Wexler. I thought we ditched the surnames a long time ago.
The road stretches ahead like it's daring us to keep going. Two pale yellow lines vanishing into mist, shoulderless blacktop stitched through trees, the kind of woods that hush when you enter them. Fog rides low across the pavement, curling around the car and sliding across the windshield like breath. We pass an abandoned diner, collapsed in on itself like a lung that's stopped trying. Nothing out here looks new. Even the mailboxes are rusted shut, their mouths clamped tight against secrets.
Dalia hasn't spoken in forty-five minutes. She insisted on driving. Knuckles pale on the wheel, jaw locked tight. She didn't argue again after she said "fine," just grabbed her jacket, keys, and left the building like the air there had turned bad. Now she keeps her eyes on the road like if she stares long enough, I'll stop asking questions.
I don't speak. I'm excellent at playing the passenger princess, half-turned toward the window, letting the landscape slide past. Everything is gray. The radio's off. Her choice. I even brought snacks like I'm on my way to a sleepover, not a murder investigation. Not sure what I was thinking, but the glovebox is now stuffed with knock-off Snickers and sour gummy bears.
The silence feels like driving next to a storm and pretending it isn't real. Eventually, I crack the window an inch, enough to let cold air in and the pressure out.
"You know," I say, quiet, casual, "this is usually the part in a horror movie where the skeptical partner says 'this is a waste of time' and then dies first."
Dalia doesn't answer right away. For a moment, I think she'll ignore me.
"I'm not skeptical," she says flatly. "I'm exhausted."
Not what I expected. It's also not wrong. I shift in my seat, watching her hands on the wheel. Still steady. "Then let me drive."
"No."
"You didn't sleep last night."
She exhales slowly, like something in her chest just gave up and sank. "I didn't dream either. So I'm counting that as a win."
The road curves, a sharp S through a dip in the trees. I contemplate whether it was the right choice to let her drive. On the other side, a sign emerges through the fog—CAVEN'S HOLLOW – 6 MILES—bent at the corners and tagged with graffiti that's been mostly scrubbed off. The trees thin, just enough to reveal a crumbling fence line and a rusted tractor half-swallowed by tall grass. We're not far now.
I glance at her again, careful. Her face is set in that expression she wears when she's bracing for something—not fear, exactly. More like anticipation with nowhere to land, like she knows whatever we're driving toward won't feel like closure.
Her voice breaks the quiet this time. "The building might not even be there anymore."
"If it's not, we'll find something else."
"You always say that."
"Because it's usually true."
Her hands flex on the wheel. I could push more, ask what she's not saying, why her temper snapped earlier in the bullpen, why her fingers shook. But I won't. We're still on the way. The ghosts don't like to be spoken to before arrival.
The fog lifts slightly as we crest another hill. Ahead, the faint outline of what used to be a church sits back from the road—shingled roof partially collapsed, steeple leaning left like a tooth knocked loose. The sign out front is gone. Only the frame remains.
"This is it?" she asks.
I double-check the GPS and nod. "This is it."
She pulls onto the shoulder and cuts the engine. The sound of gravel ticking against the undercarriage echoes louder than it should. We sit there for a second, neither of us reaching for the doors. I haven't felt this tense in her presence in ages.
"You ready?" I ask, mimicking the same line I gave her yesterday.
"No," she replies. The door opens anyway.
Rain starts again, soft at first, then steadier. It's the worst kind: not enough to drench, enough to chill and annoy. The wind pulls at her leather jacket as we cross the field. Her steps are sure, even now. Even here.
The front doors of the church are gone. It smells like rot and dust and old wood trying to remember it was sacred once. We step over the threshold like it might mean something.
The church is thick with the musk of damp wood and burned wax gone rancid. But beneath that, something deeper festers: old mildew and cold stone rising from the floorboards like a confession. The pews are splintered ribs, collapsed inward as if the building swallowed itself. Above, the ceiling yawns open, rain slipping through cracks to pockmark the floor with shadows. The back wall's water-swollen boards curl upward like tongues, whispering secrets to the dark.
Dalia strides forward, one hand hovering near her holster—habit, not fear. She cuts through the gloom, skimming graffiti-streaked walls. Names, dates, crude hearts. Kids and vandals trying to leave their own ghosts behind. But she's hunting something quieter. The thing that doesn't want to be seen. I step beside her, boots sinking into the floor's soft rot.
"It's worse than I remember."
