Chapter 8 – Blood and Silence
Clara’s Pov
Renee gasped and grabbed my arm, fingers digging into my sleeve. My body wouldn’t move; I just stood there in the doorway of Evelyn’s office, staring at the chaos that looked nothing like her usual order. Files were everywhere, drawers yanked open, her computer screen cracked. That smell—a sharp, metallic tang—hung thick in the air. Blood.
“Clara,” Renee whispered. “We need to go. Now.”
But I couldn’t. My mind felt stuck, refusing to bridge the gap between the woman I’d met yesterday—calm, methodical, unflinching—and this silence that pressed down like weight.
“Evelyn?” I called, my voice too small.
No answer.
I took slow steps inside, Renee right behind me despite her fear. The carpet squished faintly under my shoes, a soft tacky sound that confirmed what my nose had already told me. My stomach clenched.
Then I saw the edge of her hand behind the overturned chair.
I almost couldn’t bring myself to move closer, but Renee reached for my wrist and squeezed once, her face pale. Together we rounded the desk.
Evelyn lay on her side, still, one earphone dangling, a small pool of crimson spreading beneath her head. Her eyes were half open, glassy and unfocused.
Renee clapped a hand over her mouth. I dropped to my knees beside Evelyn, shaking. I touched her wrist—the skin was already cooling.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”
Everything blurred for a second. My heart was a frantic flutter, my mind a buzzing swarm of denial. She’d been fine yesterday morning—sharp, confident, promising answers. And now she was gone, like all the air had been sucked out of the room.
Renee pulled me back. “Clara, we have to leave. Whoever did this could still be here.”
That snapped through the fog.
I stumbled to my feet, scanning the office. The door behind us stood half open, the hallway light flickering. My phone was still buzzing with that last text message glowing bright: She shouldn’t have helped you.
I picked it up, hands trembling. “Whoever’s doing this,” I whispered, “it’s not random. It’s all connected.”
“We can’t figure that out right now!” Renee hissed, grabbing my coat sleeve and hauling me toward the door. “We need cops, news, somebody.”
We practically ran, down the hall, through the lobby, out into the cold air that hit like a slap. I gulped it in, leaning against the wall outside, trying to keep from collapsing.
Renee was shaking too but kept her voice steady. “Okay. You’re calling this in. We’re not arguing.”
I nodded, barely aware of dialing. When I tried to tell the dispatcher what had happened, the words tangled—something about an attack, about blood, about my friend’s name—but they must have understood enough, because they said someone was on the way.
A part of me still felt like I was watching it from outside, as if my life had stopped belonging to me sometime between that first creepy text and now.
Within the hour, the block was crawling with police cars. Sirens wailed, lights flashing blue over the wet pavement. Officers ducked in and out of the building. Renee and I sat on the curb, wrapped in blankets one of them had given us.
Every sound blurred together—the static of radios, snippets of orders—but one phrase kept slicing through: forced entry uncertain.
Someone had been in her office, left a mess that looked planned. They’d wanted to send a message. That much I understood: this wasn’t random violence. Evelyn had been killed for helping me.
When a detective finally came over to talk, I barely absorbed his questions. My answers sounded mechanical even to me—how I knew her, when I’d last seen her. Renee filled in where I went blank. He scribbled everything down, nodded, murmured something about following up.
But I saw it in his eyes: doubt. Confusion. The same look the last officer gave us.
They didn’t see the thread. They didn’t know there had been messages, photos, warnings. They thought we were scared women connecting dots that didn’t exist.
After what felt like hours, we were allowed to leave. Renee hailed a cab and kept glancing nervously over her shoulder.
“Come to my parents’ place,” she said once we were inside, voice trembling. “We’ll be safe there. There’s an alarm system, and people around all the time.”
I nodded automatically but wasn’t listening. I was still staring at my phone.
The chat thread with the unknown number was blank. Gone. Like every message had been erased while we were at the office. My stomach sank.
“They deleted them,” I whispered.
“What?”
“The texts—the pictures—they’re all gone.”
Renee’s lips parted, but no sound came out. She shook her head hard. “We’ll show them what’s left on your phone later. Just don’t… don’t freak out right now.”
We rode in silence, the city sliding by like another world.
Once we reached her parents’ place, a quiet townhouse lined with potted plants and family photos, I thought I might finally breathe again. The normalcy was disorienting after chaos—the smell of warm bread from the kitchen, the low hum of a fridge, the comforting clutter of a lived-in home.
Renee insisted I take the guest room upstairs. She even offered to sleep on the couch in the hallway, “guard-duty style,” she said. Her attempt at humor cracked under the strain.
When she went downstairs to talk with her mother, I sat on the edge of the bed staring at the lamp. The image of Evelyn’s office wouldn’t leave my mind: her hand limp, her eyes frozen open. The phone buzzing with that message.
Why did they kill her so quickly? What had she found?
I pulled out my phone again, scrolling blankly through old texts, searching for anything leftover. All gone. Only the regular thread with Adrian remained—his sweet, harmless good-morning notes, sprinkled with I miss you and jokes about coffee orders.
I hovered over his name, thumb shaking. He hadn’t messaged since yesterday afternoon. Maybe he didn’t know anything yet. Or maybe he knew everything and was waiting for me to reach out.
Then a new notification slid across the top of the screen.
A video file. Sent anonymously. No number displayed. Just a filename: lookcloser.mov.
My stomach clenched. I hesitated barely a second, then pressed play.
The video was shaky, dark, filmed from a phone camera. It showed Evelyn’s office—the same chaos, the overturned chair. A faint shadow moved through the frame, a figure too blurred to identify. But as they leaned down toward the desk, the camera caught part of their face in the light.
A familiar profile. Strong jaw, dark hair, calm focus.
Adrian.
The phone nearly slipped from my hands. I fumbled to replay it, but the file vanished before I could touch the screen again—deleted automatically.
Renee knocked from the hallway just then. “You okay?”
I shoved the phone under my pillow. “Yeah. Just… trying to calm down.”
She didn’t sound convinced. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”
When she left, I sat frozen, the weight of the truth pressing down like lead.
Adrian had been there. At Evelyn’s office. Maybe before the cops arrived, maybe after he'd done what he came to do. Either way, he was the message.
The phone vibrated under my pillow again. One new text.
This one was short, almost polite.
“Still think you can run?”