Elias
I didn't push him on it. When Mason says something is wrong, you don’t argue; you map it out. But right now, my skull felt like a hollow drum. I hooked my thumbs into my belt loops and turned toward the back exit.
"Let’s get out of the station before Walker decides to assign us to traffic duty or puts ears on us. My truck’s out back."
The gravel lot was cold, the fog hanging so low it swallowed our boots as we gathered around the tailgate. I reached into the truck bed, hauled out my heavy steel thermos, and poured the black sludge into three scratched plastic cups.
Derek took a sip, immediately winced, and stared at the cup like it had insulted his lineage. "Jesus, Reed. Did you brew this through an old sock? There’s an entire ecosystem floating at the bottom."
"Drink it or dump it, fucker," I muttered, leaning against the cold metal of the tailgate.
Mason took his without a word, staring down into the black surface before looking up at my face. His eyes didn't miss a fracture. "Still smoke?"
"No."
"Liar."
"I quit," not making eye contact I looked away toward the wood line.
"When?" Derek chimed in, a sharp grin glinting under his eyebrow piercing.
"Just before I got here."
Derek let out a loud, barking laugh that broke the heavy silence of the lot.
"Just before you got here? Wow. A whole week of purity. You’re practically a saint, Elias."
The laughter died down quickly, leaving the cold air between us empty again. Mason didn't join in. He just kept his slate-grey stare fixed on me, low and unyielding.
"You still sleep three hours?"
"No."
"You still having nightmares?"
I didn't answer. I took a heavy swallow of the bitter coffee, letting the heat burn my throat.
The quiet that followed wasn't uncomfortable; it was the same heavy silence we used to share in the sandbox when the sun went down and the desert turned freezing.
Derek shifted his weight, his boots crunching softly on the loose gravel.
The playful smirk left his face, replaced by a quiet, measured focus.
"How are you holding up, Elias? Really."
I stared down into my cup, watching the steam rise and dissolve into the fog. The air felt thin.
"I know it was three months ago," I said, my voice barely louder than the hum of the station’s generator. Another silence fell over the tailgate. Heavy. Long.
"But fuck me, it still feels like yesterday," I whispered.
Mason didn't say anything. He didn't offer any useless words of sympathy.
Instead, he simply reached over, picked up the steel thermos, and slid another two inches of hot coffee into my cup, the metal clinking softly against the plastic.
The gesture was quiet, deliberate, and said more than any sentence he could have put together.
I took a slow breath, the cold air stinging my lungs.
"Sometimes... I still reach for my phone. I’ll see a bad accident on the secondary road or find a file that makes no goddamn sense, and my thumb goes straight to the contact for Mom. Then I remember. Every fucking time."
Derek looked away, his jaw tightening as he stared at the rusted chain-link fence.
Mason kept his eyes on the gravel, his chest rising in a slow, heavy breath.
It was a clean hit, the kind of raw grief that leaves no mark on the outside but changes the way you carry your own weight.
We were surrounded in silence after I spoke.
No words can comfort something like that.
"So..." Derek said, his tone suddenly jumping an octave, that sharp, irritating glint returning to his blue eyes, trying to lighten the mood.
"Shut up, Derek," I said, not looking at him.
"So, have you met someone?"
"No."
"Don’t bullshit me, Elias. Your head is somewhere and it sure as shit not with the case."
"The fuck it isn’t." I scoff.
"Then where was your head at," Derek insisted, leaning closer, his grin widening.
"You forget I know you man. Fuck we’re brothers, I know that look when I see it. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, fucker."
"Fucking leave it, brother" I muttered.
Derek let out another bark of laughter, shaking his head.
"Right. Sure. Is she pretty?"
A long silence stretched. I looked out at the mountain ridge, but my brain didn't see the pines. It saw her. It saw the way she looked through the wire mesh of her screen door, her dark hair held back by that loose plastic clip, the soft, pale stretch of her neck.
"Pretty doesn’t even begin to describe her. She’s ethereal , like a mystical creature. I have never met someone like her but… fuck it’s never going to happen." I said softly.
"Why the fuck not, if you described her like that then that and don’t want something with her then that means…" Derek noted looking over to Mason with a worried expression.
