Elias
I stared at the numbers for longer than I should have.
The engine wasn't running. The keys were still hanging from the ignition where I'd left them five minutes ago, swaying slightly every time the wind nudged the truck. My forehead rested against the steering wheel, the leather cool against skin that hadn't felt properly rested in four days.
Sleep had become something that happened to other people. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the evidence room, back in front of the monitor, back watching Clara disappear.
Twenty-seven seconds.
That was all it took. Twenty-seven seconds to fucking erase someone from the world.
I knew the footage well enough now that I could have recited every frame from memory.
The streetlights flickering above the intersection.
The white panel van slowed just enough to stop beside the curb.
Four men stepped out with the calm precision of soldiers executing a drill they'd practised a hundred times. The syringe. The hood. The zip ties.
Twenty-seven fucking seconds.
My jaw tightened.
I haven't slept since. I hadn't been home once. There hadn't been fucking time.
I'd showered in the locker room two mornings ago, changed into the spare clothes I kept in my truck, shaved over a cracked sink beneath flickering fluorescent lights, and called it good enough.
My cottage had been sitting empty ever since, probably looking exactly the way I'd left it after the clinic.
Dishes in the sink. Curtains still half-open.
A cold coffee mug somewhere on the kitchen counter waiting for someone who wasn't coming back anytime soon.
Max hadn't left my side since the veterinarian cleared him to return.
His blanket was spread beneath my desk in the bullpen, and every now and then I'd glance down just to make sure his chest was still rising and falling.
He was healing, but slower than either of us wanted to admit.
He slept more than usual, his ears twitching every time a phone rang, or someone raised their voice across the station.
Sometimes he'd lift his head just long enough to check I was still there before settling back down with a tired sigh.
The most energy he had was when we played outside in the yard before I got the call since then he had been tired. So, fucking tired. I never found who fucking done it, injected my dog with something. Fuck, so many unanswered questions.
I reached for the truck keys and pushed the thought aside before it had a chance to grow roots. My house could wait. Sleep could wait. Laundry, dishes, and everything else waiting for me at the cottage could all wait.
The investigation couldn't.
The automatic doors groaned open as I stepped inside, warm recycled air hitting me in the face.
Someone had already burned the first pot of coffee.
The familiar smell drifted through the bullpen, mixing with printer toner, damp uniforms, and the stale scent of people who'd been working far longer than they should have.
Normal.
It should've felt normal.
Instead, it felt like walking back into a room where somebody had forgotten to mention there was a bomb under the floorboards. The briefing room was already alive.
Maps covered the walls. Traffic corridors.
Interstate exits. Freight routes. Every major road leading out of the county had been highlighted in different colours while Mason's intelligence reports sat stacked across three tables.
Red marker connected locations that looked unrelated until you stood back far enough.
Sheriff Walker stood at the front of the room with both hands planted on the table.
He looked exhausted. His tie hung loose around his collar, his shirt creased from another night without sleep, and the grey stubble across his jaw made him look ten years older than he had the previous week. The man had spent thirty years trying to keep this county safe.
Now twelve women had disappeared beneath his watch.
He didn't bother with good morning; he just looked straight at me.
"Where'd you get the footage, Reed?"
The room went quiet, not completely. Someone's chair creaked. The heating unit rattled. A deputy coughed somewhere in the corridor but inside my head everything stopped because there it was.
The question I'd been avoiding for four days.
I could tell him. I could tell everyone.
A serial killer emailed the videos to me.
I pictured exactly how that conversation would end.
Walker would confiscate the files. The FBI would descend on the station before lunch.
I'd be removed from active-duty pending psychiatric evaluation.
Someone would ask whether I'd fabricated the email.
Someone else would suggest I'd become emotionally compromised.
The footage would disappear into evidence.
The investigation would stop while bureaucracy argued over jurisdiction.
Meanwhile...
Whoever had taken those women would keep working.
No.
I couldn't afford honesty.
Not yet.
"Friend of mine," I heard myself say.
The lie landed heavily between us. Walker's eyebrows pulled together.
