Her scream is still echoing inside my chest.
I try not to clatter the mugs. The cabin’s kitchenette is barely a kitchen—just a chipped laminate counter and a single-burner stove with buttons so faded you have to guess what temperature you’re playing with. Dalia’s still in the other room, the door cracked open just enough that I can hear movement. Pacing, maybe. She didn’t go back to sleep after the nightmare. Neither did I.
It’s been hours since the ritual ended, but I keep seeing her face under that firelight, the way she stood with the chain clutched in her hand, pretending to be someone else. I didn’t know how to reach her, laying on that damp forest floor with a camera in one hand, burner phone to the right of me. All I could do was watch as Jonas Vale picked her out of the crowd and she was made a part of their sick ritual. And when she came back...
I wanted to pull her into me last night. Wrap her up and remind her she wasn’t alone, that she didn’t have to be the strongest one in every goddamn room. I know the walls she’s built are there for a reason. You don’t scale them, you wait until she opens the gate herself. But that dream, that scream—Christ, it almost brought me to my knees. When she screamed, it felt like something inside me cracked open and I ran before I even thought to. My body knew it was her and it felt like she let me in. Just a little. Just enough. Now I can’t stop thinking about it: her palm over mine, the way our hands trembled together, the soft weight of her leaning into me on that couch like she was finally giving in to gravity.
The kettle hisses and I pour slowly. Two mugs. I know how she takes it: black, no sugar, like sweetness is a luxury she doesn’t get to want. Mine would be with two spoons of sugar if only we had it. I pour a splash of milk into my mug and take a sip. I keep glancing at the door, waiting for her shadow to appear, waiting for her to sit next to me like last night meant something real. When she finally appears, the light cuts across her face like watercolor—half-shadow, half-sunrise from the pale morning light. She’s in one of my hoodies, sleeves too long. She asked me for it before I left the bedroom to make coffee.
She doesn’t want to feel like Claire anymore.
Her hazel eyes flick from the food to me, then down to the table. For a moment, she doesn’t look like the detective I’ve worked with for years. She looks like Dalia. Just Dalia. My heart aches to see her wake up every morning like this.
“You cooked.”
I shrug, sliding her mug toward her. She sits slowly, as if her limbs are remembering how to move in real life. Her hand curls around the coffee like it’s a life raft.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she says apologetically.
“You didn’t.” I pause. “I hope the eggs are edible.”
That earns me a small smile.
She drinks slowly, watching me over the rim of the mug. I can feel her thinking, turning the events of the night over in her head like a piece of glass, looking for edges. I set a plate in front of her—scrambled eggs, toast, some sad slices of apple from a gas station pack we picked up on the way here. It’s something. Something that says: I’m here. I care. Let me.
“I was thinking,” I say, easing into the seat across from her, “maybe we go over what we’ve got. While it’s still fresh.”
It’s not that I have no empathy for what she has been through, I just simply know her better. She wants to work through the evidence, find the threads and understand how the cult fits into all of this, disappearing into the work to shed the skin of Claire. She nods, almost too eager and I unlock my phone. I show her the photos—Jonas Vale, the firelight, the boy kneeling while the people in white hover over him—and she studies them like her life depends on it.
“I didn’t want you to see me that way,” she says, so quiet it’s almost nothing. “Weak. Afraid.”
My throat closes up. “You think that’s what I saw?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Dalia,” I say, and it lands heavy, real, everything I’ve been holding back packed into just her name. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. Don’t tell me that wasn’t brave.”
Her expression hardens—back to detective, back to steel—but I see the flicker of emotion before the mask sets in. She sets her coffee down and leans in, our shoulders touching.
The first image is wide: Dunhaven Glade lit by fire, bodies in loose rings like predators pretending to be prey. The next few are closer—cropped shots of who I assumed was Jonas Vale, his mouth open mid-chant, everyone staring at him like he is some prophet.
“That’s Jonas,” she says, voice low.
“And the boy?”
“Don’t know,” Dalia swallows. “He confessed to...”
She closes her eyes for a second, the memory still vivid in her mind.
“Animal abuse.”
Maybe I should have chosen a different time to discuss this rather than breakfast and suddenly I feel like an idiot.
“They made me brand him,” she continues. “With the spiral.”
I nod. “Do you think he is the next target?”
Her eyes drift to the window. Beyond it, the sky is pale and smudged like an old bruise.
“I have to go back in,” she murmurs.
I close my eyes. I already knew she would want to.
She looks up at me, eyes burning into mine. “If we drop out now, we lose everything.”
I sigh, leaning back into the dining chair. “I know. I’m not asking you to walk away.”
Her brows lift just slightly, but she doesn’t say anything. My hands itch to reach out again.
“I never thanked you,” she says, suddenly. “For last night.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I do.” Her voice softens. “You grounded me.”
“I’m with you,” I respond. “All the way.”
Dalia offers a tired smile. She tucks her legs under her in the chair, arms folded over her middle like she’s trying to hold herself together. And God help me, all I want to do is reach across this shitty table, cup her face in my hands, and promise she doesn’t have to keep doing this alone.
But she needs my presence, not my longing. “And if they push you further next time?”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“Dalia—”
Her eyes harden, and there’s something in them that silences me. Not anger. Grief, worn smooth and sharp at the same time.
“If we lose this case, we lose the trail. We lose Ruth Quinn. And who knows who else.”
I nod slowly, though everything in me revolts at the thought of letting her go back in alone.
“Then we prepare.”
“Agreed.”
I don’t say what I’m thinking. That watching her walk into that circle again might undo me. That every second she was gone felt like my chest had caved in.
I just refill her coffee and sit a little closer than I need to, because for now, this is enough.
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