Chapter 8
Silas woke in the chair by Harper’s window, his neck screaming in protest. Gray morning light filtered through the curtains. Rain still pattered against the glass—the storm hadn’t let up overnight.
He checked his watch. Six-thirty a.m. He’d been in the chair for maybe three hours, watching Harper sleep. Making sure she was safe. Making sure no one came through that window or door.
Old habits from Afghanistan. Guard duty. Protect the base. Protect your team.
Protect her.
Silas stood carefully, working the kinks out of his spine, his knees protesting loudly. Harper was still asleep, curled on her side, one hand tucked under her pillow. She looked younger in sleep, the tension that normally lined her face smoothed away. Peaceful.
He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t have stayed in her room all night, watching her sleep like some kind of stalker. But she’d asked him to stay, and he hadn’t been able to refuse.
Just until we catch him, he reminded himself. That’s all this is. Protection detail. Nothing more.
But even as he thought it, he knew it was a lie.
Something had shifted last night. Some wall he’d built around himself had cracked, and Harper Sinclair had slipped through. He’d told her about Scout, about the last innocent thing in his life. He’d admitted he wanted to go back, be the person he was before Afghanistan broke him.
He’d let her see him.
And that was dangerous. Because people he let close got hurt. Got killed. That was the pattern, the curse he carried. Better to stay distant, stay professional, keep the walls up.
But God, it was hard. Especially when she looked at him with those dark eyes that understood, that carried their own weight of guilt and trauma. When she talked about Michael and survivor’s guilt and not knowing if she could still do the job. When she fell asleep trusting him to keep her safe.
Silas left the room quietly, closing the door behind him. In the kitchen, he started coffee—the good stuff Harper kept in the freezer, not the cheap instant he usually survived on. While it brewed, he did a perimeter check.
All windows locked. Doors secured. Alarm armed. The cabin was as safe as he could make it without turning it into a fortress.
But a determined killer could still get in. Could still reach Harper if Silas made one mistake, missed one detail, let his guard down for one second.
Not happening, he thought grimly. Not on my watch.
His phone buzzed with a text from Morris. DNA results back. No match in the system. Sorry boss.
Silas cursed under his breath. The skin under Amy Thorne’s fingernails had been their best lead, and it had gone nowhere. The killer wasn’t in CODIS, wasn’t in any criminal database. Which meant either he’d never been arrested, or he’d been very careful about not leaving DNA at previous scenes.
Another text, this one from the ME. Tox screen on victim 3 shows same sedative—midazolam. Also found fiber evidence, possibly from rope. Sending to lab for analysis.
Silas made notes. The killer was consistent—same drug, same method, same symbols. But he was also escalating, losing control. The symbols on Amy Thorne had been messier than Melissa Wagoner’s. And Nicole Merrin had been left with a note, a direct taunt.
He was building toward something. Getting ready for Harper.
The thought made Silas’s chest tighten. He poured coffee, added cream and sugar the way he’d noticed Harper took hers, and tried to think like the killer. Tried to understand what drove someone to spend five years obsessing over an FBI profiler, killing surrogates, planning an endgame.
It wasn’t sexual—Dr. Reynolds had confirmed no sexual assault on any of the victims. It wasn’t about power in the traditional sense. The killer could have grabbed random women off the street if he just wanted to feel dominant.
No, this was about creation. About perfection. About making something beautiful out of death.
The symbols were the key. They meant something to the killer, communicated something important. Silas pulled up photos on his phone, studying the patterns. Circles within triangles. Intersecting lines. A language only the killer understood.
Or maybe...
Silas grabbed his laptop, pulling up the Nevada case files Ellery had sent.
He’d been thinking about this wrong. The symbols weren’t random.
They followed a specific pattern, appeared in a specific sequence on each victim’s body.
What if they weren’t just decorative? What if they were actually trying to say something?
He started mapping them, using a drawing program to recreate the symbols in order. Upper torso first, then lower torso, then—
“You’re up early.”
Silas looked up. Harper stood in the hallway, wearing sweatpants and an oversized FBI academy T-shirt, her hair messy from sleep. She looked rumpled and vulnerable and entirely too appealing.
“Coffee’s ready,” Silas said, pushing his laptop aside. “How’d you sleep?”
