With final goodbyes and a small bag of medications, they left the office.Jenna felt Dr.White’s eyes on them as they walked down the corridor, past the nurses’ station and toward the elevator.Hospital staff nodded in recognition—after a week of daily visits, Jenna had become a familiar presence.
They stepped into the elevator, and Jenna pressed the button for the ground floor.As the doors closed, sealing them in the small space, Piper took a deep breath.
“It feels strange,” she said quietly.“Going home.Like I’m walking into someone else’s life.”
“It is your life,” Jenna reminded her gently.“It always was.You just...lost it for a while.”
Piper looked at her then, green eyes—so like Jenna’s own—searching her face.“Did you ever stop looking for me?”
“Never.”The word came without hesitation.“Not for a single day.”
The elevator doors opened to the hospital lobby, sunlight streaming through the glass entrance doors.They walked together through the exit, their steps falling naturally into rhythm.Outside, the September air carried the first hints of autumn, crisp and clean.
As they approached Jenna’s car, she felt a strange sensation wash over her—a certainty that this moment marked both an end and a beginning.The search for Piper was over, but something else was taking shape, something she couldn’t yet name or understand.
Wendell’s unfinished warning echoed in her mind.“She’s still in danger.The darkness—”
Jenna glanced at her sister, who had paused to lift her face to the sun, eyes closed, expression peaceful.Whatever darkness threatened, whatever Wendell had tried to warn her about, it could wait.For now, this moment was enough—Piper, alive and returning home, the impossible made real.Whatever came next …
She unlocked the car and opened the passenger door.“Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER THREE
Jake slipped under the yellow tape that roped off an area between two abandoned mill buildings.The body lay sprawled on cracked pavement, surrounded by a cluster of uniformed officers.Even from a distance, Jake could see the strange red material wrapped around the victim’s limbs—yarn, it looked like, vivid against the pale skin and dark clothing.
“Morning, Deputy,” the officer guarding the crime scene perimeter said as he stepped aside.
Jake nodded, scanning the scene more closely.The victim lay face-up, arms splayed at unnatural angles.Derek Sullivan.The man’s face was frozen in an expression of wide-eyed surprise, as if death had come unexpectedly despite the obvious violence of his final moments.Red yarn wound around his neck, his wrists, his ankles, crisscrossing his torso in an elaborate pattern that reminded Jake of a spider’s web.
A thin man in his sixties stood off to one side, clutching a leash attached to an anxious border collie.The man shifted from foot to foot, his eyes darting between the body and the ground, clearly uncomfortable with his role in this macabre discovery.
Jake approached him first.“You found the body?”he asked.
The man nodded, swallowing hard.“Out walking Buddy here, like I do every morning.Six-thirty sharp.”He gestured toward the dog, who whined softly.“Buddy started acting strange, pulling at the leash.Then he just took off toward...toward him.”He couldn’t seem to look directly at the body anymore.“Thought he was a drunk at first, sleeping it off.But then I saw the...the red stuff.”
“Did you touch anything?”Jake asked.
“No, sir.Called 911 right away.Stayed put like they told me.”
“Did you see anyone else in the area?Anyone leaving, maybe?”
The man shook his head.“Not a soul.Place was quiet as a tomb.”He winced at his own choice of words.“Sorry.Didn’t mean to—”
“It’s alright,” Jake assured him.“I’ll need your contact information.We might have more questions later.”
As the man fumbled for his wallet to retrieve a business card, Jake noticed Dr.Melissa Stark, the county coroner, kneeling beside the body.Her team worked methodically around her, photographing the scene, collecting trace evidence, measuring distances.Jake had always appreciated Stark’s efficiency—no wasted movements, no unnecessary words.
After taking the dog walker’s information and instructing an officer to get a formal statement from him, Jake made his way to Stark’s side.The coroner looked up at his approach, her expression serious beneath her protective face shield.
“Deputy Hawkins,” she greeted him, her voice carrying the slight rasp of someone who’d spent a lifetime in morgues and laboratories.“Quite the spectacle we have here.”
Jake crouched beside her, careful not to disturb the evidence markers placed around the body.“What can you tell me, Melissa?”
She gestured to the yarn wrapping Derek’s body.“Never seen anything like this before.The pattern appears deliberate, almost ritualistic.But it was placed postmortem.”She pointed to the man’s neck.“Cause of death is asphyxiation.Ligature strangulation, to be precise.”
Jake leaned closer, seeing the deep bruising beneath the decorative yarn.“The yarn wasn’t the murder weapon?”
“No.It’s too soft, too thick.The marks indicate something thinner and tougher.”She gently moved the yarn at Derek’s throat.“Some kind of cord, I think.”
