Page 96 of Whispers in the Dark
“I know.”
Ethan stepped closer, gaze locked on hers. “I have to ask this, and I need the truth.”
She didn’t blink.
“Are you sure he didn’t just walk away? Alex would know how,” Ethan said, the words precise. Measured. “From the case. From you.”
Charlotte’s eyes flared. “What?”
“Maybe it was too much. The Elias thing. The confrontation. You and him. Maybe he?—”
“No.” She stood now, the blanket sliding off her shoulders. “You think he just bailed? In the middle of this?”
“I’m covering every possibility,” Ethan said.
“Well, rule that one out,” she snapped. “He’s dedicated to his job. He’s an adult, Ethan. Not some kid running from heartbreak. He wouldn’t just vanish—he wouldn’t walk away from an active investigation. And he sure as hell didn’t walk away from my girls. Especially not this close to Olivia’s wedding, which is only a couple months away. He didn’t break his promises.”
Ethan studied her. “You two weren’t exactly stable.”
“No,” she said, sharper now. “We weren’t. But we were talking. It was rocky, yeah, but he didn’t shut down. He stayed. He listened. We kissed. He told me he loved me. I told him I loved him. We were moving forward.” Her voice cracked. “We love each other,” she said. “We were trying. He didn’t run away.”
Ethan nodded once, slow. “Alright,” he said. “Then we treat this for what it is.”
“A disappearance?” Charlotte asked.
Ethan’s face hardened. “No. A black bag operation. Which means we don’t just find him—we find who wanted him gone.”
Thirty-Two
The safe house was quiet.Shadowed. Tucked miles outside the city where no one looked and fewer cared. Elias sat alone, the soft glow of the monitors casting sharp angles across his face. Dust floated in the still air, disturbed only by the steady hum of old hardware.
He stared at the center screen. Mara. She sat by the window in her room at the Blackwell Institute, legs folded beneath her, hands resting in her lap. Still. Not absent but paused—like waiting to reboot. The timestamp confirmed the feed was live. He watched the slow rise and fall of her chest. The tiny, rhythmic twitch of her fingers against the fabric of her sleeve. She was still in there.
He’d known it when he pulled her out of Monroe’s hands. Back when she was pale and sedated, strapped to a gurney, the fire in her dulled by overmedication and psychological cruelty disguised as treatment. Monroe called it “containment.” Elias called it what it was—control. Torture dressed in clean clothes.
Mara was twenty-five. Beautiful in a quiet, haunted way—like something delicate that had weathered too many storms. She was a loner, he assumed by choice. She painted in silence nearthe train station, where the noise drowned out her thoughts and the faces passing by never stopped long enough to ask questions.
Her work drew attention—moody, shadowed portraits full of absence and ache. Each painting spoke of emptiness without ever saying the word. That was what caught Maddox’s eye. Her brushstrokes were too precise, too personal. They didn’t just depict depression—they understood it. That made her dangerous. Or useful.
He seized her quietly. No scene, no fight. One night she was painting. The next, she wasn’t.
Inside the facility, they didn’t know what to do with her at first. She wasn’t a soldier. Wasn’t violent. But then, by chance, she looked up and locked eyes with Elias.
In that moment, something shifted.
She didn’t flinch or look away. She saw him. And for Elias, who’d spent years becoming invisible, it landed like a jolt. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, but it wasn’t just her face. It was the pain beneath it. The kind he recognized in himself.
She begged to be let go. Whispered it like a prayer when no one else was listening.
And Elias—silent, calculating, already halfway broken—made a promise he buried deep:
when the time came, he would.
He remembered that night in perfect detail. The infiltration. The quiet extraction. The look in Mara’s eyes—not panic, not confusion, but something worse: emptiness.
He’d carried her out himself. And he hadn't let go since. Waverly Junction was a calculated risk. Dropping her off near the hospital would lead her to the Blackwell Institute. Elias had done the recon. Dug deep into Tristan Blackwell’s files, vetted every physician, every facility report. It was safe. Quiet. Kind. What she needed.
He didn’t trust many, but he’d left Mara near there. Not in a cage but in care. And now, as he watched the footage from his own private backdoor into the Institute’s secure feed, he saw something new. Not movement. Not speech, but a response.
