Chapter 214: Jake
We cool it down—barely—long enough for Reid to drag his mouth from hers and say, rough, “Shower. We’ll keep going tonight.”
She giggles, wicked. “Yes, sir.” Then she makes a whole production out of it: cardigan drifting off one shoulder, fingers to the hem of her skirt, slow little shimmy like she knows exactly what she’s doing to us. She goes on until she's completely naked and I sit up without meaning to; Reid does too. The second we start to stand, she laughs harder, backs toward the bathroom, and snaps the door shut in our faces.
I drop to the mattress with a groan. “That was mean,” I call, which only earns me her laugh over the water starting up.
Reid has to readjust in his joggers and just… sprawls, forearm over his eyes, a sound coming out of him that belongs in a confession booth. I’m still smiling when I ask, “You think it was the science that made her that horny, the dude who shot his shot, or… us?”
He huffs, eyes still covered. “Probably the science.”
I bark a laugh. “Figures.”
We let the water pound and our heart rates come back down. Then Reid’s phone buzzes on the nightstand. Sloane.
His brows pull in. He answers, switches ears, and leans closer so I can hear without hitting speaker. “Hey. Good time? You okay? I thought you were off.”
“I’m more than okay,” she says, crisp, too bright. “I got the proof you wanted. I’m coming back to Northhaven with it in two days.”
Reid straightens. “This is still about Madeline?”
“Yes.”
He keeps his voice even. “Sloane... Why go to those lengths to screw with her? She’s our only biologist. Without her, the season’s done. You lose your job for the rest of it.”
“I don’t care,” Sloane snaps. “She fucked up everything with Finn. She lied all summer. She’s a criminal.”
That word hits like a cold wave. I feel my jaw harden. Reid goes very still. “What do you mean, ‘criminal’?”
“I have proof,” she says, smug and breathless all at once. “Whatever she told everyone is a lie. She wasn’t the victim at all.”
“I don’t think you know what you’re talking about,” Reid says, steel edging in.
“You can think whatever you want,” she fires back, “but when you see the proof, you won’t be able to deny it.”
“Send it,” he says. “Email.”
“So you can show it to her? No.”
“I won’t show her,” he lies so smoothly I almost believe him. He glances at the bathroom door, lowers his voice. “Email it.”
A beat. You can hear her debating with herself. “Fine. I’ll email it.”
“Okay.” He hangs up, puts the phone down like it might burn through the table.
The shower hisses on the other side of the door—her laugh echoing once when the spray hits too cold, normal, ordinary—and in here the room goes tight and quiet.
Reid looks at me. I look back. My gut is a fist. I want to rip open an inbox and see what poison she thinks she’s carrying, and I want to torch it unread in the same breath.
“I don’t know what to think,” I say, honest.
“Me either,” he answers, rough. He scrubs a hand over his mouth and stares at the bathroom door like he can see through it. “But whatever’s in that email, it doesn’t touch her. Not before we see it. Not ever, if I can help it.”
The water keeps running. We both nod at the same time, and wait.
Two minutes later Reid’s laptop pings. Subject line: proof.
He opens it; my stomach drops before the attachment even loads. The email text is neat, smug: name is covered for his safety, he’s scared of her. Literally. PDF attached.
Reid clicks. A police header fills the screen—crest, address, case number, the whole official costume. The PDF scrolls and there it is in black and white: Madeline Quinn. DOB. Eye color. Hair. Height. “Suspect.”
The narrative is worse. Harassment of \[NAME REDACTED\]. Reckless driving “in a manner that resulted in injury to the complainant.” Second report in as many weeks. “Complainant declined to press charges at the time but indicated he intends to proceed.” Last line: “Suspect not seen since.” The timestamp puts it days before she came to Northhaven.
My blood goes cold in a way I didn’t know it could. Reid’s jaw clenches; he makes a sound that could cut skin.
I pull a map with a flick because I need something I can hold—precinct address, street view, distance to her old campus—and the pins line up too neatly for comfort. It looks real. It looks official. Nothing out of place except the blurred name of the man who “fears for his safety.”
For half a second—just long enough to hate myself—I wonder.
Reid doesn’t let it live. “No,” he says, hard enough to be a lifeline. “No. Fucking. Way.”
I look at him. He’s staring at the bathroom door through the screen’s reflection, eyes black instead of brown.
“Even if this is technically real,” he says, voice low and steadying, “no one can fake what we’ve seen. Not that terror. Not last night.” He ticks it off on his fingers like he’s nailing boards over a window. “The calls. The way she won’t touch the city. The nightmare where she begged to be left alone. Remember the shaking, Jake—an hour of it. I almost put her in the car to take her to a hospital because her body wouldn’t let go.”
The shower hisses on the other side of the door; her hum hits the tile and comes back bright. It feels like hearing someone sing over a minefield.
I nod, slow at first and then with my whole spine. He’s right. You can doctor a PDF. You can’t fake the way her grip locked on my arm like a drowning person or the way her voice broke on please.
A thought snaps into place so clean it feels like a light switching on: Cruz.
“Let’s run it past Mateo,” I say, already reaching for my phone. “If anyone can gut-check a report, it’s him. He’ll tell us if the codes stack, if the badge ID is real, if anything smells off.”
Reid nods, jaw tight. “I want to do it now, but she can’t be in the room while we’re talking about this. You want to take her to grab food, or do you want the phone and I’ll distract her?”
The shower cuts off; the fan starts its rattling hum. We don’t have long.
“I’ll call people,” I decide, thumb hovering over the contact. “You take Mads, grab takeout, give me a half hour to get answers.”
“Done,” he says, then holds my gaze until I feel the words land. “We don’t believe that shit until we have confirmation it’s real.”
“Not for a second,” I answer, and mean it down to bone.
We move fast and quiet. I slide onto the far bed with my laptop and phone, angle the screen away from the bathroom, and pull the PDF’s metadata like Cruz taught me: timestamp, form version, internal code footers. I frame the questions in a text so he can hit it fast—case number, precinct, reporting officer, statute cites, whether that language ever lives on a legit form. Reid straightens the room with pointless efficiency and grabs his keys, already building a story that sounds like dinner and nothing else.
The door opens; steam spills. She steps out in soft leggings and one of our T-shirts, hair damp, cheeks pink, oblivious in the way that makes relief punch through my ribs.
“Hungry again?” Reid asks, easy as a summer tide. “I owe you takeout after that shower stunt.”
She laughs, bright and unburdened. “I was very brave.”
“Menace,” he says, fond and exasperated, and reaches for his wallet. “Come on. Let’s go make the local place hate us.”
She looks between us like she’s trying to catch a joke she missed. I keep my eyes on some harmless email. “Bring me something with too much lemon,” I say with a smile. “I’m calling a guy about permits.”
“Boss stuff,” she teases.
“Always,” I lie, smiling still, and wait for the door to close behind them.
It clicks; the fan drones; the room goes still. I exhale, open the text thread with Cruz, and drop the screenshot, the questions, and a single line he’ll read the way I need him to:
Urgent. Need to know if this is real—right now.