"She has a problem," Mason noted from the side, his voice a flat rumble.
"She's different," I said, turning my cup in my hands, my jaw setting as I tried to explain the unexplainable. "She... she talks to the garden gnomes, Mase. She’s theatrical. She fills the room up with words because she says the quiet makes people nervous, but when she watches you... it’s like she’s looking at what’s underneath the skin. "
Derek's grin turned triumphant.
"Oh, you're totally fucked. You're completely done for, Reed."
"I can't," I said, the words cutting through his laughter like a blade. The temperature in the lot seemed to drop five degrees instantly. Both looked up, their expressions flattening into rigid neutrality.
"Not again. I buried my parents three months ago. I'm not risking my heart to a person life can take from me. I'm just not fucking doing it. I can't survive burying another person."
Silence. It sat between the three of us like an old piece of shrapnel that had settled too deep to cut out. Derek closed his mouth, his shoulders dropping, while Mason gave a single, slow nod a silent acknowledgment of the rule we all lived by. He fucking gets it; he lost his first love…
"Alright," I said, tossing the dregs of my coffee into the mud.
"Let's get to work."
We moved back inside, bypassing the main desks, and took over the small secondary office at the end of the hall.
I dragged a large rolling whiteboard into the center of the room, pinning the glossy crime scene photos from the kiln shack and the old building directly next to the missing persons grid maps.
The machine took over. The three of us fell into our old roles with the smooth, terrifying precision of a unit that had spent too many years clearing rooms in the dark.
Derek went first. He thought in people, profiling the intent behind the blood.
"The kidnapper, who took those eight women over the last few weeks, likes control. Look at the data. The kidnapper takes them without a single witness, no struggle.”
“Which means we're profiling the kidnapper as male," Mason said, tapping the edge of the evidence board. Derek continues.
"The victims are all women, and every one of them disappeared without signs of a struggle.
To control and remove an adult female that cleanly, he'd need a significant physical advantage.
We're likely looking at someone at least six feet tall, around one-forty pounds minimum, probably heavier. Strong enough to overpower them quickly without drawing attention. No forensic footprints left in the dirt. Means he wants them clean. He wants them whole. That’s a ritual of absolute possession. "
He paused, his scarred finger tapping the photo of the kiln shack.
"But this? The guy from last night? This isn't possession. This is a performance. He left the bodies right where the morning shift would find them. He bound the male victim with heavy electrical wire so the morning light would catch the reflection. He wants an audience. He wants the police. He’s trying to start a violent conversation with the town. "
"Logistics don't match either," Mason interrupted, his voice a flat, solid weight as he leaned over the map.
"Look at the transport. The eight women vanished from transit points, highway turnouts, trailheads, grocery lots. Low-risk, high-efficiency snatches. The offender had a van or a truck with a covered bed. He knew the blind spots of every county camera."
He traced a line toward the timber yard.
"The kiln shack has one access road, blocked by a security gate that requires an encrypted keycard or a heavy bolt cutter. The killer didn't cut the chain. He walked the victim in through the creek bed. That’s two miles of wet rock in the pitch black, carrying the victim. That’s brutal force.
That's a completely different physical profile. "
I stood back, my hands interlocking at the back of my neck. I take a step back, the separate pieces of the investigation spinning in my head until they slammed together with a sickening click.
"Theory One," I murmured, staring at the whiteboard.
"The kidnapper. Only women. Never leaves a body. Methodical. Surgical. We don't know the purpose because we don't have the remains."
"Theory Two," Mason continued, his eyes narrowing into cold slits.
"The killer. A man and a woman last night. He left the remains, displayed them. Wants the press. Wants us to look."
"Two offenders," Mason said.
"Fuck. That's what I was afraid of," I whispered, my throat going dry.
The weight of the revelation hit the small room like a sandbag.
There wasn't just one monster hunting in the thirty-mile radius of Blackridge.
There were two separate entities operating in the same woods, their tracks overlapping in the dark, one stealing lives to keep them, the other using them to put on a show.
"I'll make a call, see if my contacts know of anything brewing under them," Mason said, pulling his encrypted satellite phone from his pocket.