Elias
The diesel engine growled beneath me as I turned onto the narrow mountain track, its familiar vibration travelling through the steering wheel and into my aching hands.
Fog drifted lazily between the pines, swallowing the headlights before reluctantly giving the road back to me a few metres at a time.
The entire valley felt muted, wrapped in a damp silence that settled over everything after sunset.
Max shifted restlessly in the back seat.
His claws scratched against the rubber mat before his nose pressed eagerly against the window, fogging the glass with quick bursts of breath. His tail thumped once against the side of the cab.
I couldn't help the tired smile that found its way onto my face.
"Easy, buddy," I muttered, glancing at him in the rear-view mirror. My own reflection looked like hell. Four days without real sleep had carved dark hollows beneath my eyes, and the stubble along my jaw had turned into something that barely resembled a beard anymore.
"We'll see her in a second."
Max answered with another impatient whine.
"I know,"
I chuckled quietly.
"She'll probably sneak you half a dozen doggy biscuits before I can stop her."
His ears perked immediately.
"You know those aren't good for you."
Another whine.
"Don't look at me like that."
His tail slapped the seat harder.
"Traitor."
For the first time all day, something close to a laugh escaped me.
The station, the videos, Walker's questions all seemed impossibly far away for those few seconds. Out here there were only trees, fog, and the familiar glow of the cottages hidden between them.
I rolled slowly past Seraphina's place without really looking.
My brain simply wasn't working anymore. I was running on muscle memory and caffeine, moving because stopping would've meant thinking, and thinking meant seeing Clara's face all over again.
I just wanted to get Max inside. Get a shower. Sit down for five goddamn minutes. I pulled into my own turnout and switched off the engine. Silence settled over the clearing.
The ticking of the cooling engine seemed unnaturally loud as I climbed out, stretching the stiffness from my back. Every muscle protested. My shoulders felt like someone had poured concrete into them sometime around yesterday morning.
I opened the rear door. Max didn't wait. He launched out of the cab the second the latch released, landing hard on the gravel before disappearing across the clearing at a full sprint.
"Hey!"
He never even looked back. I watched him tear straight past my porch. Straight past my front door. Straight towards hers. A tired smile tugged at one corner of my mouth.
"Yeah, yeah," I muttered, shaking my head as I headed for my own steps.
"I feed you every damn day, and you still pick her."
The dog had made his choice weeks ago. Apparently, I was just the guy who paid the vet bills. I bent to unlock my front door. The first bark drifted through the trees. Sharp. Happy. I barely registered. Probably announcing his arrival like he always did.
I slid the key into the lock. The second bark echoed across the clearing. Different. It stopped my hand halfway through turning the key. My fingers tightened around the brass. Something about it...
The third bark split through the night. Deep, hard and commanding. Every muscle in my body locked. My pulse didn't spike. It dropped.
Three warning barks.
Danger.
Years of military training erased every other thought before my brain had time to catch up. Some instincts never leave you. Some sounds become hardwired into your nervous system until the day you die.
Three warning barks from a trained dog meant one thing. Something was wrong. The keys slipped from my fingers. I never heard them hit the porch. I was already running. I hit the gravel so hard loose stones sprayed out beneath my boots.
"Seraphina!"
My voice tore through the clearing. Nothing answered. Not even the birds. Max wasn't barking anymore. He was whining, low and broken. The sound clawed straight through my ribs. I rounded the side of the cottage at a sprint, my lungs burning from the cold air.
Max stood frozen beside the back porch, every muscle in his body rigid. His nose was pressed against the screen door, claws scraping uselessly against the wood as another desperate whimper escaped him.
"Seraphina!"
Nothing. No sarcastic comment. No laugh. No annoyed "I'm coming." Nothing.
The silence hit me harder than any scream could have. My eyes began working automatically, years of training taking over before panic had the chance. Door. Windows. Ground. Blood? No.
Then… White. Scattered across the concrete porch like someone had dropped a porcelain plate. My stomach tightened. No… I crouched instinctively, my hand already resting against the grip of my Glock.
Tiny pieces. Painted green. One little ceramic hand. One blue boot. The one she called, Gerald. The breath caught somewhere behind my ribs.
Jesus...
She would've fought to save that stupid little thing. I didn't know why that thought hit me so hard, maybe because it meant she never saw this coming, maybe because she would've reached for him.
Slowly, I drew my pistol. The familiar weight settled into my hand as muscle memory took over. The slide snapped back with a metallic crack that echoed through the clearing.
"Seraphina!" I shouted again.
Nothing.
"I'M COMING IN!"
I kicked the back door open.
The smell hit first. Fresh dough. Garlic. Basil. Home. Everything looked...
Normal.
Too normal.
The lamp still burned over the counter.
Pizza dough rested on the marble board exactly where she'd been kneading it, the edges beginning to dry from exposure. Flour dusted the counter and drifted across the floor in pale footprints where someone had disturbed the neatness of the room. The tea towel hung crooked.
I stopped.