"A friend."
It wasn't really a question.
"I didn't know you had friends who could recover deleted municipal surveillance."
Neither did I. The thought almost made me laugh. Instead, it twisted something unpleasant low in my stomach.
Walker folded his arms.
"Mason?"
"No."
"Derek?"
"No."
His gaze sharpened.
"Then who?"
I looked past him toward the incident board instead of meeting his eyes.
"Someone I know."
Even saying it felt wrong.
Friend.
The word scraped against my conscience like broken glass. Friends didn't bypass federal firewalls. Friends didn't archive kidnappings. Friends didn't document human trafficking with the precision of a military operation before signing the message...
You're Welcome.
Whoever had sent those files wasn't helping me. He was talking to me. That thought had bothered me more than the videos themselves because it meant I wasn't chasing him anymore.
He'd decided we were already having a conversation.
"So..."
Derek leaned back against the edge of the desk, balancing a paper cup that had long since stopped pretending to be coffee. He took one look at my face and snorted.
"Jesus, Reed. You look like death warmed over."
"I've been called worse."
"Yeah?"
He took another sip, grimaced, and looked into the cup as though it had personally offended him.
"This coffee just called you ugly."
Even Mason's mouth twitched. Barely. It was probably the closest thing to a smile I'd seen from him all week.
Derek wasn't trying to be funny because the joke was good. He was trying because he'd spent enough years with both of us to recognise when the room needed air before it collapsed in on itself.
He rested the cup on the table and folded his arms.
"So..." he said again, drawing the word out with deliberate exaggeration.
"How's Seraphina? You know your girl."
I looked up from the map.
"My what?"
"Your girl."
"My girl?"
"The one who kissed you on the porch."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Bullshit."
Derek pointed the plastic stirrer at me like it was evidence in court.
"So..." Derek said, leaning back against the desk with a grin that looked entirely out of place in the middle of the briefing room.
"How's Seraphina?"
I looked up from the map.
"What about her?"
He shrugged.
"You two talk after the Max thing? Or are you still pretending that porch kiss never happened?"
I shot him a look.
"We've both been busy."
"Busy?"
Derek scoffed.
"Reed, you've practically moved into this station."
Before I could answer, movement in the corridor caught my eye.
Deputy Collins.
He wasn't walking with purpose. He wasn't carrying files or speaking to dispatch. He simply drifted past the briefing room at an almost casual pace, one hand hooked through his duty belt, his attention apparently fixed somewhere farther down the corridor.
Apparently.
His head never turned toward us. It didn't have to. His pace slowed ever so slightly as he reached our doorway. Just long enough. Then he continued walking.
Nothing unusual.
Unless you'd spent enough years in places where people learned to watch without looking.
Mason saw it too. Without lifting his head, he rested one hand on the edge of the table. Three fingers moved. The same movement he would do when we were stationed.
Stop talking.
His index finger shifted.
We're being watched.
Derek's grin disappeared so quickly it was as though someone had switched it off. He lowered his eyes to the paperwork in front of him, picked up a pen and started writing absolutely nothing.
I didn't react.
Training.
You never reacted. You acknowledged. You remembered. You waited.
By the time Collins disappeared around the corner again , my pulse hadn't accelerated. It had always happened. Fear speeds civilians up. Training slows soldiers down. I kept staring at the corridor after Collins vanished.
Something didn't fit, not Collins but something about the station.
Over the last four days, conversations had begun stopping whenever Mason, Derek and I walked into a room.
Dispatch suddenly found reasons to linger outside briefing doors.
Deputies I'd known for years seemed strangely interested in where we were going, what we were discussing, and how long we intended to stay.
Individually...
None of it meant anything.
Together...
It felt like surveillance.
Mason never looked at me. He didn't have to. His fingers had already said everything.
We have ears and eyes around.
I watched another deputy glance toward our room before immediately looking away when he realised, I'd noticed. My stomach tightened. For four days I'd been convinced the biggest threat was somewhere out beyond the tree line.
Hidden.
Waiting.
Now I wasn't so sure.