“Uncle Eric, can you hear me?” She pressed her fingers gently to his shoulder.
His eyes fluttered. Struggled. Focused.
“Annie.”
“I’m here. Don’t move. I’m calling for help.” Her hands shook as she dialed, but her voice stayed steady as she gave the address. Ambulance. Police. Both on the way.
Eric’s fingers closed around hers.
“They know,” he whispered.
“Who knows? Knows about what? Who did this to you?”
“They know about… about the locket.” His breath rattled. “Have to… have to bury it. Too dangerous.”
“You’re not making sense.” Panic tightened her chest. “Just breathe. Please.”
His eyes rolled back and his breathing hitched, a thin, broken sound that sliced straight through her. Annie dropped beside him, pressing her ear to his chest, listening for the fragile rhythm of a heart that beat too weakly, too slowly, as if it might simply decide to stop. Panic clawed up her throat. How did he know about the locket? The question barely formed before her hand moved on instinct, tapping Jacks name in her contacts list.
The screen lit her shaking fingers, and there—like a ghost from a life she’d never truly left—Jack’s name glowed back at her. Over the last four years, she could never bring herself to delete his number. “Calloway.”
“Jack, it’s Annie. Someone attacked Uncle Eric. He’s hurt. Bad. We’re at my apartment. The ambulance is coming, but—”
“I’m on my way.”
The call ended. Four words. Solid. Certain. Her chest loosened around them, and the fact that it made something warm in her gut. She hated that his voice could still melt her. Hated that it still steadied her when everything else was breaking. Hated that after four years—after the silence, the unanswered why, the way he had walked out of her life and left her to stitch herself back together alone—he was still the first person she reached for when blood and terror shattered her world.
Hate would not hold her walls—not when someone had already crossed them, not when the danger had only begun. Heavy footsteps thundered up the stairs as paramedics rushedpast her, their urgent voices filling the apartment while equipment clattered against the floor. As they worked over Eric, Annie’s gaze drifted numbly toward the kitchen wall, where something jagged had torn through the paint and caught the light. Letters. Deep and violent. Carved with enough force to scar plaster.
YOU’RE NEXT.
***
Jack had been in the apartment when the EMTs arrived, their boots thudding through the wreckage as they dropped equipment beside Eric’s broken body and went to work. Now he took the hospital stairs two at a time, his radio snapping with updates from the crime scene unit still combing through what was left of Annie’s home.
Forced entry through a rear window.
Signs of a violent struggle.
Blood consistent with blunt-force trauma.
But Jack already knew what they would find. He had seen the apartment before they rushed Eric out on a gurney. This hadn’t been a burglary. Nothing had been systematically taken. Drawers hadn’t been emptied—they’d been ripped out. Furniture hadn’t been searched—it had been overturned. Whoever had done this hadn’t been looking for property. They had been looking for answers. The wrecked apartment. The deliberate brutality against an elderly man. The warning carved into the wall. Someone was desperate to get their hands on that locket and would do whatever it took to get it.
He should have taken it into evidence immediately. Should have insisted Annie stay somewhere safe. Should haverecognized the danger the moment she spoke the Blackwood name.
Eleanor Blackwood.
The case had gathered dust for nearly a century. Annie’s purchase had disturbed it. Whatever secrets lay buried there no longer felt secure.
Jack pushed into the surgical waiting area and found her at once.
Annie sat rigid in a plastic chair, hands stained with drying blood, eyes fixed on nothing. Eric’s blood.
The sight hollowed his chest.
“Any word?” He dropped into the chair beside her.
“Concussion. Possible skull fracture. They’re running tests.” Her voice held steady, but a faint tremor ran through her hands. “He was conscious when I found him. Not for long.”
