3. Callum
Callum
“This is wild for you, Cal.”
“I know,” I mutter, tightening my grip on the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white.
Where the hell did all this rain even come from? Twenty minutes ago, the sky was just a heavy shade of twilight gray, and now it’s coming down in blinding, punishing sheets that my windshield wipers can barely push aside at high speed.
I try to stay focused on the road, tuning into my younger sister’s animated voice through the truck’s Bluetooth speakers. Isla’s bright Scottish lilt fills the cab, competing with the deafening roar of water hammering against the roof.
“I mean it,” she goes on, sounding entirely too relaxed while I’m leaning over the wheel squinting into the abyss.
“I honestly can’t remember the last time you took a proper day off work.
Even that time you caught that nasty rotavirus and were sitting on the toilet for three days straight shitting your—”
“Okay, Isla, I get it,” I cut in, my own deep Scottish accent rough from hours of silent driving and stale gas station coffee. I grumble under my breath, flicking my eyes toward the side mirror to make sure I’m still on the asphalt. “You know entirely too much about my bowels.”
“Trust me, do you think I want that information floating around in my head?” she shoots back. “Blame Gran. That woman couldn’t keep a secret if you held a gun to her head.”
I let out a low mumble of agreement. She’s not wrong, as much as I love the old bird dearly. Gran’s mouth has always moved significantly faster than her discretion.
Turning my attention back to the windshield, my jaw sets tight as I scan the surroundings.
I can’t really see shit out here. Just some towering, dense pine trees press right up against the narrow shoulder, their heavy branches leaning over the lane like a dark, choking canopy.
Massive mountain shadows loom above the tree line, cutting off what little moonlight might be hiding behind the storm clouds.
Something about these woods feels wrong. Claustrophobic, and unnaturally dark. And considering I grew up running through the backcountry of the fucking Appalachian mountains, an eerie stretch of timber shouldn’t be making the hair on the back of my neck stand up like this.
Up ahead, the road narrows to a single-lane bridge made of weathered timber and rusted iron beams. It looks reasonably stable, so I ease my foot on the brake, pulling the truck onto the gravel shoulder just before the crossing.
I shift into park and hit the hazard lights, the blinkers casting flashes against the downpour.
I pick up my phone from the center console, tapping the screen to bring up the GPS. No Signal. Searching…
Through the speakers, Isla is still yapping away, completely oblivious to my growing annoyance, blabbering on about how she’s going to a new hole-in-the-wall pizza place with some coworkers later.
Isla’s a social butterfly—always has been.
She has a hundred friends, a calendar packed with dinner dates and weekend trips, and a constant need to fill any empty space with chatter.
She’s the exact opposite of me. I like quiet. I like order, solitude, and minding my own damn business.
Which was precisely what I’d planned to get in Colorado.
I’d booked a secluded cabin tucked high in the Rockies for two full weeks, finally caving after my boss practically shoved me out of the precinct doors.
Captain Hayes had stood over my desk, crossed his arms, and insisted I take a breather before I worked myself into an early grave, reminding me in no uncertain terms that the active missing persons cases on my desk would still be waiting for my painstaking eye when I got back.
Stepping away from my desk—stepping away from the title of Detective for fourteen whole days—felt like trying to strip off my own skin.
Work consumed my life. It was who I was, through and through.
I didn’t have the faintest clue how I was going to handle two weeks of doing absolutely nothing, but it was either take the vacation or get my ass thoroughly chewed out in front of the entire squad.
A quiet retreat in a mountain cabin seemed harmless enough.
I tap the dead screen of my phone one more time, then look out the side window at a cracked, moss-covered wooden town sign swaying violently in the gale. As I continue staring at the faded lettering, my eyebrows draw tightly together.
I definitely wasn’t in fucking Colorado, I could tell you that much.
Squinting through the fogged-up side window, I try to read the weathered letters carved into the damp timber of the sign. As I lean across the center console to get a better angle, I stretch both hands out toward the dashboard vents, letting the blast of hot, dry air thaw my stiff fingers.
It’s absurdly cold for mid-June. Not just cool mountain air, but a biting chill that settles right into your bones. Where the hell am I?
