Chapter 6 #3
Silas finally looked at her. In the dim light from the parking lot, her face was half in shadow, but her eyes were clear and understanding. “Yes. When you work alone, nobody dies because of your mistakes. Nobody pays for your failures.”
“But nobody shares your successes either,” Harper said. “Nobody’s there to pull you back when you’re drowning. Nobody sees you as anything more than the sum of your failures.”
The words hit harder than they should have. Silas turned back to the gym, but he could feel Harper’s gaze on him.
“I made a bad call six months ago,” she continued. “I moved too fast, didn’t wait for backup, and Michael died. And ever since then, everyone looks at me like I’m broken. Like I’m damaged goods. Like that one mistake defines everything I am.”
“I looked at you that way,” Silas admitted.
“I know. And maybe you were right to. Maybe I am broken.” Harper paused.
“But you know what I realized? Being broken doesn’t mean being useless.
It just means being human. We all make mistakes, Silas.
The question is whether we let those mistakes destroy us or whether we learn from them and keep going. ”
“Which one are you doing?”
“Honestly? I don’t know yet.” She smiled sadly and gazed out the window into the night. “Some days I think I’m getting stronger. Other days I wake up from nightmares and wonder why I’m still alive when Michael isn’t. But I keep showing up. Keep doing the work. And maybe that’s enough.”
Silas was quiet for a long moment. Outside, the last few gym members were leaving. The parking lot was mostly empty now. If the killer was coming, he should have been here by now.
“You’re not broken,” Silas said finally. “You’re dealing with trauma. That’s different.”
“So are you.”
“Yeah. So am I.” They both turned at the same time and he met her eyes. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe carrying it alone isn’t the answer. Maybe...” He trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“Maybe we carry it together,” Harper finished quietly. “Just for this case. Just until we catch him.”
“Just until we catch him,” Silas agreed.
But even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. Something had shifted between them tonight. Some wall had come down. And he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a terrible mistake waiting to happen.
His phone buzzed. Text from Morris at The Daily Grind surveillance site. Nothing. Dead quiet.
Other teams reported in with similar messages. No sign of hoodie man. No suspicious activity. No attempted abductions.
Either the killer had changed his pattern, or he was being more careful tonight. Watching the watchers.
“He knows we’re looking for him,” Harper said, reading the texts over Silas’s shoulder. “He saw the press conference. He knows we’ve connected the victims. So he’s lying low.”
“Or he’s already got his next victim and we’re too late to stop it.”
The thought made Silas’s stomach clench. Somewhere out there, right now, another young woman might be tied down in a soundproofed room, watching a killer approach with a knife, symbols already planned out in his mind.
And they were sitting in a parking lot, helpless to stop it.
“We should canvas the hospitals,” Harper said. “See if anyone matching the victim profile was admitted tonight. Assaults, abductions, anything that might be related.”
“Good idea.” Sitting here idle was going to drive them both nuts. He understood that need to keep moving. To do something. Silas started the engine. “I’ll call it in, have patrol units check.”
They spent the next three hours driving to hospitals, checking emergency rooms, talking to admitting staff. Nothing. No one matching the profile. No suspicious cases.
By one a.m., Silas had to accept they’d struck out. The killer hadn’t taken anyone tonight—or if he had, they hadn’t found the victim yet.
“I should get you back to the cabin,” Silas said.
“I can drive myself—”
“Not happening. There’s a serial killer out there who’s fixated on you. You’re not going anywhere alone,” he said for the umpteenth time. Then sighed. He softened his tone. “Please, Harper. Let me make sure you get home safe.”
She studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Fine.”
They drove through the dark streets in companionable silence. Silas was exhausted—eighteen-hour day, stress, the emotional conversation in the parking lot. But he felt oddly content. Like despite the lack of progress on the case, something important had happened tonight.
He’d let someone in. Just a little. Just enough to remember what it felt like to have a partner who understood.
At the cabin, Silas walked Harper to the door, watching as she unlocked it and stepped inside. She turned back to him.
“Thank you,” she said. “For today. For tonight. For...understanding.”
“Same,” Silas said.
They stood there for a moment, neither quite ready to say goodbye. Then Harper’s phone rang, shattering the moment.
She answered, listened, and Silas watched her face go pale.
“We’ll be right there,” she said, hanging up. She looked at Silas, and her eyes were stricken. “They found another body. Riverside Park. Same MO.”
Silas’s heart sank. While they’d been watching gyms and coffee shops, the killer had been working. Had taken another victim, carved his symbols, left another woman dead.
They’d failed.
“Let’s go,” Silas said.
As they drove back toward the city, the dark, heavy weight of failure hanging over them, Silas’s mind was already racing ahead.
Three victims in four nights. The killer was accelerating even faster than they’d thought.
Harper was right: if they didn’t stop him soon, the body count would keep rising.
But one thought kept circling back, impossible to ignore. If the killer knew Harper was hunting him, if he’d left that note specifically for her, why hadn’t he made contact again? What was he waiting for?
And the answer, when it came, made Silas’s blood run cold.
The killer wasn’t just hunting random women who looked like someone he’d lost.
He was building toward something. Working up to his real target.
And that target might be the woman sitting next to him in the dark car, heading toward yet another crime scene, yet another dead woman.
He was building toward Harper.