Chapter 177 Come as Someone Else

Chapter 177 Come as Someone Else
I built the group chat the same way I built everything else now — quietly, with no fingerprints left behind.

Three disposable numbers. One primary, two secondary. Permissions locked so tightly that even the people inside it would never see each other clearly. No names. No profile pictures. No exit option that didn’t look suspicious.

The title was just a string of digits that meant nothing to anyone but me. Clean. Anonymous. Exactly the kind of invitation that would feel dangerous enough to be interesting and vague enough to keep the recipient from immediately deleting it.

Getting Abigail Thompson’s number had taken longer than I wanted and less time than it should have.

A quiet request through a contact who still believed I was simply doing background work for a client interested in community youth programs. A digital trail that never pointed back to an Ashford.

By the time the number sat in my encrypted notes, I had already cross-checked it against every other piece of information I held on her. Highest Purity Score. Daughter of the woman Pastor Whitaker was now publicly marrying. Already standing closer to the head of the Fund than any other girl her age in this town.

And she reminded me of Sophia so sharply it was almost physical.

The same careful way of holding herself in public, as if she had learned early that being too visible was dangerous. The same stubborn set to the jaw when something unfair happened around her. The same quiet intensity in the eyes that said she was noticing more than she was saying.

Every time I reviewed the surveillance stills or the Fund’s own notes on her, the parallel landed like a bruise I refused to stop pressing. Sophia had walked into the system believing it might still be kind. Abigail was already inside it, scored and ranked and watched, and she didn’t even know the full shape of the cage yet.

I told myself that was useful.

I told myself the resemblance was simply data.

I did not let myself sit with the other possibility —that some part of me was reaching toward a ghost and using this girl as the nearest available shape.

The first message was simple.

I typed it on the primary disposable, checked it twice, then sent it into the empty group.

"Halloween. Oct 31st. 114 Morrow Lane. Come as someone else. Tell no one."

Then I added her number.

I watched the delivery confirmation appear. No read receipt yet. That was fine. People needed time to decide whether curiosity outweighed caution. I leaned back in the desk chair and listened to the house settle around me.

My father was somewhere downstairs. He had no idea the quiet son living under his roof had just opened the first real door in a plan five years in the making.

The adrenaline was clean and sharp.

This was no longer just files and timelines and quiet hatred. This was movement.

I waited twenty minutes. Then thirty. The message remained unread.

I had expected hesitation. I had not expected the particular frustration that came with it.

Every day that passed without her opening the door was another day the Fund continued its work unchecked. Another day Pastor Whitaker sat comfortably at the head of the machine. Another day the highest-scored girl in town walked around without understanding how closely she was already being measured.

I created the second message before I could talk myself out of it.

A different disposable number this time. Same group. The tone slightly more personal, as if another anonymous member had decided to be helpful.

"You should know who else is coming. Check the attached."

The attachment was a single image file, carefully stripped of metadata. I had spent an hour deciding what to put inside it. Not enough to expose the full shape of the Fund. Not enough to make her run to her mother or to Pastor Whitaker. Just enough to make the invitation feel real and the risk feel specific.

A partial list of names. A blurred still from an older Ball. A single line of internal language that would mean nothing to most people and everything to someone who had already begun to sense the cage.

I attached it and sent it.

Then I watched.

The first message finally showed as read.

The second message remained untouched.

Minutes passed. Then more. The attachment sat unopened like a door she had decided not to walk through.

Something hot and ugly moved through my chest.

I set the phone down carefully, then slammed the side of my fist against the desk hard enough to make the laptop jump. The sound was loud in the quiet study. I breathed through my teeth until the spike of anger settled back into the colder place it belonged.

She was cautious. That was smart. It was also inconvenient.

I needed her at 114 Morrow Lane on the thirty-first. Not because I cared about her safety. Not because the resemblance to Sophia meant I wanted to pull her out of the fire.

I needed her there because she was the cleanest available pressure point against the man at the top. Proximity to Abigail Thompson meant proximity to Rebecca Thompson. Proximity to Rebecca meant a new angle on Pastor Whitaker. And a private, masked, untraceable setting on Halloween gave me the first chance to speak to the highest-scored girl in town without the Fund’s eyes directly on either of us.

I wanted information.

I wanted a crack.

I wanted the first quiet conversation that would let me decide whether she was useful, disposable, or something I would have to account for more carefully.

The fact that looking at her still made something in my chest twist like an old injury was irrelevant.

I picked the phone back up and stared at the unopened attachment.

She would open it eventually.

Or she would ignore it and force me to find another way.

Either outcome was data.

I closed the encrypted windows, wiped the temporary logs, and sat in the dark listening to the house. Somewhere downstairs my father was still performing the life of a respectable man. Up here, his son had just set the first real piece on the board.

Halloween was eleven days away.

Abigail Thompson had the invitation.

And I had already decided that whether she came willingly or needed another push, she would be at 114 Morrow Lane when the night arrived.

The only question left was what I would do with her once she walked through the door.

I smiled in the dark, small and humorless, and felt the old grief and the newer purpose settle into the same cold shape.

Sophia had not been given a choice.

This girl still had one.

I intended to make sure she used it exactly the way I needed.