Page 34 of Whispers in the Dark
“Is James working tonight?” Olivia glanced toward the hallway.
Molly shook her head. “Neurosurgery conference in Miami. Left Tuesday.”
“Smart man,” Ethan muttered, brushing snow from his sleeves. “Escaped March in South Dakota.”
Alex managed a small smile but said nothing. He let the atmosphere wrap around him, familiar and foreign all at once. This house had held grief, reunions, plans made in the dead of night. It was more than a home. It was a waypoint.
Noah flopped onto the couch and stretched. “Forgot how nice this place is.”
Ruth curled up in the corner, pulling Isobel down beside her. “We met here during a helluva time,” she said softly.
Isobel rested her head on Ruth’s shoulder, whispering, “You found me.”
Alex glanced over at Charlotte. She was standing near the fireplace now, one hand on Bailey’s head, the other resting on the back of a leather chair. She wasn’t speaking, but she was present—watching, listening, recalibrating.
He knew that look.
She was already calculating their next move.
The street was quiet.Late enough that most people were still inside. Lights off. No movement. The wind carried the low, lazy hum of a distant highway—but otherwise, nothing.
Rook moved like breath.
He parked three houses down in a contractor van that didn’t belong to any local company. A laminated badge sat on the dash. It was fake but good enough for a quick glance. His gloves were already on.
In the back of the van, Henry Byron lay slumped under a heavy blanket. Breathing, but barely. Muscles too weak to resist. Eyes closed. Still no words. Just the slow rhythm of survival—shallow and flickering.
Rook carried him around the side of the house. Quiet. Efficient. He stepped over the mulch bed, ducked past the porch light, and placed Byron gently on the back deck—seated against the railing, like he might’ve sat there once, a lifetime ago.
He clipped the photo to his chest, a note folded and tucked in his palm. He checked the position. Made sure Byron wouldn’t slide. Then he turned to the back door. Locked. Alarm on. No dog here, but the neighbor’s dog was barking like a loon. That complicated things.
He pulled a digital decoder from his pocket and connected it to the keypad. Fingers moved fast, inputting a code he’d pulled from a security breach two years ago, one Charlotte never updated. The alarm screamed for a half second before he silenced it. He opened the door to the fenced backyard and slipped inside. Easy.
The house smelled like when he was here the other night. Coffee. Paper. Cedar. A faint trace of lavender that clung to the air like a memory. He moved quickly. He didn’t have long.
The kitchen came first—he ignored it. He passed framed photos of daughters, of holiday mornings and birthdays. A life carefully built. Carefully guarded. None of it mattered.
He headed straight for the office. Bookshelves. Filing cabinets. Locked drawers.
He didn’t waste time guessing. He went for the bottom drawer, the one with newer locks and older hinges, the kind added after the fact, after someone started keeping things they didn’t want found.
He believed she had them. The real interviews. The ones with Ward—before his arrest, before the plea deal, before the official narrative got cleaned up for court. She was the only one who had access. She’d run point on the entire operation. She’d sat across from him, hour after hour, seen what others missed. And she never trusted the system to keep its hands clean.
The official files were incomplete. Transcripts, edited footage. Sanitized. But Charlotte Everhart? She didn’t delete things. She archived them.
He knew the tapes existed. And if they did, she would have them. He unlocked the front door. Just in case. Then got to work. Drawer by drawer, shelf by shelf. Messy but fast.
Ten minutes in, his gut twisted. Nothing. No tapes. No labeled drives. No backups tucked behind the spines of lawbooks. Just notes. Case files. Clippings. Organized chaos, but nothing he could use.
Then there was movement. Outside, the porch light across the street blinked on.
Rook ducked back behind the office doorway, watching through the curtain gap as a neighbor stepped outside in pajama pants and a hoodie, barefoot, blinking against the dark. Not random. Not idle. Someone had heard something. Maybe the alarm, even that half-second burst. Maybe the front door unlocking. Enough to draw suspicion. One of the observant types. The kind who memorized parking patterns and trash day schedules.
Rook cursed under his breath. No clean exit through the front.
He scanned the room one last time. He’d torn apart the house and found nothing. Either she’d moved them, or she never kept them at all. But he didn’t believe that. Not yet.
He was moving again quickly. By the time he reached the back door, the neighbor had crossed the street. Closer now. Listening.
