Page 27 of Whispers in the Night

“Wife. Two kids. Seven and nine.” Harper closed her eyes. “I went to the funeral. Sat in the back. His wife saw me and just...the look on her face. Pure hatred. She blamed me. Still does.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.” Harper opened her eyes. “So yeah, I need to prove I can still do this job. Because if I can’t, then Michael died for nothing. And I can’t live with that.”

Silas reached across the table and did something Harper didn’t expect—he took her hand. Just held it, warm and solid and steady.

“Michael didn’t die for nothing,” Silas said quietly. “He died doing his job, trying to save his partner. That matters. That means something. Even if you can’t see it right now.”

Harper stared at their joined hands, feeling something shift in her chest. A crack in the walls she’d built, letting in light she wasn’t sure she deserved.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

They sat like that for a moment, connected across the table. Then Silas seemed to realize what he was doing and pulled his hand back, clearing his throat.

“We should get back to the station. Still have work to do.”

“Right. Yeah.” Harper’s hand felt cold where his had been.

They paid and headed out into the rain, walking side by side through Blackridge’s empty streets. Harper found herself acutely aware of Silas next to her—the way he moved, the way hekept himself positioned between her and the street, the way his eyes never stopped scanning their surroundings.

Protective. Even though he didn’t trust her, even though he’d made it clear he was only working with her because he had to, he was still protecting her.

Harper didn’t know what to do with that.

Back at the station, Silas’s computer had flagged several potential matches in the missing persons database. They settled back into the office, the easy moment from the diner dissolving into professional focus.

“Four possibles,” Silas said, pulling up the files. “All young women, early twenties, dark hair. Two disappeared in Oregon, one in Northern California, one in Washington. All within the past three years. None of them were ever found.”

Harper studied the photos. All four women looked like they could have been sisters to Melissa Wagoner and Amy Thorne. The same type, the same physical profile.

“That’s not coincidence,” she said. “That’s him. He’s been killing this whole time, just hiding the bodies better.”

“If that’s true, we’re not looking at five victims. We’re looking at eight. Maybe more.”

The weight of it settled on Harper’s shoulders. Eight women. Eight lives stolen. Eight families left with questions and grief and no closure.

“We need to find the bodies,” she said. “If we can find where he’s been hiding them, maybe we can figure out who he is.”

“That’s a lot of ground to cover. We’re talking three states, hundreds of miles—”

“He has a comfort zone. Somewhere he feels safe. Somewhere he knows well enough to hide bodies without being caught.” Harper pulled up a map on her laptop. “Let’s plot the disappearances. See if there’s a geographic pattern.”

They worked late into the night, marking locations, drawing connections, building a picture of a killer who’d been operating for years in the shadows. By the time Harper looked up, it was past midnight.

“We should call it,” Silas said, rubbing his eyes. “We’re both exhausted. We’ll think more clearly in the morning.”

“You go. I want to finish this—”

“Harper.” He gave her a look. “You need sleep. Real sleep, not passing out from exhaustion at your desk.”

“I don’t sleep much anymore.”

“Yeah, I noticed. The nightmares?”

She shouldn’t have been surprised he’d figured it out. He was observant, trained to read people. “Every night. Same dream. Michael dying while I watch.”

“PTSD is a bitch,” Silas said quietly, his gaze fixating on the wall but his mind going somewhere else. “I still get them too. My team in Afghanistan. Sometimes, I wake up and I can smell the smoke, hear the screaming. It never really goes away.”