Chapter Eighteen
ROXY
Dragged upward through a fog of heaviness and ache, I surface slowly. My fingers twitch first, a small, uncertain movement that sends a ripple of pain up my arm. My throat feels raw, like I’ve been screaming or breathing smoke, and when I try to swallow, it burns.
Light presses in through my eyelids. Too bright.
I squint, lashes fluttering as the world sharpens in painful increments.
White bleeds into shape above me, flat, endless, wrong.
The ceiling comes into focus, sterile and unforgiving, while fluorescent lights hum overhead, a thin, mechanical whine that burrows into my skull.
I try to move and regret it instantly. Every muscle screams in protest, a chorus of deep, bruised pain that steals the breath from my lungs. My body feels heavy, uncooperative, like it belongs to someone else entirely.
Then footsteps approach.
A shape resolves at my side, soft-soled shoes and pale fabric, and then a face leans into my line of sight. The woman’s smile is practiced, gentle in a way that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“You’re awake,” she says, voice calm and reassuring. “That’s good. You gave us quite a scare, Miss Vale.”
Vale.
That’s my name.
Roxy Vale.
Wildlife photographer.
Twenty-six years old.
I know these facts the way I know how to breathe. They are automatic, fundamental, but there’s something underneath that certainty, something that shifts and writhes like smoke trying to take shape before dissipating into nothing.
“What h-happened?” My voice comes out rough, my throat raw as if I’ve been screaming.
Maybe I have?
I can’t remember.
“Car accident,” the kind nurse says, checking the IV in my arm with practiced efficiency.
“Looks like it was a few weeks back, and you were wandering the wilderness ever since. You’re lucky to be alive.
They found you in the snow off Route 16, your car wrapped around a tree.
Hypothermic, concussed, and blood loss from the head wound. ”
Route 16.
The Appalachian pass.
I was there for a shoot.
The memories surface sluggishly, fragments that don’t quite fit. Snow, mountains, and trees stretching toward the sky so clear it hurt to look at.
But there’s… something else.
“There was a man,” I say suddenly. “In my car. A man who—”
“The deceased,” the nurse interrupts gently. “Yes. The police will want to talk to you. Johnathan Jones. Ex-military. They’re still investigating, but from the evidence, he flagged you down, got in, and then… the crash.”
Johnathan Jones.
The name means nothing.
But when I close my eyes, I see blood on tactical gear, terror in gray eyes, hands grabbing my arm hard enough to bruise.
Ice.
Blue eyes like winter.
A voice that could freeze the air in your lungs.
Not human.
The thought surfaces without context, foreign and immediate, and I grab for it desperately because it’s the only thing that sparks recognition in the empty landscape of my memory.
But the harder I reach, the faster it dissolves, leaving nothing except a bone-deep certainty that I’ve forgotten something crucial.
Something that matters more than breathing.
“The doctors say you’ll make a full recovery,” the nurse continues, oblivious to the panic clawing up my throat. “No permanent damage. You’re very fortunate.”
Fortunate.
Right.
I’m fortunate to be alive while a man is dead, and I can’t remember why.
She leaves, and I’m alone with the heart monitor’s steady beep and the gnawing sensation that my life has become a puzzle with half the pieces missing. I know my name, my job, and my complicated history with my mother. All of it present and accounted for…
But there’s a hole where the last few weeks should be.
A void that pulses like a fresh bruise, yielding nothing except the echo of something vast slipping further away.
The police come in the afternoon, when the light through the window has gone flat, and the room smells faintly of antiseptic and burned coffee.
Two detectives. Plain clothes. The taller one knocks once before stepping inside. “Miss Vale?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Detective Harris. This is Detective Miller.” He gestures to the man leaning against the counter. “We need to ask you a few questions about the accident.”
I nod, my fingers tightening against the blanket.
Harris pulls a chair closer to the bed. “Do you remember the night of the crash?”
“Yes,” I say. “Not all of it. But… enough.”
Miller straightens slightly. “Tell us what you remember.”
I swallow. “I was driving… the road was empty.”
“Were you alone?” Harris asks.
“Yes. At first.”
Miller’s gaze sharpens. “At first?”
“There was a man,” I say slowly. “He ran into the road.”
Harris stills. “He flagged you down?”
“Yes. He was waving his arms. Yelling.” My throat tightens at the memory. “I thought he was hurt.”
