Chapter 23 Ellie
ELLIE
The phone screen blurs as my hands shake, but I don't look away from the message. Fear floods my system—cold, immediate, real. My chest tightens, breath catching in that familiar pattern I've known since childhood. The urge to disappear crashes over me like muscle memory.
Make yourself smaller. Quieter. Less of a problem.
I recognize the voice, that ancient whisper that kept me alive through school hallways that themselves seemed to taunt the fat girl; through family dinners where the echo around the table resounded with are you sure you need to eat that; and then through boardrooms where my presence felt like an intrusion magnified by my size.
It's louder now, more insistent, promising safety if I just step back, fade out, let someone else handle this.
"I need to sit down."
Caleb gestures to the chair across from his desk, but I remain standing. Sitting feels like surrendering, like accepting that this is too big for me.
"The smart thing would be to leave," I mutter under my breath.
"Probably."
"Pack up tonight. Drive back to the city. Write a different story."
"You could."
I study the fear coursing through me, turn it over like evidence. It's real—this thing, whatever it is, wants me gone or dead. The threat isn't imagined or exaggerated. Every rational instinct screams for retreat.
But underneath the fear, something else pulses.
Recognition. This is exactly what I felt anytime the laughter rippled at my expense.
This is what I felt when the camera flashes began.
It was this same impulse to shrink, to apologize for taking up space, to make myself convenient for everyone else's comfort.
"I spent most of my life being the person who leaves the room when things get uncomfortable."
"Past tense?"
I look at him directly. "I'm not that person anymore."
“You don’t have to convince me,” Caleb says quietly.
“I’m not,” I reply. “I’m convincing myself.”
He watches me carefully. “And if this gets worse?”
“Then I deal with it bigger, not smaller.”
His brow furrows.
“I’ve spent years making myself easier to overlook,” I continue. “Quieter. Nicer. Less complicated. And it never actually kept me safe. It just made me easier to ignore when something went wrong.”
“This is different,” he says.
“It is,” I agree. “That’s why shrinking won’t work anymore.”
The words surprise me with their certainty. The fear doesn't disappear—if anything, naming my choice makes the danger more real. But I don't mistake fear for inability. They're separate things now.
"Good." He pulls out another map, this one marked with different colored pins. "Because we're going to need your investigative skills to track this thing properly."
"My skills?"
"You found patterns we missed for decades. You connected dots we couldn't see because we were too close to them." He spreads both maps side by side. "You want transparency? Here's all of it. Every disappearance, every sighting, every failed attempt to track this thing down."
I move closer to study the evidence, my fear settling into something manageable—present but not controlling.
"What do you need me to do?"
The radio crackles again, and I catch fragments of conversation—patrol routes, safe houses, containment protocols. All spoken around me, about me, without me.
"Stop."
Caleb pauses mid-sentence, radio halfway to his mouth.
"I said stop." I stand, planting both hands on the desk between us. "You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Managing me. Planning around me like I'm a problem to solve instead of a person who gets to make choices." I tap the map where his marks cluster near the forest edge. "This thing has been watching me since I arrived, and your solution is to tuck me away somewhere safe while you handle it?"
"Ellie, this isn't…"
"This isn't what? Your area of expertise? Because investigating dangerous situations happens to be mine." I pull my notebook from my bag, flip to the timeline I've been building. "You want to know what I've learned? Your mystery stalker doesn't just follow patterns—it adapts them. Look."
I trace the dates with my finger. "1990, three disappearances in spring. 1997, two in late summer. 2004, four in autumn, but spread over two months instead of clustered." I look up at him. "It's learning from your responses. Getting smarter."
He sets down the radio, attention fully focused now.
"So hiding me doesn't solve the problem. It just teaches this thing that threatening journalists makes werewolves retreat." I flip to another page. "But if we use me as bait—controlled bait, with backup and strategy—we might actually catch it."
"Absolutely not."
"Why? Because I'm human? Because I'm not pack?" I lean forward. "Or because you still think protection means keeping me ignorant and out of the way?"
