Chapter 19 Ellie
ELLIE
My phone buzzes with a text from Thomas Reed, the overly cautious librarian.
I type back immediately: Yes. Same place as yesterday?
The message shows as delivered. Then read.
Then nothing.
I wait five minutes before trying again: Thomas? Everything okay?
Delivered. Read. Silence.
Twenty minutes pass. I call his number directly, listening to rings that stretch into automated voicemail.
I walk to my window, pulling the curtain aside just enough to peer at the street below. The same pickup truck that was parked across from the diner yesterday now sits three spaces down from my building. Different location, same license plate.
When I first noticed it, I assumed coincidence. Small town, limited parking, people have routines.
Now I recognize surveillance.
The driver isn't trying to hide. He wants me to know I'm being watched. The message isn't subtle: your questions have consequences, and those consequences are escalating.
Which means I've found something worth protecting.
I find him at the sheriff’s office just after I leave the diner. He’s standing over a map spread across his desk, shoulders tight with a tension I recognize from my own sleepless nights. He doesn’t look up when I enter.
“I know about the quarry,” I say.
My voice is calm, a flat statement of fact.
He stills.
“People talk,” he says carefully.
“About an abandoned quarry?” I ask. “Because that’s new.”
“It’s private property.”
I nod. “So was the forest trail you blocked me from last week.”
His jaw tightens.
“You’re drawing connections that don’t exist,” he says.
“Then help me understand why everyone gets quiet when I say the word out loud,” I reply.
Silence.
“You don’t want to be there,” he says finally.
“That’s not what I asked.”
He exhales through his nose. “Ellie…”
“You don’t get to tell me what I want,” I cut in. “You get to tell me why you’re scared of a hole in the ground.”
His head lifts slowly. His eyes are shadowed, the steady gaze I’ve come to expect now fractured with something raw. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.” He straightens, but the movement lacks its usual controlled grace. It’s jagged, like he’s fighting his own reflexes. “Go home, Ellie.”
“I found the patterns. The dates, the locations. It’s not random disappearances, Caleb. It’s a cycle. Something happens here every seven years. The last spike was in 2018. The next one is happening right now.”
He goes very still. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then tell me. Explain it to me. Make me understand why three people went missing in 1985, another two in 1962, and why right now, people in this town are acting like they’re waiting for a storm to hit.”
He crosses the space between us in three strides. Not threatening—but the proximity is electric, charged with the frustration he’s been swallowing for weeks. “Understanding won’t protect you. Knowing won’t make you safe. It will do the exact opposite.”
“So I’m just supposed to pretend? To look at the gaps in your own records and call it coincidence?”
“Yes.” The word is torn from him. “For once in your life, stop digging. Stop needing to see everything.”
“Or what?”
His control snaps. I see it happen—a fracture running through the careful wall he’s maintained since the day we met. His hands come up, not to touch me but to frame my face, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones. The contact is startling, warm.
“Or you become part of the pattern,” he says, his voice low and rough. “I can’t watch that happen.”
There’s fear in his eyes. Real, undiluted fear.
For me?
I can tell that it’s the first honest thing he’s shown me.
I don’t pull away. “You’ve been trying to scare me off since I arrived.”
“It hasn’t worked.”
“No.”
His breath hitches. The air between us thickens, heavy with everything unsaid. The argument hasn’t ended—it’s just transformed, molten heat replacing cold frustration.
When his lips crash against mine, it doesn’t feel like surrender. It feels like another battlefield, mouths colliding with the same tension that’s been simmering between us for weeks—his kiss a desperate translation of all the warnings he couldn’t voice aloud.
Papers rustle as he backs me against the edge of his desk, the carefully arranged maps scattering to the floor in an unceremonious heap. My fingers twist into the fabric of his shirt, anchoring him to me, refusing to let him retreat even as his body presses me into the unforgiving wood.
“This is reckless,” he breathes, forehead brushing mine.
“So stop,” I challenge.
His hands tighten on my hips instead. “You know I won’t.”
“Good,” I whisper.
The sharp edge digs into the small of my back, but I barely register the discomfort, too focused on the heat of his mouth, the way his teeth graze my lower lip like he’s both punishing and claiming me at once.
