Chapter 15
Harper woke on the couch, still wrapped in Silas’s arms. Gray morning light filtered through the windows. For a moment, she let herself just exist in the warmth and safety of his embrace before reality came crashing back.
The operation. Oliver Webb. A killer still out there.
She shifted, and Silas stirred, his arm tightening around her reflexively before his eyes opened.
“Morning,” he murmured, his voice rough with sleep.
“Morning.” Harper checked her phone. Six-thirty a.m. “We should get moving. Final day of the operation.”
They went through their morning routine with practiced efficiency—coffee, showers, changing into work clothes. But there was a new awareness between them now, a tension that had nothing to do with the case. Every time their eyes met, Harper felt the pull of unfinished business.
At the station, the mood was tense. Day three of the operation and they had nothing but a suspicious transient who might or might not be their killer.
“Webb spent the night in his van three blocks from Riverside Apartments,” Morris reported. “Woke up around six, drove to a fast-food place for breakfast, now he’s parked near the library.”
“Just existing,” Harper said, frustrated. “No overt suspicious behavior. No contact with potential victims.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Silas suggested. “Maybe he knows we’re watching and is staying clean.”
“Or maybe he’s not our guy,” Holloway said, entering the conference room looking more refreshed than she had felt in…
longer than she could remember. “I’ve got the mayor breathing down my neck about costs.
We’ve had forty officers on overtime for seventy-two hours with nothing to show for it.
I need results or I need to pull the plug. ”
“Give us until noon,” Harper said. “Six more hours. If Webb doesn’t do anything incriminating by then, we’ll reassess.”
Holloway nodded reluctantly. “Noon. Not a minute longer.”
The morning dragged. Webb drove around Blackridge, stopping at a park, a convenience store, back to the library. Normal, boring behavior. Harper watched the surveillance feeds until her eyes burned, willing Webb to make a mistake, to give them something they could use.
But he didn’t.
At eleven-thirty, Holloway called them into his office. “That’s it. We’re done. Pull all teams back.”
“Captain—”
“We’ve been following this guy for three days. He’s done nothing but live his life. Suspicious? Sure. Criminal? We have no proof.” Holloway scratched the scruff on his jaw. “I’m not saying Webb is off our radar. We’ll keep an eye on him. But I can’t justify this level of resources any longer.”
Harper wanted to argue, but she knew he was right. They’d gambled on Webb being their killer and lost. Or at least, they hadn’t won yet.
“What about the fiber evidence?” Silas asked. “Did the FBI lab come back with anything?”
“Still pending. Should have results by tomorrow.” Holloway looked at them both. “Go home. Get real rest. We’ll regroup Monday morning with fresh eyes and new strategies.”
Harper’s shoulders sagged, but she knew he was right. They needed a break—everyone did. Outside the station, she felt the weight of failure pressing down on her. Three days of intensive surveillance. Dozens of officers working around the clock. And they were exactly where they’d started.
“It’s not over,” Silas said, reading her expression. “We’re still building the case. Still gathering evidence.”
“While he’s out there planning his next kill.” Harper leaned against their car. “Five women dead in ten days, then nothing for four days. He’s either gone to ground or he’s planning something big.” Or worse. He could be out there killing indiscriminately and they just hadn’t found the bodies yet.
“Then we figure out which and stop him.” Silas opened the passenger door for her. “But not today. Today we rest.”
The drive back to the cabin was quiet. Harper stared out the window as had become habit, her mind churning through evidence and theories and dead ends. They were missing something. Some connection that would make everything click into place.
At the cabin, Silas headed straight for the kitchen. “I’m making lunch. Real food. You’re going to eat it.”
“I’m not hungry,” she groused, her appetite effectively dead from the sheer stress of the investigation.
“Don’t care. Sit.”
She glared at his back, wanting to be angry that he was being so pushy and demanding. But then she knew he was coming from a position of caring, and her anger deflated.
Harper sat, watching as Silas pulled out ingredients with the ease of someone who’d done this a thousand times. There was something soothing about watching him cook, about the normalcy of it in the midst of chaos.
“Talk to me,” Silas said as he chopped vegetables. “What’s going through your head?”
“That we’re failing,” she said honestly. “That every day we don’t catch him is another day he’s selecting his next victim. That five women are dead and it’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said automatically, flicking her a serious look over his shoulder.