Miller steps forward. “Did you recognize him?”
“No.”
“Did he identify himself?”
I shake my head. “He didn’t make sense. He kept saying… things.”
Harris leans in slightly. “What kind of things?”
“That something was after him,” I say. “That it wasn’t human. He kept saying that over and over.”
Miller exhales through his nose. “Did he appear intoxicated?”
“No,” I say immediately. “He was terrified. Like—” I stop, searching for the right word. “Like he’d already accepted he was going to die.”
Harris exchanges a glance with Miller. “What happened next?”
“I told him to get in the car,” I say. “It was cold. He was bleeding. I thought I could drive him somewhere safe.”
“You let a stranger into your vehicle,” Miller says carefully.
“Yes,” I snap. “Because he was begging me.”
Harris raises a hand. “Miss… what happened after he got in?”
I close my eyes. “He kept looking behind us, out the windows. He wouldn’t stop talking. He said they’d find him.”
“They?” Miller asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “He just kept talking about them not being human.”
Harris’s voice stays calm. “And the crash?”
My stomach drops. “I… I think he grabbed the wheel,” I say quietly.
Miller’s head snaps up. “He what?”
“He screamed and grabbed the steering wheel,” I repeat. “I tried to pull it back, but—” My breath stutters. “We left the road.”
Silence floods the room.
Harris clears his throat. “You’re saying the crash wasn’t an accident?”
“No,” I say. “It wasn’t.”
Miller rubs a hand over his jaw. “Why would he do that?”
“I… I don’t know,” I whisper. “It’s all a blur.” I bring my hand up to my head to try to help dull the ache forming behind my eyes.
Harris opens a folder slowly. “The man’s name was Johnathan Jones.”
The name lands heavier this time.
“He was a licensed hunter,” Harris continues.
“Makes sense with what he was wearing,” I say.
“They found him in the passenger seat,” Miller adds. “Seat belt on.”
My hands start to shake. “I don’t remember him putting it on.”
Harris watches me carefully. “There were injuries.”
“From the crash,” I say.
“Some,” Harris agrees. “Others don’t line up.”
I look between them. “Then what do they line up with?”
Miller hesitates.
Harris answers. “With someone who’d already been fighting for his life before he ever got into your car.”
The older detective leans forward. “Defensive wounds. Burns, bite wounds. Between you and me, Miss Vale, this doesn’t look like any hunting accident I’ve ever seen.”
Burns. The word snags on something in my mind. I see fire in colors that shouldn’t exist, blue-white and red-gold twisting together like…
Like what?
“I don’t remember,” I whisper, both truth and lie because something is there, just out of reach.
The taller detective lingers at the door like he wants to say something else, something he’s decided against, while the other offers a final look that’s meant to be reassuring and misses by a mile.
“If you remember anything else, please give us a call,” he slides his card onto the chair by the door, and then the door clicks shut behind them with a sound that feels far too final for a room this quiet.
And then I’m alone again.
The silence presses in, thicker without voices to push against it.
Machines hum softly at my bedside. Somewhere down the hall, someone laughs, the sound distant, as though it belongs to a different world entirely.
I stare up at the ceiling and start counting the acoustic tiles because it’s easier than replaying the way the detectives’ eyes slid away from mine when they didn’t have answers.
One.
Two.
Three.
The certainty creeps in anyway.
There’s something missing.
Not gone, buried.
A gap in my memory that aches.
Whatever I forgot didn’t vanish on its own. It’s pressing at the edges now, impatient, like it’s running out of time to stay hidden.
My eyes begin to blink, slow, heavy, the threat of sleep invading my senses. My body sinks first. My limbs going slack. The hum of machines blurs into a low, distant thrum, like a sound heard through water.
I count one more tile… four.
Then another… five.
Somewhere between breaths, the edges of the room soften and slide away.
I’m standing at a table. Rough wood beneath my palms, scarred and stained with use.
Ledgers lie open in front of me, pages filled with neat, precise columns of numbers that make immediate sense even though I don’t recognize the names attached to them.
My eyes skim the entries without effort, tracking totals, losses, margins, things I have never learned and yet somehow know.
The pages flip on their own, as if magic is weaving through the parchment.
Shipment manifests are stacked nearby, stamped with symbols that aren’t letters but feel like language all the same. The ink looks old. I trace one mark with my finger and feel a pulse of recognition that settles deep in my chest.