Seraphina would've fixed that. She couldn't walk past something crooked, not without straightening it. The chair near the table sat several inches away from where it belonged. A cup of coffee had gone cold. The surface had formed that thin grey skin food gets when it's abandoned.
She hadn't finished cooking, hadn't finished eating, hadn't finished whatever she'd been doing. She'd simply...
Stopped.
The thought made something cold settle beneath my ribs.
I cleared the kitchen. Nothing. Living room.
Nothing. Bathroom. Empty. Every room felt like she'd only stepped outside for a second.
Except she hadn't. I lowered the pistol just enough to look at Max.
The shepherd stood perfectly still, watching me.
"Search."
He didn't move.
"Max."
His ears flicked.
"Search. Find her."
Immediately his nose dropped to the floor. He moved through the cottage in tight circles, inhaling rapidly as he worked. Counter. Table. Chair. Hallway.
Then his pace changed. He found something. Without hesitation he tracked the scent straight back toward the rear entrance. He stopped. His nose pressed against one exact spot on the floorboards beside the open back door. He sniffed again. Whined. Turned once. Returned to the exact same place.
Again.
Again.
Again.
His tail didn't move. His ears flattened. He looked up at me. She went this way. She’d left through the back, and she hadn't walked out on her own soles. No… Not her. Someone took her this way and she never came back.
My hand was already reaching for my phone before I'd consciously decided to call Mason. The screen blurred for a second. I blinked hard.
Fucking focus Reed. I unlocked it, hit his contact and lifted it to my ear while my eyes never stopped moving across the garden. The call barely rang once.
"Reed."
"Seraphina’s house. Now."
Silence.
"Mason."
Something in my voice must've reached him. The easy familiarity disappeared instantly.
"What happened?"
I swallowed. My throat felt full of gravel.
"Get Derek."
Another pause.
"Elias."
"...Someone took her."
Nothing. No questions. No disbelief. Just the sound of him grabbing his keys.
"We're moving."
The line went dead. I lowered the phone slowly. For a second, I simply stood there, breathing through my nose.
Think.
Don't panic.
Think.
My eyes dropped to the flower beds. Boot prints.
Big ones. Deep. Four… No… Three different tread patterns.
Heavy men. They hadn't cared where they stepped.
Hydrangeas lay crushed into the mud. Wild clover flattened beneath thick ribbed soles.
The neat little rows she'd spent hours planting were gone.
I stared at them longer than I should have.
She would've hated this. The stupid thought hit me like a punch.
She would've walked outside tomorrow morning with her coffee...
and the first thing she'd have noticed wouldn't have been the broken porch.
It would've been her flowers. Something twisted painfully behind my ribs.
Goddammit...
Why her? Of all the people in this godforsaken valley...Why her?
The videos. The missing women. The white van. The fucking email. The card. Pieces I'd spent four sleepless days trying to force together suddenly crashed into each other all at once. My stomach dropped.
No.
No.
Please don't let this be connected. Please don't. I turned back toward the porch. The broken ceramic crunched softly beneath my boots. Gerald, or what was left of him. I looked a bit closer and saw something.
“What?”
Frowning, I crouched carefully. This is now a crime scene, don't contaminate it. I pulled a pen from my pocket instead of using my fingers. Slowly… Carefully… I nudged one painted green fragment aside another. Then another. Something white appeared beneath the shattered ceramic.
My pulse stumbled. Not another… It wasn't part of the gnome. It was card stock. As if Gerald kept it. For me.
A diesel engine screamed into the clearing so hard gravel sprayed against the porch posts. Doors slammed. Boots hit the ground. Fast. Purposeful. Mason and Derek reached the porch in seconds. Neither of them spoke immediately. They didn't have to. One look inside the cottage said enough.
Flour. Cold coffee. Chair. Broken door. Broken Gerald. Max pacing.
Mason looked at me.
"What happened?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
My heartbeat had become the only sound I could hear, loud enough to drown out Derek's questions.
Carefully, almost mechanically, I slid another shard of Gerald's shattered ceramic body aside with the tip of my pen.
A painted sleeve. A tiny green boot. Half a smiling face.
Each piece revealed another fraction of the concrete beneath it until something stark white emerged from underneath the broken base.
Not paper. Cardstock. Heavy. Expensive. I eased the final shard away. The card lay perfectly square with the edge of the porch, centred with impossible precision, as though whoever had left it had measured the angle before setting it down.
I slid the card free using the pen, careful not to touch it. Mason stepped closer. Derek moved in beside him. None of us spoke. The three of us leaned over the card together.
One sentence. Typed. Clean. Clinical. No signature, explanation, emotion. Just words. For several long seconds nobody breathed. The mountain seemed to fall silent around the cottage. Even Max stopped whining.
Mason and Derek exhaled first. Both saying at the same time…
"Fuck."
Words haven’t escaped my own mouth. My eyes stayed locked on the card. A cold weight settled somewhere behind my ribs.
"I should've fucking known..."
The words left me before I even realised I'd spoken them.
Somewhere… we'd already met the person who left this card. We just hadn't realised they were standing close enough to hear us speak.