“Yes,” I say without hesitation, pressing a kiss to her hair. “I am.” Her little body sinks into me, her eyes heavy lidded. “Let’s go back to sleep okay, princess?” Nora nods and gives me a sleepy smile as she snuggles into me as I slowly stand. I carry my reason for life up the stairs and tuck her away into the safety of her little unicorn bed. She curls up with her stuffie, and I can’t help but fidget with the little bracelet she made me.
I have to get back to work, but I take one final look at her before focusing on what really matters, what information I have found, and what I missed the first time. Cameron and Leyla are still out there. Zack trusted me enough to try to find them, to put together this lattice-work puzzle that was left in the wake of their so-called death. They weren’t the ones who took advantage of the noise we created, the way attention shifted when we started pulling at their threads. Someone else was already in position, already waiting for the moment we looked the other way. Zack knows my skin in this game is personal, and now his life was affected by this in more ways than one.
The Whispering Killer doesn’t leave a digital footprint the way others do. No habits that can be mapped neatly into a behavioral model. They operate in gaps, in silence, in the places between signals where people like me assume there’s nothing to see.
That assumption almost got Hazel killed.
I lean back in my chair and scrub a hand down my face, the guilt sitting heavy and immovable in my chest. Hazel is safe. Zack got to her. She’s alive, unharmed in all the ways that matter, and I repeat that fact to myself like it’s a firewall strong enough to keep everything else out.
It isn’t.
Because if my information hadn’t sent us running in the wrong direction, Zack wouldn’t have had to tear the city apart to find her. She wouldn’t have been alone. She wouldn’t have been afraid. And Zack wouldn’t be carrying the weight of knowing how close he came to losing her.
That part is on me.
I pull Cameron’s file back up anyway, because guilt doesn’t earn forgiveness and it sure as hell doesn’t stop threats. Cameron is methodical, a planner, the kind of man who likes control without exposure. Leyla is mobility and adaptability, her presence light but persistent, always one step ahead of patterns. Their presence is so clearly laid out in front of me, and things just weren’t adding up—but they are now.
And now I know better what to look for.
The Whispering Killer doesn’t announce themself. They watch. They wait. They move only when everyone else is distracted, when the noise is loud enough to cover the sound of a life being taken off the board. That kind of predator doesn’t disappear just because they failed once.
I start rebuilding my models from scratch, stripping out assumptions, hunting absence instead of presence, focusing on where dataisn’tinstead of where it clusters. Power fluctuations that don’t line up. Cameras that blink off for half a second too long. Communications dead zones that shouldn’t exist.
Zack trusts me, and I kept letting him down. That’s the part that hurts the most.
He trusted me with his back, with his work, with the woman he cares about, and I repaid that trust with information that was good, but not good enough. I won’t make that mistake again. Not for Cameron. Not for Leyla. And never again for The Whispering Killer.
When I finally package what I have and send it, it’s cleaner, narrower, and laced with warnings instead of confidence. I don’t promise certainty this time. I promise vigilance.
I sit there after, the hum of the machines filling the silence, and let the guilt stay where it belongs—close enough to hurt, sharp enough to keep me honest.
Hazel is safe.
But until the people responsible are found, until the shadows stop moving when I look away, I don’t get to rest.
Zack deserves better than the bullshit I just put him through. Pulling up his contact, his phone rings twice before he answers with his curt, “Hey.”
I send an updated packet to Zack—no conclusions, no certainty, just patterns, warnings, and a truth I should have seen sooner. Cameron and Leyla aren’t dead. They’re missing. Taken. And whoever has them understands how to weaponize absence better than anyone I’ve ever tracked.
I don’t ask for forgiveness. I don’t deserve it yet.
Instead, I stay where I am, rebuilding everything from the ground up, hunting not for noise but for silence that feelsdesigned. Places where the world should be louder than it is. The Whispering Killer thrives in overlooked spaces, in the confidence that comes after people think the danger has passed.
“Hey, just sent over an updated packet.”
I hear clicking as what I can only assume is his laptop is being worked on over on his end. “Got it. Linc, what exactly am I looking at?”
I clear my throat as I look at the information in front of me. “Everything I missed the first time around. I’m sorry, Zack.”
“None of that Lincoln. You did what you could with what you had. Now enough of that. What am I looking at exactly?” His voice is solid and not angry. Our friendship is not something Itake for granted, and hearing the solidity in his voice, is like a balm I didn’t know I was looking for.
“Right. Right, we’re looking at little blips from a computer I missed the first time. It’s coming from Philly. A warehouse in the outskirts of Philadelphia, where after sending out some drones, it seems to be a totally abandoned warehouse. Inconspicuous, aside from the person who owns it. Because I wasn’t aware a ghost could own property.”
I bite my lower lip, knowing that he’s not going to like this answer.
“Why, Linc? Who owns the warehouse?”
Silence, for only a moment, before I sigh. “Michael Curtis.”