This isn’t like before. That had been anger, quick and explosive, a flash of heat that burned out just as fast. This is something else—slower, deeper, an urgency that unfolds rather than detonates.
“Ellie…” My name breaks on his tongue like a warning and a benediction all at once.
“You don’t get to warn me,” I murmur, lips brushing his. “Not anymore.”
“I’m still trying to protect you,” he admits, breath shuddering.
“Then maybe,” I whisper, “try wanting me too.”
“I already do,” he says, voice wrecked. “That’s the problem.”
Caleb’s hands grip my hips, fingers digging in as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he loosens his hold for even a second.
The pressure of his touch leaves marks I know will linger, bruises I’ll trace later in the mirror, proof that this was real. Then, with effortless strength, he lifts me onto the desk like I weigh nothing at all, like my body isn’t something to be maneuvered around but something to be held.
I can’t believe he can actually do that. I love that!
The thought flickers through me, warm and dizzying, as my hands slide down his chest, past the waistband of his pants.
This time, I take hold of him, my fingers curling around the hard length of his cock.
His breath stutters against my lips, and I swear I can feel his pulse pounding just beneath his skin, wild and untamed.
There’s something intoxicating about the way he reacts to me, the way his body betrays the control he clings to in every other moment.
I lean back slightly, one knee rising instinctively to give him better access.
He doesn’t hesitate—his hand closes around my thigh, fingers pressing into soft flesh as he drags my leg higher, opening me up for him.
Then he surges forward, burying himself inside me in one deep, relentless stroke.
I gasp, my back arching off the desk as he fills me completely.
The stretch burns in the best way, a sharp, grounding pleasure that makes my nails dig into his shoulders.
His grip tightens, holding me in place as if he knows I might try to escape the intensity of this, the way it strips us both bare.
What follows isn’t just passion—it’s necessity.
Our bodies move in a rhythm that’s less about pleasure and more about something deeper, something unspoken.
His forehead drops to my shoulder, his breath hot and uneven against my skin as we cling to each other, as if this is the only way we know how to communicate.
“Tell me this is nothing,” he manages between ragged breaths.
“I can’t,” I gasp. “You know I can’t.”
“Then stop pretending I’m the only one losing control.”
“I never said you were,” I whisper, voice shaking. “I’m right here with you.”
Every thrust is a claim, an anchor, a silent argument where our bodies speak the truth our words keep missing.
“Don’t disappear on me after this,” I breathe.
His hands tighten, grounding. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You always do,” I say, softer now. “You pull away.”
“Not this time,” he promises, voice raw. “Not from you.”
The desk creaks beneath us, the sound swallowed by the ragged noise of our breathing, the slick slide of skin against skin.
When release comes, it’s not a shattering but a slow unraveling, warmth spreading through my veins like liquid gold, pulling a choked gasp from his throat as he follows me over the edge.
He doesn’t pull away immediately—instead, he stays buried inside me, his body heavy and real against mine, his hands roaming over my curves as if memorizing them.
For a moment, the world narrows to just this: the heat of his skin, the way his heartbeat thunders against my chest, the quiet intimacy of being held.
“We crossed a line,” he murmurs, but there’s no regret in it. Only truth. “Twice.”
“I know,” I say, fingers curling in his shirt. “I’m not sorry.”
He exhales, forehead resting against mine. “Neither am I. That might be what scares me most.”
“Good,” I whisper. “Then we’re terrified together.”
Eventually, though, he does pull back. And just like that, the moment fractures. He doesn’t look at me as he rights his clothes, his movements precise again, the wall between us reassembling brick by brick.
But the conflict is still there, unresolved, waiting beneath the surface of our skin. I can see it in the tension of his jaw, the way his fingers linger for a second too long on his belt buckle before he steps away. He won’t meet my eyes, and I know—this isn’t over. Not really.
I don't knock when I reach Caleb’s office. The front door opens to reveal a space that feels more lived-in than professional.
"We need to talk."
He looks up from paperwork, looking like he’s been expecting this moment.
"Office hours ended three hours ago, Miss Carter."
"Good thing this isn't official business."
I drop the folder on his desk, pages scattering across whatever he was reading. Crime scene photos peek out from underneath my research, and my stomach lurches at the glimpse of violence I wasn't prepared to see.
"What is this?"
"Everything I've found about the disappearances. And a few things I think you already know."