Page 118 of The Last Call Home
Driver’s side door ajar.Passenger-side window reduced to jagged teeth of safety glass.
Interior torn apart.
No sign of Delilah.
Just silence.
And ...fuck, blood.
“Cass, there’s blood on the gravel,” I say, crouching near the edge of the shoulder, flashlight beam catching the dull stain soaking into the dirt.“Fuck.Fuck.Fuck.”
The sound of my voice barely registers—hoarse, guttural, frayed down to the marrow.I’m barely holding myself together, because it’s not just blood.It’s proof.Proof that she didn’t go quietly.
We should’ve driven her ourselves.Should’ve had eyes on her every goddamn second, not just when she was working or at her mother’s house.We treated her routines like they were safe zones, as if danger waited politely outside designated windows.
Cass moves beside me, his eyes scanning everything with clinical precision, but his shoulders are tight, jaw locked.“It’s not fresh,” he mutters, flashlight in one hand, sweeping over the crushed foliage near the roadside.“Already soaked in.Barely visible unless you’re really looking.”
I am looking.
I’m searching for everything.Every piece of her she might’ve left behind in a panic.Did she run?The shuffle of gravel beneath desperate feet.The drag marks of someone fighting like hell not to be taken.A torn thread from her shirt, a boot print pressed too deep into the mud, the arc of motion that says she ran—or tried to.
Anything that could indicate me how far she advanced before it all went dark.
Because it did go dark.
Somewhere past mile marker eight, right at the edge of the dead zone—where cell signals vanish, cameras blur, and the air itself feels like it’s holding its breath—I felt it.
This of course isn’t a feeling I can rationalize or explain in a report.It won’t fit neatly between timestamps and field notes or be boiled down into the clean, objective language investigators are supposed to use.It’s not data.It’s not theory.It’s instinct that bypasses logic entirely and goes straight for your ribs.
This isn’t adrenaline, panic or fear.It’s hollowness gnawing.Scraping you out from the inside until all that’s left is the unbearable awareness that something has shifted—something irreversible because you lost everything.
My hands curl into fists, the skin over my knuckles stretched raw.“We have to find her before we lose track of her.”My voice is a rasp, a mix of half-growled orders and clipped commands.
I don’t know how many times Cassian’s told me to breathe.
I can’t.Not until she’s found.
Cass crouches again, this time near the jagged edge of the glass where something sharp sliced into the earth beside the tire tracks.His flashlight sweeps across the scene, catching the faint shimmer of metal—maybe from a hairpin, maybe from the bracelet she always wears, the one she never takes off.
He’s quiet.Cassian has detached himself from his feelings.This is a case where he has to solve it and Delilah isn’t a person—for now.Though, I’m sure the moment we find her, he’s going to lose his fucking shit.
Cass’s mind is already piecing the scene together, forming patterns from shattered lines and blood trails, extrapolating timelines from the violence left behind.
And still, even through the calculation, he still looks wrecked.
Something fundamental inside him cracked the moment we realized she’s missing.
Like he’s already picturing every worst-case scenario—and daring the universe to make him live through it.He hasn’t said it, but I know he thinks this is on him.Rosalinda wanted to flee today and go to Canada to start a new life.She knew it was coming.I ...I told him not to overreact.We thought we had time, but we didn’t.
“I didn’t fucking see it coming,” he mutters, standing slowly.“I should’ve known they’d grab her on the way to Simone’s.I should’ve sent someone with her?—”
“She would’ve said no,” I interrupt, my voice low, fraying.“She’s been trying to pretend things are normal.”
“She shouldn’t have to pretend,” he bites back.“We should’ve kept her safe.”
We both fall silent.We don’t have the right to argue when we’re both wrong.
Delilah’s not here.