The altar platform looms ahead, a skeletal rise of planks clotted with debris: shattered glass, splintered timber, the brittle remains of something small and furred curled in the corner. A relic of hunger.
"Where was the mark?" she asks.
I gesture to the platform's left edge. "Chalk or ash. Almost gone by the time we arrived."
She crouches, turns on her phone's flashlight. Dust motes swirl like agitated spirits. I kneel beside her, gloved hand brushing grime from the boards. The wood groans, spongy with moisture, and for a heartbeat, I imagine fingers beneath it—pale, grasping.
Her flashlight tilts. "There."
Faint. A curved line half-swallowed by time. One loop, maybe two. Enough to prickle the skin between my shoulders. She doesn't speak, just stares, as if the mark might unspool if she blinks.
"We could scrape it," I say. "Test for compound traces."
She stands abruptly, light swinging to the ceiling. Raindrops fall in a slow, arrhythmic pulse, pooling near the pulpit. Her beam traces the water's path up the wall—and freezes.
There.
Higher than eye level. Carved, not drawn. A curve. Then another.
The church suddenly feels rearranged—staged. The debris too neatly skirted around the pulpit, the floor beneath it swept clean. Someone knelt here.
Dalia snaps photos, the flash slicing the dark. When she lowers her phone, her thumb brushes the screen like she's wiping away blood. "I should call this in."
"Are you going to?"
Her silence is answer enough.
Beneath the pulpit, a shape glints in the muck. I nudge it with my boot—a wooden box, half-rotted, lid warped shut. Inside: blackened paper, edges blistered as if held to a flame. A hymnal, maybe, or a journal. The pages crumble at my touch, ink bleared to ghosts. Except one.
A half-symbol claws the margin. Dalia takes it, holds it to the light. The paper trembles—or maybe her hands do.
"A shrine, perhaps?" I ask. Rain quickens, needling the roof. The storm arrives in a gasp of wind, rattling the remains of stained glass—shattered yellows and blues and reds scattering across the floor like fallen stars.
We stand shoulder to shoulder, the unspoken truth clotting the air: this is a thread.
⫘⫘⫘
We don't speak much in the car. Rain slicks the asphalt into a black mirror, reflecting skeletal trees that claw at the sky. Dalia drives like she's punishing the car, the engine growling in time with the storm in her eyes. The silence between us is charged, a live wire strung from her rigid shoulders to my clenched jaw.
I offer once to take the wheel. She presses harder on the gas and I let it go.
The woods press closer here, pines bowing under the wind's weight, their shadows long-fingered and hungry. I count the mile markers to steady myself: 17... 16... 15... Each one a hammer strike. Her sleeve is streaked with church rot, her cheek smudged with ash. I want to wipe it clean. I want to mark it darker.
Stop.
She breaks first.
"I don't like the timing," she says, voice frayed at the edges.
"Of the symbol?"
A muscle jumps in her neck. "Of everything. The body. The lab outage. That box."
The word hangs, sharp as the splintered steeple we left behind. I turn it over in my mind. Placed, not stacked.
"You think it's a message," I say.
"I think it's a trap."
Her eyes cut to me, then away. The diner lights bloom ahead—a sickly orange halo in the gloom. She parks behind the building, away from the windows, away from witnesses. I want to crack a joke about being paranoid then think better of it. The engine dies, but she doesn't move, her hand staying on the gearshift, fingers curled like she's clutching a grenade pin.
I wait.
Tap, tap, tap. Rain drums the roof. The scent of fried grease seeps through the vents, cloying and false.
I unbuckle slowly. "Let's eat."
She exhales through her nose, opens the door. I follow. We don't speak as we walk up. The air is thick with unasked questions and the way her arms stay wrapped tightly around herself. We pass a young couple leaving—laughing about something dumb, something easy—and the girl looks at Dalia a beat too long. Not in recognition but curiosity.
Whatever's written on Dalia's face, she stops laughing.
We step inside, and the door closes behind us with the kind of hush that tells you whatever world was waiting outside doesn't follow you in here. Inside, the diner is a diorama of normalcy: vinyl booths cracked with age, a jukebox muttering Elvis, the fry cook's acne-scarred cheeks glowing under heat lamps. We take the corner booth, the one beneath the fractured neon sign that sputters EAT in dying pink pulses.
EAT.
EAT.
EAT.
