to my first appointment years ago.”
Another message hits my phone. Same unknown number. This time there is an image. I do not open it until Sloane moves beside me.
The photo loads.
Bluefin Marina.
My boat.
Taken from a distance while Kara and I returned from the water. She is standing near the console, red hair wild, cover-up loose around her shoulders. I am at the wheel, looking ahead. Beneath it, words.
He doesn’t get to keep you.
Kara reads it over my arm. Her breathing stops. Then her phone, sealed in the evidence bag on the table, starts ringing.
Vanessa … the name glows through plastic in a way that is both familiar and monstrous.
Kara stares at it. No one moves. The ringing stops. A voicemail notification appears.
Sloane reaches for the bag. “We can play it.”
Kara’s face changes and she looks very decisive.
“No,” she says.
Sloane pauses.
Kara looks at me. “I’ll listen.”
I want to say no, but I bite my tongue. God knows, she doesn’t need more pain. Kara lifts her chin, still pale and shaking.
“Not because she gets to reach me,” Kara says. “Because I’m done letting her hide behind the voice I trusted.”
Sloane’s gaze shifts to me. I nod once. He opens the voicemail on speaker.
Vanessa’s voice fills the kitchen, breathless and trembling.
“Kara, honey, I don’t know what they’re telling you, but you need to remember who actually knows you. Who stayed. Who believed you when everyone else thought you were losing it.”
A pause.
Then softer.
“You always come back to me. You know you do.”
Kara closes her eyes. Vanessa’s voice drops.
“And if that man thinks he can take my girl from me, he has no idea what I’m willing to do.”
The message ends.
For three seconds, there is no sound except the marsh wind tapping something against the back window.
Then Rafi speaks from the laptop.
“Her phone just pinged off a tower in Sunbreak Harbor.”
Sloane turns toward the door. I pull Kara behind me before I decide to. This time she does not object.
Rafi’s voice is grim.
“She’s definitely on the island.”