Isla’s voice crackles through the truck’s speakers, pulling my attention back to the call. The lightheartedness in her tone from earlier has completely vanished, replaced by something quieter and more hesitant.
“Cal…you’re actually going to enjoy this vacation, right?” she asks softly. “You’re not going to spend it, you know…”
Her voice trails off, but she doesn’t need to finish the sentence. We’ve been dancing around this phantom for over a decade.
“You know I will, Isla,” I say softly, resting my wrist on the top of the steering wheel.
She lets out a sigh that rustles through the receiver. “Cal, you need to stop. You have to move out of this phase of denial you’ve been stuck in for the last thirteen years. It isn’t healthy.”
My jaw tightens, my knuckles locking against the wheel. “What if he’s still out there?” I ask, the words dropping like lead between us. “If the tables were turned, Isla, Rory would never stop looking for us. You know he wouldn’t.”
“All this does is hurt Gran,” Isla says, her voice breaking around the edges, sounding utterly defeated. “Rory is gone, Cal. Thirteen years is too long to keep holding your breath for someone who isn’t coming home.”
I close my eyes for a brief second, the raw truth in her voice searing straight through me. I can’t even blame her for feeling that way.
Thirteen years ago, our younger brother Rory—who’d always possessed a wild, fidgety itch to wander and explore every hidden corner of the woods—went hiking on an unmarked trail he’d found up in the hills. And then he just…vanished.
None of it had made a damn bit of sense.
Rory had been seventeen, but he wasn’t reckless.
He knew the backcountry better than any park ranger, always carried a compass, his survival gear, water, and never took stupid risks.
Yet after a three-week search involving bloodhounds, thermal drones, and hundreds of volunteers combing every square inch of the ridge, they found absolutely nothing.
No pack, no boot prints, no torn jacket.
Eventually, the county Sheriff’s department slapped a “presumed dead” stamp on his file and closed the case.
It completely devastated Gran, who had raised the three of us in her small mountain home after our parents died.
Before Rory vanished, Gran was a pillar of iron-willed strength—a woman who’d lived in the same cabin her entire life, relying on nothing but a landline phone and a prayer, taking zero shit from anyone.
Afterward, the grief turned her fragile, anxious, and deeply paranoid.
She started calling me every single morning at seven sharp just to hear my voice and make sure I was still breathing.
She became so terrified of losing Isla or me that she actually went out and bought a smartphone—the same woman who still refused to buy a microwave to this day—simply so she could install Life360 and track our locations every hour of the day.
Rory’s cold case was the catalyst that pushed me to put on a badge and become a detective.
I told myself that if I couldn’t save my own brother, maybe I could bring closure to other families living in that same endless, agonizing limbo.
But the truth was, I never really stopped working on Rory’s file.
I spent every spare weekend re-interviewing old witnesses, cross-referencing topographic maps, and chasing down dead-end tips.
For my own sanity, I couldn’t let it go.
Maybe Isla was right. Maybe it was just my own fucked up way of coping, of keeping the wound open so I didn’t have to face the empty space he left behind.
But I couldn’t give up on trying to find my brother—not today, not next year, not if it took my whole damn life to do it.
“Look,” Isla says as she shifts gears, trying to pull us back from the edge of a conversation we’ve had a hundred times. “Just try to actually enjoy this vacation, alright? Go fishing. Go hiking. Do whatever the fuck it is you normally do when you’re hiding out in the middle of nowhere in nature.”
A laugh slips out. “Some people actually like the quiet, believe it or not.”
“Yeah, Cal. Serial killers and men with severe emotional damage.”
I roll my eyes at the dashboard. She’s an ER nurse down in Nashville, Tennessee, and the commotion of a big city fits her like a glove. She thrives on the noise, the crowds, and the five different social circles she somehow maintains.
I couldn’t do it if you paid me. I need room to breathe.
My mind spends sixty hours a week untangling crime scenes and piecing together worst-case scenarios; when I’m off the clock, I need silence.
I think about my place back in North Carolina—three quiet acres tucked into the hills outside Asheville, where the only sound at night is the wind in the trees and the creek running past the property line.
That house is my sanctuary, the only place my brain finally turns the volume down.