"Because if something happens to you…"
"Then we make sure nothing happens to me. With planning. With backup. With me knowing exactly what I'm walking into instead of stumbling around blind." I point to the map. "Where does it usually strike?"
He hesitates, then marks a trail junction with reluctant precision.
"How does it approach? What time of day? What triggers an attack versus surveillance?" I'm already taking notes. "Does it hunt alone or with others? How fast can it move? What are its weaknesses?"
"Ellie…"
"These aren't rhetorical questions, Caleb. If you want me safe, give me information. If you want me protected, make me part of the plan." I close the notebook with a sharp snap. "Because I'm not hiding in a safe house while this thing regroups and figures out a better hunting strategy."
He studies me in silence, something shifting in his expression.
"You're serious about this."
“I’m serious about not disappearing,” I say.
“You think that’s what I’m asking you to do?”
“I think it’s what everyone asks eventually,” I reply. “Just be quieter. Safer. Somewhere else.”
He exhales slowly. “I don’t want you erased.”
“Then don’t erase my choices.”
Silence stretches. Not hostile. Evaluative.
“If we do this,” he says finally, “it’s not heroics. It’s preparation. Redundancies. Failsafes.”
“Good,” I say. “Because I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m trying to survive.”
"Dead serious." I meet his gaze steadily. "Danger I can see and prepare for is manageable. Danger that gets handled around me while I sit in the dark? That's just delayed helplessness."
The radio crackles again. This time, he doesn't reach for it.
The map becomes our battleground, but this time we're fighting on the same side. I spread my research alongside his intelligence reports, watching him absorb my timeline without interrupting to correct or redirect.
"Your pattern analysis is more complete than ours." He traces my red lines with one finger. "We've been tracking individual incidents. You've been tracking the system."
"Because I wasn't trying to protect anyone from the truth." The words come out sharper than I intend, but he doesn't flinch.
"Fair point." He pulls out a folder I haven't seen before. "Pack surveillance logs for the past month. Every sighting, every disturbance. Cross-reference them with your investigation timeline."
I scan the reports, noting dates and locations. "It's been following my exact route. Every interview, every archive visit."
"Learning what you know before you know it yourself."
"Which means it's always one step ahead." I circle three locations where the sightings cluster. "Unless we change the game."
"How?"
"Stop reacting. Start acting." I pull out a fresh sheet of paper. "What does it want most?"
"To hunt without interference."
"Wrong." I write CONTROL at the top. "It wants control. It's been controlling this narrative for decades—when to strike, who to take, how much attention to draw. My investigation threatens that control."
Caleb leans back in his chair, studying my notes. "So we give it a choice it can't resist."
"We give it me." The words settle between us like a challenge. "But on our terms, not its."
"Absolutely not."
"Think it through." I start sketching a rough map of the forest perimeter. "It's been stalking me for from the beginning, but it hasn't struck. Why?"
"Because you've been unpredictable. Moving around town, changing your patterns."
"Exactly. But what if I became predictable? What if I went exactly where it expects me to go, when it expects me to be there?"
His jaw tightens. "That's called bait."
"That's called strategy." I mark an X deep in the forest. "The old logging road. Every disappearance traces back to that area eventually. It's comfortable there, confident."
"It's also isolated. No backup, no witnesses."
"No backup that it can see." I look up at him. "How many pack members can move through those woods undetected?"
"All of them, but…"
"Then we use that. I go in alone, visibly alone. Draw it out into the open where your people can contain it."
"You're talking about using yourself as live bait for something that's been killing people for generations."
"I'm talking about refusing to hide while it hunts." I set down my pen. "This isn't recklessness, Caleb. This is mathematics. We know its patterns, its preferences, its territory. We have advantages it doesn't know about. The only variable we can't control is timing, so we control that too."
He stares at the map for a long moment. "The pack won't agree to this."
"The pack doesn't get to decide what I do with my life."
"I might not agree to this."
"You don't get to decide either." I lean forward. "But you do get to help me do it right, or watch me do it wrong."