“Better than I have in months, actually.” She padded to the kitchen, poured herself coffee, and joined him at the table. “Thanks for staying. I know that was probably uncomfortable.”
“I’ve slept in worse places.” Afghanistan immediately came to mind—weeks in the field, sleeping in full gear, one eye always open. “And you needed someone there. The nightmares—”
“Are getting old, yeah.” Harper wrapped her hands around her mug. “What are you working on?”
Silas turned the laptop so she could see. “The symbols. I’m trying to map them, see if there’s a pattern or sequence I’ve been missing. What if they’re not just decorative? What if they’re actually communicating something?”
Harper leaned closer, studying his work. She smelled like soap and coffee and something else—something warm and distinctly her. Silas forced himself to focus on the screen.
“That’s smart,” Harper said. “I tried to decode them in Nevada, brought in symbology experts, but maybe we were thinking too literally. Looking for existing languages or occult symbols. But what if he created his own language? His own system of meaning?”
“Exactly.” Silas pulled up another photo. “Look at the sequence on Melissa Wagoner. The circle appears first, upper left torso. Then the triangle, overlapping. Then these intersecting lines, moving down toward the abdomen. It’s like he’s building something, layer by layer.”
“Building or telling a story,” Harper murmured, echoing his thoughts. She grabbed a notepad, started sketching. “In Nevada, the symbols appeared in the same sequence on all three victims. But there were variations—small differences in the line placements, the angles of intersection.”
“So he’s refining the message. Getting more specific with each victim.”
“Or getting closer to what he really wants to say.” Harper looked up at him, and Silas was struck by how close they were sitting. Close enough to see the flecks of gold in her dark eyes. Close enough to smell her shampoo. “The question is what he’s trying to communicate. And to who.”
“To you,” Silas said. “He’s been trying to communicate with you from the beginning. The Nevada victims, the notes, the escalation now that you’re in Blackridge. This is all about you.”
Harper’s expression tightened. “Then maybe we use that. We put out a statement, address him directly through the media. Tell him I’m listening. I’m ready to hear what he has to say.”
“Absolutely not—”
“Silas, think about it,” she said with a note of frustration. “He wants my attention. He wants me to understand him. So we give him a platform to communicate. We control the message, we control the meeting point. We draw him out.”
“By making you even more of a target than you already are.” Silas shook his head. It was too risky. “No. We work the evidence, we find him through investigation, we don’t hand you to him on a silver platter.”
“But—”
“Harper.” He reached over, covered her hand with his before he could think better of it. “I know you want to end this. I know you feel responsible for those women’s deaths. But sacrificing yourself won’t bring them back. It’ll just give him exactly what he wants.”
Harper stared at their joined hands. Silas should pull away, should maintain professional distance. But her hand was small and warm under his, and he found himself not wanting to let go.
It wasn’t lost on him that she could have pulled away. But didn’t.
“I’m tired of being afraid,” Harper said quietly. “I’m tired of women dying in my place. I’m tired of feeling helpless.”
“You’re not helpless. You’re a brilliant profiler who’s helping us understand this killer better than anyone else could.” Silas squeezed her hand gently. “We’ll catch him. I promise you that. But we do it the right way. Not by feeding you to him.”
Harper nodded slowly. “Okay. We do it your way. For now.”
“For now,” Silas agreed, though he had no intention of ever letting Harper put herself in danger. Not if he could help it.
They sat like that for a moment, hands connected on the table, morning light filtering through the cabin windows. It felt domestic. Intimate. Like something more than partners working a case.
Silas pulled his hand back. “We should get to the station. Morris probably has updates from the overnight canvass. And I want to review the fiber evidence from Nicole Merrin.”
“Right. Yeah.” Harper stood abruptly. “I’ll shower and change. Twenty minutes?”
“Take your time.”
While Harper freshened, Silas checked his phone.
Multiple texts from team members—updates on leads, dead ends, witness statements that went nowhere.
The investigation was stalling out. They had DNA that didn’t match anyone.
Security footage of a killer who kept his face hidden.
Victims who’d been drugged and taken from public places with no witnesses.
The killer was smart. Careful. Aware.
But he was also escalating, losing control. Making mistakes. That’s when they’d catch him—when his obsession with Harper pushed him into doing something reckless.
Silas just had to make sure Harper survived long enough for that to happen.
***