Dalia doesn't sit, more like collapses, her body folding into the seat like a blade sheathed too fast. The waitress, Marta, according to her name tag, knows better than to chat. She slides two coffees toward us, the cups chipped, the liquid inside tar-thick and bitter. Dalia wraps her hands around the mug but doesn't drink.
"You looked at me differently," she says suddenly.
The words land like a slap. "What?"
"This morning. In the bullpen."
Her gaze is a scalpel. I could deflect. Instead, I let the truth slip, just a fraction. "You were staring at the file like it was a hostage note."
She doesn't blink. "And?"
Somewhere, a laughter erupts, then dies. I shrug. Dalia's thumb rubs the mug's handle—once, twice. Her voice drops to a whisper. "You've been seeing more than you normally do. Since the beginning."
She's being weirdly cryptic. I chalk it up to exhaustion. "The case?"
"Her."
The victim. The woman with someone else's hands. The one who's gotten under Dalia's skin like shrapnel. I lean forward, the table's edge biting into my ribs. "The ash smears weren't careless. They were a performance. The spiral, the box—it's all a script."
Her nostrils flare. "Why stitch the hands, then? Like she is some doll in need of fixing?"
The neon flickers.
EAT.
EAT.
EAT.
I don't have the answers. She doesn't pull away when I cover her hand with mine. Her skin is cold, her pulse a trapped bird beneath my palm. I don't squeeze. Don't soothe. Just anchor.
"If it's her..." she starts. The sentence fractures. Her. Not the victim this time. Someone else. The storm outside swells, wind screaming through the diner's gaps like it's been waiting all night to howl her name. The moment breaks when the waitress comes over. Middle-aged, tired around the eyes, pencil behind one ear. She doesn't ask for our order, just pours fresh coffee and slides a laminated menu between us like she already knows we won't read it.
She glances at Dalia. Her eyes soften a little, like she wants to say something—some small kindness, maybe.
I take my hand back slowly, fingers cold where they touched hers. She's breathing through her nose again, focused on the steam curling up from her mug like she can find answers in it. I don't know if she's angry or tired or unravelling by degrees. She doesn't fidget, doesn't move except to raise the cup to her lips.
Outside, a truck passes too fast, tires hissing over the slick pavement. The lights streak across the window before disappearing. We both follow the motion instinctively.
"Did you recognize anything in that church?"
"No."
The no is too fast. Too clipped. I watch her, careful. "Not even the layout?"
"Elias."
We are back to Elias, I guess. Her voice warns me off, but I can't let it go. "You froze for a second. There was a moment."
She pushes the coffee away and leans back in the booth, arms crossed, eyes on the table like it might confess something she can't.
"I've been inside places like that before," she says finally. "That's all."
It's not all. I know it. She knows I know it. But we let the lie sit between us anyway, because calling it out would require a version of us we haven't become yet. I nod once, let her change the subject.
"Tomorrow," she says, voice even again. "We run every cult-adjacent incident in the past five years. Anyone arrested, anyone released. Start with the counties around this one."
"You think this is regional?"
"I think it started small."
I sip my coffee. It's gone cold.
"Will you sleep?" I ask.
She exhales something close to a laugh. "I don't remember the last time I did."
I want to say something—anything—that would make that sentence less hollow. But there's nothing. No comfort I can give that won't sound like apology or worse, pity.
So I just nod. "We'll hit the ground early."
She nods too. But when she stands, her hand lingers for a moment against the table. I pay the bill. We leave the diner, walk towards the motel we booked for the night. The walk is short, thirty seconds, maybe. The motel sign flickers to our right, buzzing faintly. It's close enough to cast shadows on the diner windows behind us. Our boots move in sync—hers scuffed at the toe, mine leaving faint wet tracks behind us. Silence was never uncomfortable between us before.
Her hands stay buried in her coat pockets. Mine too. I glance sideways once. She doesn't meet it, but I see the corner of her mouth twitch.
The front office smells like bleach and burnt coffee. There's a fan going somewhere behind the desk, the kind that clicks every third rotation like it's counting time out loud.
A woman looks up from behind the counter, hair pulled into a tight braid, reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She gives us a once-over—long coats, wet boots, cop posture—and doesn't bother smiling.
"You're the detectives?"
Dalia nods. "That's right."
The receptionist sighs. Not irritated, but tired in the way only people working a double shift in the middle of nowhere get tired. "Right. They called ahead. Told me to expect you."
She swivels in her chair, rummages behind the desk. Papers shuffle. A drawer squeals open, then slams. Dalia shifts her weight beside me, arms crossed over her chest.
