10. Miles #2
"I don't have a look."
"It’s the one where you're deciding something," Mason says with a tone that says I know you well enough now.
"I'm working."
Declan doesn't say anything. He's learned that sometimes the most effective contribution to a conversation is to say nothing and let it resolve itself.
I open a minimal trace window on the bottom right of my right monitor.
It’s small enough that it doesn't pull the eye toward it.
Her portal activity is running quietly underneath the case files, the way it always does at this hour.
She logs on late; she's been doing it since the second week of term. It’s some combination of insomnia of someone still finding their rhythm in a new place.
She's in her coursework folder. Opening the communications essay.
Again.
She's read that essay four times since the grade came back. I know because the trace logs the access and I check the logs every morning. She reads it, highlights sections, removes the highlights, and then closes it.
"The Austin one's bothering me," Declan says from the table.
I minimize the trace window. I don’t close it, just minimize it. "Which part?"
"The timeline. She disappeared on a Wednesday." He taps the legal pad. "Every other disappearance is a Friday or Saturday. Late evening. The Austin one is a Thursday afternoon."
I pull the Austin file. Sarah Okafor, twenty-four, graduate student.
Disappeared from the university library, different university, different state, same profession as Jade Coleman in Colorado.
Last seen at two fifteen in the afternoon, which is an outlier against the pattern of late-evening disappearances across the other six cases.
"What was the gap between the environmental change and the disappearance in Austin?" I ask.
I already know the answer. I'm asking because I want Declan to run the same calculation I ran three weeks ago and tell me what he gets.
He checks his notes, flips back two pages. "Four months. Within the window."
"But the time of day is wrong."
"Yeah."
"Which means either Austin is different for a reason we haven't identified yet," I say, "or Austin is an outlier and someone deviated from the pattern."
"Why would they deviate?"
"Opportunity. Something changed. She was somewhere she wasn't supposed to be at a time that wasn't planned for, and they moved anyway.
" I make a note. Flag Austin separately.
Possible deviation from established pattern.
Suggest reviewing subject's schedule for anomalies in the week prior.
"Or she wasn't chosen the same way the others were. "
Mason looks up. "What does that mean?"
"It means she might have been added to the list differently. Every other girl, based on what we have was watched for the full window. Three to five months of location surveillance. If Austin is a deviation, maybe Sarah Okafor was chosen on a shorter timeline."
"Why would they rush one?"
"I don't know yet." That’s the thing which is annoying me. I don’t have any answers. I have more and more questions, but no answers.
The trace indicator pulses quietly in the bottom corner of my screen.
Sadie has closed the essay. She's in a new document now, something she's writing herself.
Mason sets the Nashville file down and stretches his neck to one side. "I think we've done enough for tonight."
"Give me twenty minutes," I say.
"It's nearly two."
"Twenty minutes,” I snap at him.
He looks at me with the expression he gets when he's decided not to push something. Then he closes his laptop and stands, and Declan caps his pen and stacks the physical files back into order.
"You're staying on it," Mason says, it’s not a question.
"I want to finish the Austin thread."
He picks up his laptop and his coffee cup and pauses at the bottom of the stairs. "Miles."
I look at him.
He glances at my screen, the case files on the left, and the bottom corner of the right monitor where the trace indicator sits.
"Don't be up all night," he says.
He goes upstairs. Declan follows, dropping a hand briefly on my shoulder as he passes, no words, just that, which from Declan means more than most people's full sentences.
Then it's just me.
I turn back to the Austin file and work it for another twenty minutes, the way I said I would.
The thread doesn't resolve tonight. There isn't enough data yet.
I need deeper access to Sarah Okafor's university records and her social media history from the six months prior, both of which I'll pull tomorrow.
When the twenty minutes are up, I make my final notes, close the partition, and sit back.
The trace indicator pulses.
Sadie is still writing. It’s nearly two in the morning and I’m guessing she’s still at her desk in that small warm circle of lamplight. The cursor is moving in its rhythm, producing something that’s genuinely hers this time. I watch it for a while.
I turn on her webcam and microphone with a few keystrokes.
The feed blooms across my screen in crisp detail.
There she is, her hair twisted up messily, and she’s wearing that faded tank top that slips off one shoulder, with her lips parted in concentration.
I lean closer, my breath slowing. Every second of it sinks into me.
The audio crackles softly. I hear her exhale, the faint scratch of her pen when she pauses to jot something on paper beside the laptop. She mutters under her breath, “This better be right this time.”
I smile in the dark of my room. She’s perfect, so focused, and so unaware of how completely I see her.
I type into the hidden chat window I’ve embedded in her system, the one that will appear directly on her screen. My fingers move with care.
You’re doing beautifully tonight, Sadie. The way your mind works when no one’s watching… It's breathtaking.
On my feed I see her freeze. Her head snaps up.
She stares at the screen, her eyes widening.
The pen slips from her fingers and rolls across the desk.
“What the hell?” she whispers, her voice thin through the mic.
I hear the fear in it, but there’s something else underneath, that startled curiosity that keeps pulling her back to the edge.
I let the silence stretch just long enough for her pulse to climb, then type again.
Don’t be afraid. I only want to watch you shine. The essay they gave you credit for last time wasn’t you. This one is, I’m proud of you.
She pushes her chair back slightly, glancing around the room, then toward the window. Her gaze darts back to the laptop. “Who are you?” she says aloud, her voice cracking but she’s trying to sound steady. “How did you get into my computer?”
I turn up the mic sensitivity, savoring the way her breathing has changed, shallower now, quicker.
The camera catches the slight tremble in her hands as she pulls the blanket from her bed over her lap like it could shield her.
God, she’s beautiful when she’s like this.
Real. Mine in the ways she doesn’t understand yet.
I would never hurt you, Sadie. That’s the one thing you never have to fear from me.
I’m the one who leaves the violets, so you know you’re thought of.
The one who remembers how you like your coffee and the exact way you bite your lip when you’re nervous.
I watch over you from afar because you deserve to be protected. Cherished. Even when you don’t see me.
She reads it, her lips moving silently. A flush creeps up her neck.
She looks scared, her eyes flicking to the door, then back to the screen, but she doesn’t slam the laptop shut.
Not yet. “This isn’t funny,” she says, quieter this time, almost like she’s testing if I can really hear her.
“Stop it, please. If you’re trying to scare me, it’s working. ”
I let my fingers hover, choosing each word with tenderness.
I’m not trying to scare you. I’m trying to care for you, the only way I know how right now. From the shadows, where I can keep the worst things away from you. No one else sees you the way I do. No one else would rewrite your world just to make it safer, and brighter for you.
Her breathing hitches through the mic. She presses a hand to her chest, staring at the screen as if it might reach out and touch her. “Why me?” she whispers, barely audible. “What do you want from me?”