“Isn’t it though? He’s fixated on me. Every victim looks like me. They’re dying because I exist.”
Silas set down his knife and turned to face her fully. “They’re dying because he’s a psychopath who chooses to kill. That’s on him. Not you.”
“I gave that press conference in Nevada,” she pressed on. “I made myself a target.”
“You did your job. You explained the profile to help catch a killer. How were you supposed to know he’d fixate on you?” Silas moved closer. “Harper, you can’t control other people’s actions. You can only control your own. And you’re doing everything possible to stop him.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It never feels like enough,” he said softly.
“I know. I’ve been there.” Silas took her hands, pulling her to her feet.
“After Afghanistan, after my team died, I spent months thinking about what I could have done differently. What I should have seen. How I could have prevented it. It nearly destroyed me.”
She stared up into his eyes. “What changed?”
“I realized that guilt was a luxury. That if I spent all my energy feeling guilty, I had nothing left to actually make a difference.” His thumbs traced circles on the backs of her hands. “The best way to honor the people we’ve lost is to save the people we can. To keep fighting.”
Harper felt tears prick her eyes. “I’m so tired of fighting.”
“I know. Me too.” Silas pulled her into his arms, held her tight. “But we don’t stop. We rest, we regroup, we keep going.”
Harper buried her face against his chest, letting herself take comfort in his strength. When had Silas become her anchor? Again, she circled the thought that he’d somehow become…essential. When did that happen?
She pulled back enough to look up at him. His pale-blue eyes were soft with understanding and something deeper. Something that made her heart race.
“I need—” Harper stopped, not sure how to articulate what she needed. “I need to not think about the case for a while. I need to feel something other than guilt and frustration and fear.”
“What do you need, Harper?”
She answered by pulling him down into a kiss.
It started gentle, tentative, like last night.
But it quickly deepened as days of tension and fear and denied desire poured between them.
Harper’s hands slid up to thread through Silas’s hair, pulling him closer.
His arms wrapped around her waist, lifting her slightly so she fit more perfectly against him.
They broke apart only long enough to catch their breath.
“Are you sure?” Silas asked, his voice rough. “Because if we do this, I need you to be sure. Not just running from the case. Not just seeking distraction.”
Harper met his eyes directly. “I’m sure. I want this. I want you. Not as distraction. As something real.”
“Harper—”
She kissed him again, harder this time, leaving no room for doubt. “Bedroom. Now.”
This time, no phone interrupted them.
They made it to the bedroom in a tangle of kisses and fumbling hands. Silas kicked the door shut behind them, pressed Harper against it, his mouth on hers, his hands sliding under her shirt.
Harper tugged at his shirt, needing to feel skin. Silas pulled back just long enough to yank it over his head, then returned to her with renewed intensity. His hands found the hem of her shirt, paused.
“Still sure?”
“Yes,” she said breathlessly. Harper pulled her own shirt off and tossed it aside. “Stop asking and just—”
Silas kissed her into silence, his hands exploring newly exposed skin. Harper gasped at the sensation, at the heat building between them. She fumbled with his belt, frustrated by the buckle until Silas’s hands covered hers, helping.
They stumbled toward the bed, shedding clothes as they went. By the time they fell onto the mattress, there were no barriers left between them. Just skin and heat and need.
“You’re so beautiful,” Silas murmured against her neck, his lips trailing kisses down her throat.
Harper arched into his touch, her hands exploring the planes of his back, the scars she could feel there—souvenirs from Afghanistan, from a life before this moment. She traced them gently, reverently.
“Harper.” Her name was a prayer on his lips. “Tell me what you want.”
“You. Just you.”
Silas captured her mouth again, his hands moving with purpose now. Harper gasped at the sensation, her body responding to every touch. This wasn’t gentle or tentative. This was desperate and intense and exactly what they both needed.
When he finally sank inside her, Harper cried out, her nails digging into his shoulders. Silas groaned, his forehead pressing against hers as they moved together. The rhythm built, urgent and consuming, blocking out everything else—the case, the victims, the guilt, the fear.
In this moment, there was only them. Only the heat and pleasure and connection that went deeper than anything physical. Harper felt something inside her crack open, walls she’d maintained for years crumbling under the weight of what she felt for this man.