Chapter 227: Reid
We close in on the phone—me, Jake, Charlie, Cruz—everyone but Sloane. It’s face-up on the island, pulsing to life. Messages stack in a sick little ladder.
I miss you maddie.
we cant work this out.
you belong to me.
you cant keep hiding.
im gonna find you.
Another banner slides up. The room tilts.
you look so beautiful today.
We all stop breathing. The timestamp might as well be a knife: this morning.
Then, seconds later:
im coming for you.
And then:
we'll be together now.
All the blood leaves my body. My knees go loose; the edge of the counter bites my palm or I’d go down. The world narrows to the sound of my own pulse and the blue-white glow of her name. I've never felt like fainting before, but I'm pretty damn sure that's what's happening to me now.
“Reid.” Cruz’s hand clamps my shoulder, hard, an anchor. “Breathe.”
Jake’s already across the room, voice like a whip. “SLOANE—what did you tell him?”
She flinches, eyes skittering. “I told him about Northhaven a few days ago,” she blurts. “But he said he didn’t want to see her—he’s scared of her—he said he’d go to the police and tell them where she’s hiding—”
“Fuck,” Cruz says—no cop cadence left, just a human word. He’s jamming his feet into his shoes when the doorbell saws the air in half.
We lunge for it—hope spiking, stupid and blinding—and yank it open.
Finn.
My stomach free-falls. He's not with Madeline. He's not with Madeline. He's not with Madeline. He's not with Madeline. He's not with Madeline. WHY is he not with Madeline?
He steps in without looking up, voice breezy, clueless. “Yoo—where is Missy Scientist? I went early to set up, been waiting for her like an hour.”
Charlie makes a sound that isn’t a word—half shriek, half sob—and then she’s crying, full-body shaking. Finn finally looks at us, color draining. “What—what’s happening? What happened?”
Cruz’s voice goes hard and clean. “You have not seen Madeline at all today?”
Finn blinks at him. “Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cruz snaps, already moving. “Answer the question.”
Finn swallows. “I—yeah, I saw her at home this morning. She was eating breakfast. Said she’d follow right after me.”
“Where was Liam?” Jake barks.
“Grocery store,” Finn says, words tripping. “Getting some stuff before going back to the house to grab her papers to bring here—”
The front door opens again. Liam, oblivious, steps in, shaking rain off his sleeves. “Y’all, who the heck was Madeline walking with? I thought she was supposed to be with Finn and me, but that guy was snuggling her close—”
He looks up and stops dead.
“Describe Nick,” Cruz fires over his shoulder at Sloane.
She jumps. “Blond-ish hair. Tall.”
All of us swing to Liam.
“Yeah?” he says, defensively. “That guy was blond and tall too, but so am I—what’s wrong with that?”
Chaos detonates.
Charlie’s knees hit the floor. She’s sobbing so hard she can’t get air. Jake drives his fist into the wall—drywall cracks in a jagged star—and he’s shoving his feet into boots before the dust settles. “How was he holding her?” Cruz demands, already at the door, one hand to his earpiece out of habit he isn’t wearing.
Liam’s face has gone waxy. “They were moving fast toward the harbor,” he says, voice small. “He had her shoulders—her arm—kind of pressed against her. Like… like he was steering her or maybe hugging her. Why? Who is he?”
Everything goes silent for one impossible second. The quiet of a wave at full height, the second before it breaks on your skull. Everyone in the room seems to understand the danger Madeline is in, even without the full story.
I jam my feet into my shoes, don’t bother with laces. Jake’s already there. Cruz is there. Charlie’s hand clamps the table to haul herself up. Sloane is a statue, horror finally dawning. Finn’s stammering I didn’t—I thought—like a stuck record.
I don’t hear the rest.
We’re out the door.
We run.
Cruz, Jake, me—flat out—boots hammering asphalt, cutting through the fish market alley where the hose water turns the concrete slick and the gulls scream like they know something we don’t. Finn, Liam, Charlie a ragged breath behind us. My lungs burn and I don’t feel it; my legs are engines and I don’t care if they break.
We vault the low chain by the bait shack and hit the pier at speed. Boards drum underfoot—thud-thud-thud—salt in my mouth, diesel hanging low over the slips. I’m already counting unconsciously—one, two, third berth on the left—and I’m praying to a god I don’t believe in that this is all a misunderstanding, that she’ll be there, that Mads will be there, that—
We clear the corner.
Jake jolts like he’s been shot, staggers two steps, and folds, retching hard over the edge. The sound tears out of him, raw. Finn and Liam follow our line of sight, both going sheet-white in the same instant; Finn’s hand opens and closes on nothing, Liam’s lips shape a word that doesn’t come. Charlie claps a shaking hand to her throat and makes a small, animal sound, knees wanting to go. People down the dock turn; everything around us keeps moving like none of it knows the ground just gave out.
Cruz skids to a stop beside me, eyes raking the water, the slips, the channel—signals, vectors, nothing matching. He doesn’t see what we see because he hasn’t lived here every dawn and storm. “Talk to me,” he snaps, breath steady where mine isn’t. “What is it? What am I looking at?”
My fingers find a piling because if I don’t hold something I’ll go down. I swallow metal. Point.
“The Vigil,” I manage, voice like gravel in a throat that doesn’t want to work.
“It’s gone.”