Chapter 19 #2
My breath catches. Three words detonate in my chest. Sleep in my bed. The order of it. The claim of it. The way my body answers before my pride can argue.
Water rocks gently around my thighs as I set the phone down and sink a little deeper, letting the heat seep into the bones of me.
Outside, the forest breathes. Inside, the stubborn tremble still coasts through my limbs, a soft aftershock.
I close my eyes, and for a fragile, dangerous moment, I let the yes sit warm and certain behind my ribs.
Gabe barrels through the front door like a one-man marching band, paper bags knocking against his thigh. “Food is here!” he calls, voice ricocheting down the hall.
I jolt, slosh, then scramble out of the tub. Ten frantic seconds of toweling, ten more to pull on soft sweats and a loose tee. By the time I pad into the kitchen, he’s already unwrapping burgers and crinkling fry bags like applause.
“Hey.” He grins around a mouthful. “You look…better.”
“Steam works wonders,” I say, grabbing my own burger. Salt and grease hit my tongue, and the world steadies, the way it does after you finally eat on a long shift.
Gabe chews, studies me with narrowed eyes. “Steam, huh.”
“Hot water and the promise of food,” I correct, and dunk a fry in ketchup with great ceremony.
He lets it go, pivots to the dining table, where his ad hoc command center has colonized every inch. Two monitors glow like twin moons. The villain board leans against a chair, scrawled with dates, arrows, and names that refuse to cohere into a clean picture.
“We need to map relationships,” he says, wiping his hands on a napkin. “Not just events. People. Vectors.”
“Vectors?” I arch a brow.
“Lines of force.” He taps the cap of a dry-erase marker against his palm. “Who benefits? Who knows what? Where access lives.”
We stand shoulder-to-shoulder and begin to stitch threads across time.
He sketches circles—GRETCHEN, ALAN, CASINO / SHAFER, HOSPITAL, WILDS—then draws lines between them, labeling in block letters: MONEY, ACCESS, MOTIVE?
, HISTORY. I add smaller notes in the margins: puncture behind ear, MDMA + beta blocker, transfer after fire, anonymous threats.
“We keep circling back to ‘inside help,’” I murmur, underlining it. “At the hospital. At least once in the past, maybe twice.”
Gabe nods. “And the casino ecosystem. Cash-heavy, lots of people, favors owed. If someone needed pills without a script? Easy. If someone needed surveillance or to make a person vanish for a night? Easier.”
My mind drifts to my mom’s letter, to the coffee mug in Alan’s gift box that says Not today, Satan. The ache twinges, sharp and immediate, then settles into the familiar throb I’ve been nursing since I came home.
Gabe notices. “You holding up?”
“Yes.” It’s not true yet, but sometimes you have to say the future out loud before your heart gets the memo.
He spins a beer cap on the table; it wobbles, sings, then collapses. “Two theories for Gretchen,” he says. “One: she knew something and was silenced. Two: someone used her death to pull you back.”
“The second one still feels too…cinematic,” I say. “If they wanted me gone, they had ten years.”
“Agreed.” He jots SILENCED next to my mother’s name and boxes it. “So, what did she know?”
“Alan said she’d started getting her affairs in order. Maybe she saw something at work? A will, a deed, a transfer.”
Gabe writes DOCS under ALAN. “I’ll look at his filings, corporate records, and property transfers. If he sneezed on a form this year, I’ll find the tissue.”
My stomach growls again, traitorously. I polish off the last wedge of burger, lick a smear of sauce from my thumb, and drift to the window.
The trees are ink cutouts against a deepening blue. The cabin’s quiet feels different without Luke’s weight inside it—emptier, hollower, like a bell that’s been struck but won’t ring.
“Okay,” Gabe says, clapping his hands once. “I’m dumping a spiderweb of requests and scripts. Feeds. Alerts. If anyone in Cedar Hollow sneezes MDMA or beta blockers onto a network I can reach, I’ll know. You—sit, breathe, don’t open the door for anyone.”
He sweeps wrappers into a bag and grabs his keys. “I’ll run over and feed Hannibal and swing back.”
I salute him with a fry. He scowls like I’ve besmirched the uniform of the nation. “Worst soldier ever.”
When the door clicks shut, the house exhales. I tidy the counter, rinse the plates, then wipe a streak of ketchup from the villain board’s frame with my sleeve.
The domesticity of the moment is absurd and perfect; it’s also what I crave. Something simple. Something still.
I wander down the hall and pause in the master doorway. The slate-gray comforter is folded back the way I left it this morning; the pillow holds a shallow crescent, a dented moon.
His scent lingers—cedar and soap and something warmer that feels like memory. I slide between the sheets on his side—my side, tonight—and curl my legs up until I’m compact, contained.
Sleep reaches for me with careful hands. I must drift because the phone’s buzz startles me, a bright sound in a soft room. LUKE glows on the screen.
“Hello?” My voice is a rasp of cotton and dreams.
“Hi.” His tone is low, velvet over gravel. It threads down my spine and settles in the small, warm places.
“I’m in your bed,” I blurt.
“Mmm.” I hear the smile. “I like it when you do what I say.”
A laugh escapes me before I can cage it. “Don’t get used to it.”
“I won’t.” He draws the words out lazily. “I’ll ration it. Special occasions.”
Warmth pools in my chest. “Did you eat?”
“Full liquids,” he says mournfully. “The pudding was the highlight.”
“That’s a good sign,” I say, slipping into nurse cadence. “Means you’re progressing.”
“Progressing toward real food and away from this IV pole.” He yawns, and the sound is so human and ordinary I want to cry. “I’m tired, Isla.”
“Of course you are.”
Silence stretches, sweet and easy, the kind that doesn’t demand payment.
“I wish I were there,” he murmurs at last, softer, as if the words are for the dark.
“Me too,” I say, the truth sliding out unadorned. It lands between us like a stone in still water—ripples, then quiet.
“Instead of flying,” he adds, and something tilts in his voice, a slant I recognize from hospital shifts when patients drift too far on pain meds.
“Flying?” I sit up, pulse pricking.
“Over the fields,” he says dreamily. “You’re there. You’re dancing.”
“Luke,” I say carefully, “did they give you something new?”
“No.” Barely a whisper. “But I can’t take care of everyone all the time. What about Eden? She needs me. She’s just a baby.”
My heart jackhammers. He’s not on narcotics that make him hallucinate—at least not enough to do this. Something else is wrong. “Luke, listen to me. Press the nurse call button. Now.”
“Not enough time,” he murmurs, drifting farther away.
“Luke.” I sharpen my voice, a command I only use when I have to. “Press the button.”
“I want more time, Isla,” he says, like a child hugging a toy in sleep.
Panic slices clean through the softness. “Luke! Button. Now.” I swing my legs out of bed and clutch the phone, heart pounding, staring into the dark.
Something is wrong. Terribly, terrifyingly wrong.