Page 67 of Collateral Damage
A cold, hollow sensation begins to coil in my gut, replacing the residual heat of his touch. The police caught someone, I tell myself, trying to still my racing thoughts.
But the frantic, rhythmic chattering of the phone on the coffee table feels too much like a taunt. If they had him—if he’s truly in custody— how is he still reaching out?
Fifteen
Silas
I force the heat from the kiss down, letting the soldier in me take over as I bank my body away from Ava to hide the screen.
My mind clicks into the tactical reality: we are deep in the pocket of the valley. Cell reception here is a ghost—it haunts the perimeter but rarely finds the center.
I look at the screen. The texts aren't just erratic; they are bunched into rapid-fire clusters.
16:04. 16:05. 16:05. They hit the network all at once, the moment the signal caught the cabin's thin air.
"How often do you usually hear from him?" I ask, keeping my voice calm.
Ava swallows. "Daily."
My fist curls at my side. Every day. Every morning, she wakes up and checks her phone before she lets herself draw a full breath. Every evening, she double-checks the locks, her entire life being slowly compressed by the noise of his obsession. He moved into her life without asking and made himself impossible to evict.
I swipe through the queue, sending them to Delilah one by one, then delete them. I pause at the voicemail icons.
"You have two voice messages," I say, glancing back at her. Her face is pale, caught in the flickering amber light of the dying fire. "Alright if I screen them?"
"Be my guest."
I hit dial, pressing the phone to my ear. The first is a routine update from the care home. I relay it to Ava, then listen to the next message. The second the message begins, every muscle in my body coils tight.
I'm beginning to think you don't appreciate everything I've done for you, Doc. It's time you had a reminder of what your life would be like without me.
I listen to it once. Then again. The cadence, the control, the unhurried confidence—it’s the voice of a man who hasn't once considered the possibility that he won't get what he wants.
I look at Ava. She’s watching me the way I’ve seen her read a chart, her eyes darting across my features, scanning for the flicker that tells her whether this is survivable. I give her nothing. I can’t afford to.
I lower the phone, the screen still dark. There are two ways to read this. Only one I pray is right.
If this is merely a backlog—a digital dam finally breaking under the atmospheric pressure of the storm—it means he sent them hours ago or scheduled them, unaware that we were ever in this blind spot until the signal finally punched through.
But if it isn't a backlog...
"Silas?" she whispers, her voice barely rising above the wind howling at the eaves. "How is he sending messages if he’s in jail?"
I turn to face her, careful not to let the tremor in my own heartbeat bleed into my posture. "That’s what I’m going to find out," I say, my voice steady as stone.
It’s the truth, but it’s a pointed one—the kind that serves as a lifeline if I’m right, or a noose if I’ve underestimated the man on the other end of the line.
Ava
Silas’s call to Caleb is short, a sharp exchange of tactical directives. He keeps his voice low, angled toward the shadows. I catch fragments despite myself: Forward it. Full trace. Yes, the property too. A long pause, and his jaw tightens. I don’t care what it takes. Get another detective on this. Forward the texts to him.
He ends the call and sets the phone on the heavy oak table between us, a cold anchor on the wood. "Delilah has the audio," he says, his voice flat. "They'll run it through voice analysis, track the carrier routing.”
He turns to the window, scanning the tree line with methodical left to right, near to far, unhurried. The wind outside is a physical force, rattling the glass in its frame, clawing at the cabin like an unseen hand. He pulls on his coat, the fabric rasping in the quiet. “I hate leaving you, but I need to check on the generator again.”
He picks up the spare weapon from the table and passes it to me. “Keep it on you at all times.”
This time, I take it without argument. My fingers curl around the grip, the cold steel a comfort now.