The receptionist resurfaces with a key card in one hand, a clipboard in the other. "Look, I'm gonna be straight with you. We had a pipe burst in two of the upstairs rooms last night. Water damage. Maintenance is dragging ass. I've only got one room ready to go—bottom floor, end unit."
I blink once. "Only one?"
"Only one. Unless you want to bunk with the ice machine."
"It's fine," Dalia says flatly. To me. To herself.
"Names. Sign here. You want extra towels, don't bother calling. They're in the closet by the soda machine."
Dalia signs first. Her handwriting's fast, angular. Mine follows, steadier. Key card exchanges hands like it's nothing. Like this isn't anything.
"Room twelve," the receptionist mutters. "Don't drag mud in. And don't touch the thermostat—thing's been cursed since '98."
⫘⫘⫘
The motel door sticks when I push it open, wood swollen from too many damp nights and not enough care. I shoulder it the rest of the way, step into a room that smells faintly of bleach and old smoke, even though the sticker on the wall says non-smoking in polite red letters. Dalia doesn't comment. She walks in like she's done this a thousand times, sets her gun down on the table near the curtained window, and starts peeling off her coat in movements that look more like muscle memory than thought. Her boots come next—wet soles thudding gently against the worn carpet, mud caked along the edges.
I close the door behind us. The lock rattles when I twist it. My heart is beating faster than it should.
The room has one bed. Queen-sized, maybe, but only if we're generous. A TV remote chained to the nightstand. Two lamps, one flickering. One chair with a cigarette burn in the cushion. The kind of place you don't ask questions in. The kind of place people pass through, forgettable by design. Dalia sits on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees, head bowed like the day is still heavy on her spine. She scrubs a hand down her face and exhales, slow and deep, like she's trying to push the whole case out of her lungs.
"You should shower first," I mumble. My voice comes out softer than I expect.
She looks up at me. Her ponytail's slipped, a few damp strands clinging to her cheek. She looks like the day wore her down, then hollowed out the parts that were left.
"You look like someone ran you through a coffee filter." I try to lighten the mood. Or forget about the one bed situation.
That earns me something close to a smile. She quickly disappears into the bathroom without another word. I hear the water start after a minute—sharp against old tile, the pipes groaning in the walls like the building is protesting the demand. I sit in the chair. Wait. There's no clock ticking, but time still stretches. Long enough for me to start replaying everything we saw today. Long enough for the spiral to start curling again behind my eyes.
The bathroom door opens with a click, steam spilling out like breath from a wound. When she comes back out, it's in a black tee and sweatpants. No socks. Her feet are pale against the carpet.
"You can shower," she says, pulling back the covers on the bed. "I'm not kicking you to the floor."
I nod, but don't move yet. I'm not sure I'm breathing. Just sit there, hands on my thighs, watching her tuck herself under the motel comforter like it's just another night. Like we're not sitting in the gravity well of something bigger than either of us knows how to name.
"You okay?" I ask finally.
She doesn't answer for a beat. "No."
I nod. That's fair. My heart is hammering inside my chest.
I take my turn in the shower, scalding water sluicing off the day's grit, the steam thick enough to choke on. When I step out, the cold air razors my skin. Don't look at her, I tell myself. But she's there—a silhouette curved toward the window, the blanket draped low on her hips, the dip of her spine a question I've memorized but never answered.
Her breath hitches when I sit on the bed. The mattress groans. The sheets are starched and rough, prison-grade, the kind that leaves phantom burns. I lie back, careful not to let my arm brush hers.
The silence between us is a living thing, coiled between us, fed by every unspooled confession, every sidelong glance in the precinct hallway, every time her husband's name hung in the air like a blade. Markus. A man who sleeps soundly while his wife dissects horrors under fluorescent lights.
I hate the prick.
I stare at the water-stained ceiling. Count the cracks. One. Two. Three. She shifts, the fabric whispering against her skin, and I roll onto my side without thinking. There it is—the slope of her shoulder, pale as a moonlit kill zone. The freckle just below her collarbone, the one I've traced with my eyes during stakeouts, interrogations, the long nights when she thought I wasn't looking. My throat tightens.
Say something.
I'm here.
You don't have to carry this alone. Let me carry it with you.
But the words fossilize in my chest. Her hand flexes against the pillow.
I reach over to the bedside table on my side and kill the last light.
Darkness swallows us whole.
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