Page 83 of When the Smoke Clears

LUKE: And Isla—sleep in my bed tonight.

My breath catches. Three words detonate in my chest. Sleep in my bed. The order of it. The claim of it. The way my body answers before my pride can argue.

Water rocks gently around my thighs as I set the phone down and sink a little deeper, letting the heat seep into the bones of me.

Outside, the forest breathes. Inside, the stubborn tremble still coasts through my limbs, a soft aftershock.

I close my eyes, and for a fragile, dangerous moment, I let the yes sit warm and certain behind my ribs.

Gabe barrels through the front door like a one-man marching band, paper bags knocking against his thigh. “Food is here!” he calls, voice ricocheting down the hall.

I jolt, slosh, then scramble out of the tub. Ten frantic seconds of toweling, ten more to pull on soft sweats and a loose tee. By the time I pad into the kitchen, he’s already unwrapping burgers and crinkling fry bags like applause.

“Hey.” He grins around a mouthful. “You look…better.”

“Steam works wonders,” I say, grabbing my own burger. Salt and grease hit my tongue, and the world steadies, the way it does after you finally eat on a long shift.

Gabe chews, studies me with narrowed eyes. “Steam, huh.”

“Hot water and the promise of food,” I correct, and dunk a fry in ketchup with great ceremony.

He lets it go, pivots to the dining table, where his ad hoc command center has colonized every inch. Two monitors glow like twin moons. The villain board leans against a chair, scrawled with dates, arrows, and names that refuse to cohere into a clean picture.

“We need to map relationships,” he says, wiping his hands on a napkin. “Not just events. People. Vectors.”

“Vectors?” I arch a brow.

“Lines of force.” He taps the cap of a dry-erase marker against his palm. “Who benefits? Who knows what? Where access lives.”

We stand shoulder-to-shoulder and begin to stitch threads across time. He sketches circles—GRETCHEN, ALAN, CASINO / SHAFER, HOSPITAL, WILDS—then draws lines between them, labeling in block letters: MONEY, ACCESS, MOTIVE?, HISTORY. I add smaller notes in the margins: puncture behind ear, MDMA + beta blocker, transfer after fire, anonymous threats.

“We keep circling back to ‘inside help,’” I murmur, underlining it. “At the hospital. At least once in the past, maybe twice.”

Gabe nods. “And the casino ecosystem. Cash-heavy, lots of people, favors owed. If someone needed pills without a script? Easy. If someone needed surveillance or to make a person vanish for a night? Easier.”

My mind drifts to my mom’s letter, to the coffee mug in Alan’s gift box that says Not today, Satan. The ache twinges, sharp and immediate, then settles into the familiar throb I’ve been nursing since I came home.

Gabe notices. “You holding up?”

“Yes.” It’s not true yet, but sometimes you have to say the future out loud before your heart gets the memo.

He spins a beer cap on the table; it wobbles, sings, then collapses. “Two theories for Gretchen,” he says. “One: she knew something and was silenced. Two: someone used her death to pull you back.”

“The second one still feels too…cinematic,” I say. “If they wanted me gone, they had ten years.”

“Agreed.” He jots SILENCED next to my mother’s name and boxes it. “So, what did she know?”

“Alan said she’d started getting her affairs in order. Maybe she saw something at work? A will, a deed, a transfer.”

Gabe writes DOCS under ALAN. “I’ll look at his filings, corporate records, and property transfers. If he sneezed on a form this year, I’ll find the tissue.”

My stomach growls again, traitorously. I polish off the last wedge of burger, lick a smear of sauce from my thumb, and drift to the window.

The trees are ink cutouts against a deepening blue. The cabin’s quiet feels different without Luke’s weight inside it—emptier, hollower, like a bell that’s been struck but won’t ring.

“Okay,” Gabe says, clapping his hands once. “I’m dumping a spiderweb of requests and scripts. Feeds. Alerts. If anyone in Cedar Hollow sneezes MDMA or beta blockers onto a network I can reach, I’ll know. You—sit, breathe, don’t open the door for anyone.”

He sweeps wrappers into a bag and grabs his keys. “I’ll run over and feed Hannibal and swing back.”