Chapter 37
ROWAN
Everyone’s still out cold. Jess barely surfaced yesterday long enough to inhale Eli’s chili before disappearing back under the blankets. Can’t blame her—the heat took everything out of her. Out of all of us.
I should be sleeping too. My eyes burn. My shoulders ache. But every time I close them, I see Blake’s face at the anime convention, and sleep stops being an option.
So I’m here. Hunting.
The cursor blinks like a pulse I can’t shut off.
Another frame loads—grainy, blue-washed, useless.
Eli’s files sprawl across the screen: screenshots, clipped reports, archived posts that reek of money and silence.
Blake’s “shark attack.” His father’s sanitized press releases.
Same bullshit headline everywhere: Local CEO’s son survives freak shark encounter off Pacific coast.
Right. Shark.
Except sharks don’t leave four clean slashes across a man’s chest and face. Evenly spaced. Parallel. The kind of marks you get when someone rakes their nails down your skin while fighting for their life.
Someone did that to him.
Someone fought back.
I zoom in on the crew photo and pick out the twelve female faces, all accounted for. Eli already tracked every single one—alive, employed, no red flags. Which means either Blake’s daddy paid someone off, or the person who clawed him up never made it off that ship.
That thought sits heavy in my chest, lead-weight and suffocating. If Blake hurt someone else—if he killed again—then I didn’t just miss it. I failed to stop it. Another woman paid the price for my doubt.
An image of Meredith flashes behind my eyes—her laugh, her blood, the way I convinced myself it wasn’t murder. That maybe it really was an accident. That the trial failing meant I had to let it go.
I drag a hand over my mouth, jaw tight. I should’ve known better.
For years, I told myself Meredith’s death was an accident—that the court got it right, that maybe he just panicked.
But looking at these wounds, I can’t shake the feeling I’ve been lying to myself.
Blake’s not unlucky. He’s dangerous. And I let him walk away.
But all of the crew’s accounted for. The passengers? Eli’s still fighting to get that manifest—cruise lines don’t exactly hand over data to rogue ex-hackers. So I’m left staring at these four lines carved into Blake’s face, his chest, wondering who left them.
Wondering if they’re still breathing.
I lean back, rolling the tension out of my neck. Two possibilities: hush money or a body buried somewhere cold and deep. Either way, someone on that cruise knew what he really is.
And if they’re still out there, they might be the only one who knows the truth.
A few minutes later, there’s a creak down the hall. Cassian rounds the corner shirtless, hair wrecked from sleep. His scent hits—amber and leather with hints of black pepper spiking, restless. I register it without thinking, the old instinct to read my pack kicking in.
“You’re still up?” His voice is rough, gravelly, and static.
I don’t look away from the screen. “Couldn’t sleep.”
He grunts—the kind of sound that says same—and drops onto the couch across from me. The leather sighs under his weight.
“You find anything?”
“Nothing solid. Just lies stacked on better PR.”
Cassian’s gaze tracks the mess of files across my screen. “What are we looking at?”
I pull up the cruise security feed, a low-res stretch of deck footage Eli managed to recover. “Eli found this in an old cloud backup.”
Cassian squints. “Blake?”
“And he’s with someone else.”
The clip runs—Blake at the railing, wind tossing his hair, a brunette standing near him. The image stutters. They move closer, talking—no, he’s talking and she’s backing up. Then static swallows them both.
Cassian frowns. “Who’s she?”
“Don’t know. Not on the crew list. Not on the passenger manifest either—from what I can tell.”
He shifts closer to the screen, eyes narrowing. “Could be a staffer off-duty. Or someone who didn’t want to be there officially.”
“Yeah. And whoever scrubbed the footage made sure no one could get a clear look at her face.”
Cassian’s hands flex against his thighs. “You think his dad covered it up?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Rewind it.”
I do. We watch the same few seconds again—the brunette, the railing, Blake’s arm lifting toward her shoulder. Her flinch. The frame cuts to static.
