Page 85 of Jayson
The bracelet digs into my palm as I kill the light and press myself against the shadows, heart hammering against bone. Whoever is up there doesn’t know I’m down here—yet.
I breathe through the terror.
Because I came for the truth, and it’s clutched in my fist.
Now I just have to survive long enough to expose it.
I kill the light, dive behind the boxes, flatten myself to the wall. My heartbeat is a drumbeat in my ears. Footsteps move overhead. Steady. Heavy.
I don’t move. I can’t breathe.
My eyes scan the darkness, desperate.
There’s an old window. It’s narrow, but maybe it’s enough. I slide toward it, hands trembling. Every scrape of metal sounds like a scream. I wedge the window up and outward.
I hear a voice. Low. Male. Closer.
My name. Someone says my name in a singsong voice, and it floats toward me like a ghostly echo.
Keira.
I don’t look back. I shove through the window and crawl out, lungs heaving. It’s small, cramped. My knees scrape. My palms sting. But I keep going.
34
JAYSON
“She’s gone, caro.”
Nina’s voice cuts through the quiet like a blade. For a beat, I don’t respond. I just stare at the phone in my hand, her words sinking in.
Gone.
“She slipped away from the fitting room,” Nina adds, her tone tight. “Lionel didn’t even see her go.”
Of course he didn’t. Keira’s smart. Smarter than most people give her credit for. And when she wants something—like escape—she doesn’t make noise. She just disappears.
I drag in a slow breath, steadying the hammer of my pulse. There’s no room for panic. Not now.
She’s been gone long enough to get a solid head start. Which tells me this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision—it was calculated. She waited for her chance. Waited for Nina and Lionel to be just distracted enough.
This wasn’t about slipping away for air. This was a mission. And grief’s behind the wheel now, pushing her straight into the dark, away from me.
I grab my phone, unlocking the tracking app I installed onher phone. The dot appears instantly. Her signal pulses back at me from a street I know too well. Her childhood home. My jaw tightens. That house again. She keeps going back like it’s calling her home. Like it still has a hold on her throat.
What the hell are you doing back there, Keira Bishop?
I stare at the screen, breath caught somewhere between relief and dread.
She’s still within reach.
Still close enough to bring home—before the past pulls her under for good.
I nosethe Aston to the curb half a block away—engine off, hazards black. The street is a postcard of quiet suburbia: trimmed hedges, porch lights glowing like low-grade halos, not a curtain stirring. Perfect cover for whatever nightmare Keira’s chasing.
I pop the door, scan the street, then start toward the Bishop property. Autumn leaves crunch under my boots, each step a metronome for the pulse beating in my throat.
Why are you here again, Keira?What do you hope to find?
