Chapter 97: Jake
I lie on my back staring at the ceiling, the quiet pressing down harder than any twelve-hour shift ever has.
First day off in… hell, I don’t even know. Months, maybe. Every time I stop to think, something else drags me back in—the road, the docks, the field runs, the endless data reports Reid hates reading. When I’m not out there, I’m buried in admin work Charlie doesn’t have time for.
But today… nothing.
It should feel like a relief.
It doesn’t.
My lip burns when I lick it, the split still raw, and my knuckles ache like I picked a fight with concrete. I flex my hand, watching the skin stretch over bruised bone. The faint pulse under the scab reminds me why I can’t ever let myself get that angry again.
I sigh, swing my legs off the bed. The floor’s cold under my feet. The whole house feels wrong when it’s this quiet—too big, too empty, too easy to think.
I strip my shirt off and catch the faintest trace of her—Madeline—on the fabric. Vanilla, maybe. Something soft, too clean for this place. I close my eyes for a second, then throw it aside like it burned me.
I turn on the shower, let the pipes groan until the water runs hot enough to fog the mirror.
Neither of us slept last night. Reid or me.
After we left her room, we checked everything—windows, doors, locks. I found Charlie half-asleep on the couch, mumbling something about Italian food before rolling over. She looked fine, safe. I made sure.
Reid did another sweep outside. Rain had started again, heavy, slanting. His flashlight cut through the fog like a blade, catching the shine of wet gravel and fence wire.
When he came back, he didn’t say a word.
He didn’t have to.
We both knew.
Whatever lines we’d been holding all this time—they blurred last night.
He looked at me once before heading for the door. I followed. Neither of us said a thing.
The drive back to our SWMRI house was the longest stretch of silence I can remember. Not hostile. Just heavy. Like we both needed the quiet to decide what to do with what we’d done.
I knew we wouldn’t be able to avoid it forever—her—the conversation that’s been circling us since the day Madeline walked into SWMRI.
It was always going to happen.
We just didn’t know when.
And it did.
It came out ugly, louder than it should’ve been, sharper than either of us meant.
Now, in hindsight, I’m glad there aren’t any houses close enough to hear us.
Because last night wasn’t pretty.
Not even close.
When we got back to the house, neither of us turned on the lights.
Neither of us changed.
The place smelled like rain and salt and iron, the kind of scent that clings to skin after too long in the storm. The only light came from the stove bulb and the weak orange glow bleeding through the blinds from the street outside.
We sat—Reid at one end of the couch, me at the other. Far apart. The silence between us was its own weather system, thick and heavy and familiar.
Usually, it’s me who cracks first. Reid can stay quiet for days. Always has been able to. Growing up, it used to crawl under my skin—how he could just sit there, stone still, until I was the one who snapped.
But last night, he spoke first.
“I’m trying to piece it together,” he said, staring at nothing. His voice was quiet, but there was that edge underneath—the one that only shows when he’s been grinding on the same thought for too long. “What scares her.”
I didn’t move. Just waited.
He rubbed the heel of his hand against his jaw, still damp from the rain. “I can’t make sense of it. The first time she panicked—Mrs. Carver said it was because she got lost. But I don’t buy it anymore.”
He looked down, eyes flicking like he was replaying it. “That didn’t look like someone who was lost. She looked very close to passing out.”
I swallowed, thinking about how she’d looked last night—her hands trembling so violently I could hear her bracelets clinking together.
“And then the phone call,” he said. “Unknown number. The reaction was the same—frozen. And then tonight…” He trailed off, jaw tight. “I don’t know if it’s connected, or if it’s just the fear that someone random might’ve been there.”
“She panicked with me, too,” I said. My voice sounded rough, even to me. “When I mentioned the city. Told her she could go back if she wanted.”
Reid looked up then, meeting my eyes in that sharp, assessing way of his.
He didn’t say anything, but I knew he remembered tonight too—her face draining of color, her breathing turning ragged.
“She said she didn’t like the city,” I went on. “That it scared her. And she smiled when she said it, so I didn't think much of it. Now...”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers steepled. “Maybe she used to get lost a lot. Maybe something happened to her there. Break-in. Mugging.”
“Then what about the phone call?” I asked.
He frowned. “That’s the part I can’t make sense of. Unless…” He exhaled. “Unless it’s one person. I think she’s scared of someone specific. Everything else—windows, doors, phones—they’re triggers.”
That word hung in the air between us.
“Someone in the city,” I said quietly.
Reid nodded.
I ran a hand through my hair, still damp. “Who the hell could scare her that much? At twenty-two? Parents overseas, no sign of family issues. It’s not that.”
He didn’t answer. His silence was louder than anything I could’ve said.
“She’s not just anxious,” I added. “You saw her. The shaking, the way she couldn’t get a single word out. That wasn’t fear of something imaginary, Reid. That was fear of someone real.”
He was quiet again for a while, staring out the window, jaw working. “I did a background check when we hired her,” he said finally. “And there wasn’t much to find. No social media. Just her school email, her phone number. Her address was listed as her university. I tried cross-checking people in her program. Some old photos from a year or two ago. That’s it. She disappeared off the map after that.”
Something sharp twisted in my chest. “You think she’s hiding?”
“I think someone made her hide.”
For a second, neither of us said anything. Just the sound of the wind pushing against the siding, and the clock ticking in the kitchen.
“I can still see her hands,” I muttered. “The way they shook. Like she couldn’t even control them.”
Reid’s head snapped up, eyes dark. “Her tears,” he said. “She looked… terrified.” He clenched his jaw. “It pissed me off.”
“Yeah,” I said. My voice came out lower than I meant. “Me too.”
We didn’t have to explain what that meant. The anger wasn’t at her—it was at whoever the hell had made her afraid like that.
Reid leaned back, exhaling hard. “If it’s one person, then this is all connected. The call. The panic. The city. That person must've knocked on her door or something, too.”
I nodded. “And she’s not telling us because she doesn’t trust anyone enough to.”
“Or she’s trying to pretend it’s over,” he said. “That’s worse.”
The silence that followed was heavier than before. The only light in the room flickered as the streetlamp outside buzzed faintly.
Finally, I said, “We can’t let it happen again.”
He nodded slowly. “Agreed.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “I’ll block unknown VoIP pings on the router. No more unknown calls coming through Wi-Fi. She only gets through numbers she saves.”
“I’ll talk to Albie,” he said. “If he sees anyone hanging around, or a car that passes more than once, he calls me.”
“Not the house.”
“Not the house.”
We sat there for a while, both staring at the floor, the sound of rain ticking against the glass.
I could still see her—the way her eyes darted to every window, the way her lips trembled when she tried to speak.
Reid’s knuckles were white against his knees. “Whoever they are,” he said finally, “if they ever show up here—”
“—they won’t,” I cut in.
He looked at me then, and for the first time all night, we were completely in sync.
We didn’t have answers.
We didn’t have proof.
But we both knew one thing.
If whoever haunted her ever set foot in Northhaven, they wouldn’t walk back out.