Cassian exhales slowly, jaw tight. “She’s scared.”
“Yeah.”
“She could’ve fought him there. Left the marks we saw.”
“Can’t tell—video skips right before she moves.” I show him what I’m talking about.
Cassian sits back, drags a hand down his face. “Could be nothing.”
“Or it could be everything.”
We don’t say the rest out loud.
If she tried to defend herself, then she might’ve paid for it.
Eli drifts in, scratching his jaw, wearing sweats and the same wrinkled Nexus tee he’s probably slept in for two days. “Why are you two sitting in the dark like serial killers?”
Cassian doesn’t look up. “Because we might be hunting one.”
Eli freezes mid-yawn. “Okay… creepy answer.” He steps closer, squinting at the screen. “That the cruise footage I pulled?”
“Yeah.” I tilt the laptop toward him. “Timestamp lines up with the night before the attack.”
He drops onto the arm of the couch, peering at the grainy video as it loops again. “Quality’s ass,” he mutters. “But yeah, that’s him. Who’s she?”
“That’s the problem,” Cassian says. “She’s not listed anywhere. We crossed-referenced the passenger list and crew, nada.”
Eli frowns, already reaching for the keyboard. “Not even on the backup rosters or customs logs?”
“Could she have used a fake name?” I ask.
“Maybe. And if Blake paid for a really good one. Every ID scanned before boarding gets timestamped and verified by the cruise line’s internal server. I pulled those too.” His fingers tap faster, the hacker side of him waking up. “If she was on that ship, she didn’t go through normal channels.”
Cassian leans forward, eyes narrowing. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning someone smuggled her on.”
He pauses the footage on a blur of motion—Blake turning, the woman’s wrist catching light. Something silver flashes before the feed cuts out.
“Back it up.” I point to the screen.
Eli does, freezing the exact frame. “Could be a bracelet or watch.”
“Might be a lead.” I rub the back of my neck, the lack of sleep catching up to me.
“Whoever scrubbed this,” Eli says, low, “knew what they were doing. The deletion pattern isn’t random—it’s surgical. Someone went through frame by frame and wiped her from every visible angle. But they missed her jewelry because they were concentrating so much on making sure no one saw her face.”
My stomach knots. “You think Blake did it?”
“Doubtful. His digital literacy probably ends at Instagram.”
“His dad, then.”
“Or a private cleaner. Someone with access to the feed.” Eli sits back, shaking his head. “I’ve seen data wipes like this before. They cost a fortune.”
Cassian’s gaze slides to me. “He’s hiding her.”
“Looks that way.” My throat feels tight. “Question is, why?”
The cursor blinks in the middle of the paused frame, the woman’s outline caught between pixels and shadow.
Eli exhales. “I’ll keep digging. There’s a chance her metadata’s still buried in the backup—ID tags, maybe even a facial match if I can rebuild the checksum.”
“Do it,” I say flatly.
Eli nods, already typing. His eyes narrow, focus sharp. “If she’s still out there, I’ll find her.”
I hope he’s right. Because if she isn’t, that means Blake didn’t just hide her. He erased her.
By the time sunlight starts leaking through the blinds, the kitchen smells like sugar and exhaustion.
Eli’s at the table, laptop open, fingers flying. Cassian’s on his second screen, cycling through missing-person reports. I’m checking the oven, where a pan of premade cinnamon rolls finishes crisping after a quick nuke job in the microwave—fast, easy, enough to pass for breakfast.
Footsteps pad across the hall, soft but certain.
Jess rounds the corner and blinks. “Dang. I thought Eli would consider frozen cinnamon rolls a cardinal sin.”
“Don’t have time to cook right now.” I wrap up the remaining half package and put it back in the freezer.
She leans on the counter, eyes narrowing in mock disbelief. “How are those even in the house?”
“Emergency stash,” I tell her, setting the timer. “Whenever Eli’s sick or working a double at Nexus, we have to fend for ourselves somehow.”
