Chapter 218: Jake
She’s out in minutes, cheek heavy on my chest, the movie mumbling nonsense at the edge of the dark. I keep combing my fingers through her hair—slow, lazy strokes that make her breathing fall into that deep, even rhythm I could live on.
“First thing when we’re back,” I say, keeping my voice down, eyes still on her, “we teach her not to hold conversations with anything that can bite.”
Reid snorts into his pillow. “She’d never listen. She’s a real life Snow White.” He shifts, glancing over. “Why’d she call it a thief?”
I smile because I can hear her saying it. “Told me once raccoons look like bandits in little black masks. They steal food, so—little thieves.”
“This girl,” he murmurs, fond and wrecked.
I trace another line through her hair and watch her mouth soften in sleep. “Can’t believe she forgot to mention she speaks Italian.”
He hums, that low note that means he’s with me. A beat, then, quieter: “You going to tell me what you found?”
I exhale through my nose. “Called Cruz. He pulled it apart. Says it’s… messy. The precinct number’s real, the header looks right, but the body reads wrong. Their department uses a specific cadence in the narrative, and most other stations do—this isn’t it. It’s also missing the reporting officer’s signature; every legitimate report gets signed off. And you wouldn’t see a redacted complainant name if a report ‘leaked’—that tanks the chain of custody on sight.” I glance down at her, then back up. “His take is someone lifted a real report template and rewrote pieces.”
Reid pushes up on an elbow, all coiled muscle and intent. “Good. That’s good news. She didn’t do what’s in there.”
I don’t answer right away, and the quiet stretches. He watches my face. “Why do you look like that if it proves our girl’s innocent?”
“Because Cruz thinks whoever doctored it isn’t stable,” I say, keeping the words soft so they don’t touch her. “Whoever did this either got the original sent to him or hacked their way to it. They don’t hand out copies like flyers. And—” my voice drops another shade “—he has a feeling the original complainant was Madeline. Which means this guy did something bad enough she went to the police. Now Sloane’s playing courier.”
Reid goes very still. The anger is right there, but under it I hear something I almost never hear from him—panic, thin and real. I hate it.
“Cruz was worried,” I add, because leaving that out would be lying. “Like actually worried. He offered to come to Northhaven for a few days. Just… be around.”
Reid swallows, jaw tight. “Can he call the station? Get a person on the line and confirm it?”
“Different province,” I say. “Not his turf. He won’t step on it. But his gut’s bad.”
We listen to the idiot movie breathe and to her breathing answer it. I keep my hand moving in her hair, slow as tide.
Reid’s quiet snaps. “We go to the city,” he says, voice low but wired. “We go to that station ourselves and tell them this bastard is after her.”
“We can’t,” I answer, still stroking her hair because it keeps her under. “We don’t leave her alone, and we don’t take her to the city.”
His volume climbs. “We have to do something. She’s getting texts—texts—and calls. He’s talking to Sloane. How long until they figure out she’s in Northhaven—”
“Shut the fuck up,” I cut in, sharper than I mean to, because her lashes flutter and her breath skips. I shush against her hair, slow my hand, feel her settle. “You’ll wake her.”
He catches it, swallows the rest. “Shh,” he echoes, a rough whisper, like the word hurts.
He sits on his bed hard, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. For a minute the only sound is the idiot movie murmuring at the foot of the bed.
“I really don’t want to do jail time,” he says finally, voice muffled, “but if we find him I might do something that’ll get me there.”
I scoff out of habit. Then he lifts his face and he isn’t joking. “You can’t be serious.”
He’s always had a darkness I don’t, even when we were kids—something colder under the bone that only surfaces when it has to. It’s here now.
“There are two of us,” he says, exhaling like the thought tastes like metal. “If it comes down to it, at least one of us stays with her. If I have to do time.”
“You’re not seriously considering it.”
His eyes are winter-dark, flat and bright. “He hurt her. He scared her. He’s trying to frame her. He’s harassing her. Stalking her.” His jaw knots. “If he comes here and puts a hand on her—there’s no version where I hold back. None.”
I swallow. The room feels smaller. The movie keeps talking like it didn’t hear a thing.
He isn’t bluffing.
I breathe out slow, stare at the ceiling, and let the heat bleed off my voice. “Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that.”
The movie mutters nonsense; her breath ghosts warm through my shirt. I picture Reid in a cell and my stomach turns—not because I’m worried for him, but for whatever idiot would try him. He’d be fine. Everyone else… less so. But she would not. She’d carry it like a wound she couldn’t stop reopening. She’d never forgive the world for putting him there, and she’d never forgive herself for being the reason he went.
I smooth my palm over her hair again, slower, like I can polish the thought away. “She’d hate it,” I whisper, eyes still on him. “She wouldn’t recover if you did time over her.”
His jaw works; he nods once, clipped, like he’s swallowing a blade. The darkness in him doesn’t leave, but it leans back a fraction, giving the room air.
“So we don’t let it get there,” I add, softer, for both of us. “We keep her close. We keep this off her. And we make sure if anything comes, it breaks on us first.”