Cassian smirks without looking up. “Rowan’s survival instincts kick in. Sugar and caffeine.”
Eli hums, not even glancing away from his code. “I’m right here, you know.”
Jess smiles faintly, moving to the cupboard for mugs. “Then I’ll make the coffee before he gets offended by the baking methods.”
“Appreciate it,” I say, because I do — even if my stomach’s already knotted tight about Blake.
She pours, the sound of coffee filling the room. For a second, it almost feels normal. Then Cassian exhales through his nose, rough and low.
“Got something,” he says, nodding toward his tablet. “Cross-referenced the cruise passenger lists against missing-persons databases. Three women disappeared that year, but none match the timeline exactly. And without seeing her face, she could be anyone.”
Eli doesn’t look up. “That’s because the one we’re looking for isn’t on the list.”
Jess glances between them, a frown forming. “What’s going on?”
I wipe my hands on a towel and move closer, resting one hip against the counter. “We’ve been digging into Blake’s ‘shark attack’ that happened seven years ago. Eli found corrupted security footage from the night before it happened. Looks like he was with a woman who never officially existed.”
Her brow creases. “Never existed?”
Cassian turns the tablet so she can see. “Not crew. Not a passenger. No ID, no digital footprint. Whoever she is, she was wiped from the cameras except for one tiny moment. But we can’t see her face.”
Eli angles his screen toward her. “I’m still reconstructing frames, but someone went to serious lengths to erase her.”
Jess blinks, setting the coffee pot down. “Why would anyone do that?” Then she hands out mugs of coffee to each of us.
“Because she fought him,” I say quietly.
Her head snaps toward me. “What?”
“Look.” I bring up the paused frame — Blake at the railing, the brunette beside him, sea wind snapping her hair. Then the glitch, the half-second where her wrist flashes silver before the feed dissolves.
Jess steps closer, eyes fixed on the screen. “Can you zoom in?”
Eli does. The pixels blur and warp, but the shimmer of something metallic catches in the light.
Jess’s hand trembles. The mug she’s holding knocks gently against the counter.
“Jess?” Cassian’s tone softens, and I catch the shift in his scent as his Alpha instinct rises. “You okay?”
She doesn’t answer. Just stares at the screen like it’s rewiring her memory, rewriting her entire history. The color drains from her face so fast that I move without thinking, ready to catch her if she falls.
Her breath shudders out. “That bracelet.”
“What about it?”
She swallows hard. “It’s hers. That’s Sabrina’s bracelet.”
Eli blinks. “Your sister?”
Jess nods, eyes wide and wet. “My dad gave it to her when she turned sixteen. A silver crescent moon. She never took it off.” Her voice breaks.
“When I met Blake the first time, he said I reminded him of someone. I thought he was just being a creep.” She drags in a shaky breath.
“And later—after I hit him—he called me a wild cat too. I didn’t understand it then, but…
” Her throat closes around the words. “He was talking about Sabrina. About what she did to him before he—”
The room goes silent except for the hum of Eli’s laptop fan and the slow tick of the oven timer.
Cassian’s hand curls into a fist. “You’re sure it’s her?”
Jess doesn’t even blink. “I’d bet my life on it.”
“Eli, pull up the date again of the cruise.” I rub Jess’s back while he searches.
“Dates are July tenth through seventeenth, over seven years ago.”
“Oh god.” Jess shakes, covering her mouth with her hands. “That’s when she disappeared from Nexus, and no one would tell us shit. They said maybe she ran away after she was placed.”
My chest tightens. “Then she’s the one who fought him.”
Eli leans back, face pale. “And if she fought him…”
Jess closes her eyes. “Then he killed her.”
The timer dings, sharp and wrong in the quiet. The smell of sugar fills the room, too sweet against the taste of horror.
I pull Jess against my chest, and Cassian’s hand finds her shoulder while Eli goes perfectly still, his fingers frozen above the keyboard.
We may have found Sabrina. But years too late to save her.