The motel bed is cold on her side.
My hand reaches out before consciousness fully returns, searching for the shape of a body that should be there. Instead, I find nothing—no heat lingering in the sheets, no familiar dent in the pillow where her head should rest. The absence hits me like cold water, and I sit up fast enough to make the room spin.
“Dalia?”
The silence is wrong. No soft shuffle of feet on carpet. No quiet hum of the coffee maker. No gentle muttering as she studies her case files in the early morning light. I shove off the tangled blankets, heart hammering against my ribs, and scan the room with growing dread.
Her boots are gone from beside the door. Her jacket missing from the chair. The burner phone that lived on the nightstand—vanished.
Then I remember.
A folded piece of paper taped to the mirror, positioned exactly where I can’t miss it. Her handwriting staring back at me—those precise block letters she uses when she wants to be completely clear, completely understood.
Elias, I need you to trust me. I know this isn’t how we wanted it to happen, but I couldn’t wait for another green light that will never come. The case is bigger than Locke. Bigger than the Task Force. Bigger than both of us. I’ll come back to you.
Always yours, D.
I read it once. Twice. A third time, like the words might rearrange themselves into something less devastating. My pulse refuses to slow, refuses to accept what’s written in her careful hand.
She’s gone.
Not “running errands” gone. Not “undercover for a few hours” gone. This note reads like a goodbye disguised as a promise. It’s everything she couldn’t say out loud compressed into four brutal lines of black ink.
I sink onto the edge of the bed and feel all the air leave my lungs at once. It’s not panic yet—it’s the moment before panic. That terrible, suspended silence right before the world collapses.
Every instinct screams at me to tear this room apart. To call her phone until she answers. To bang on these cheap walls until they give her back to me.
But I won’t, because despite the terror clawing at my chest, I trust her. She said she needed to do this, and I knew it was coming. The way she studied that case board last night like she was memorizing a map. The way she looked at me like she was committing my face to memory in case she never saw it again.
She filed for divorce last week. Her resignation papers are sitting at the bottom of Everett’s desk drawer, waiting to be processed. She systematically dismantled her old life and watched it burn. This was always the next step—the final leap into the unknown.
The clock shows 6:12 am in accusatory black numbers.
The note trembles between my fingers, but I don’t let go. My phone buzzes on the nightstand and I flinch like I’ve heard gunfire.
Locke: We’re reviewing the delivery manifests again. Bring your notes.
I want to hurl the phone against the wall.
Instead, I stand. I dress. I do exactly what Dalia would expect me to do—I show up and I keep playing the part until she comes home.
The precinct feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out through hidden vents.
Kelsi hunches over her usual spot, fingers flying across keys without looking up. Locke stands at the whiteboard with a marker in her hand, already deep into her morning briefing. The same ritual, the same players, except everything feels drained of color now.
Jonas Vale’s photograph stares back from the center of the evidence web. Below it, written in Locke’s precise red marker: AMBERFIELD HARVEST LOGISTICS.
I nod at appropriate intervals. I listen to words that feel like they’re coming from underwater. I pretend my world hasn’t just shifted off its axis.
Dalia’s chair sits empty. No one mentions it. Locke doesn’t even seem to notice.
“We’ll pull the property history on the warehouse next,” Locke says, tapping the marker against the board. “I’ve already contacted a judge about expediting a warrant if we can establish direct ties to Vale.”
Kelsi nods without looking up from her screen. “They’ve got a delivery scheduled for Thursday.”
I bite down on my tongue hard enough to taste copper. Thursday.
Locke’s eyes flick to me. “You with us, Wexler?”
“Yeah,” I lie, forcing my voice to sound steady. “Just thinking through the logistics.”
Kelsi frowns slightly, like she’s picking up on something off in my tone, but she doesn’t say anything.
The morning crawls by. At lunch, I sit in my car and read the note again, searching for clues I might have missed. Some hidden message that tells me what she’s planning, how long I have before…
Before what? Before she disappears completely? Before she becomes another photograph on someone else’s evidence board?
She’s not just playing bait anymore. She’s gone completely dark, operating without backup or oversight. And the worst part is, no one here even knows she’s submitted her resignation. Only me.
I want to scream. I want to march into Locke’s office and throw everything on the table—the motel room, the parallel investigation, the fact that my partner has gone rogue and might be walking into a death trap.
But I can’t. Not yet. Because that would end any chance of covering for her if she needs time to work.
I open my phone and type carefully:
Hey. Weird question. You seen Dalia?
The response from Kelsi comes quickly:
Not since yesterday. Why?
I stare at the screen, cursor blinking in the empty text box. I don’t type anything else. Let the silence settle, let them start noticing the absence.
And if she doesn’t surface soon, I’ll burn the whole commune down to find her.
The afternoon drags like blood through water—slow, thick, leaving stains on everything it touches.
I pace the precinct corridors with a case file clutched too tightly in my sweating palm. The edges are creased now, softened from anxious handling as I pass Locke’s desk again and again, pretending I’m busy.
It’s been hours, and Locke hasn’t asked a single question. That’s what unnerves me most.
She’s too comfortable with Dalia being gone, too quick to take complete control of the briefings, like she’s been waiting for this moment—for us to finally fracture and leave the case entirely in her hands. Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe lack of sleep and the motel’s moldy walls have finally fried my brain.
But I don’t think so.
I think Locke knew this was coming. Maybe not the exact timing, but the inevitability of it. She knew Dalia well enough to predict she’d eventually do exactly what she’s done the entire case—run straight toward the fire instead of waiting for permission.
I just didn’t think she’d light the match without telling me when.
I take refuge in the records room, seeking the only space in this building without windows or witnesses. Just familiar old files and the steady hum of fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like angry insects. I claim the desk in the corner—the one Dalia always preferred when we needed to talk without being overheard—and spread out the farmhouse files.
Victim: Ruth Quinn. Female, 27. 5’6”.
Never found. Her existence frozen in time in what might be her final photograph—a grainy image from one of the commune’s gatherings, her face bright with the kind of fervent belief that gets people killed. Very likely got her killed.
There’s a word Dalia had circled on the copy of Cartwright’s notes on Ruth: “hollowing”.
I think about the Jane Doe we found at the farmhouse, the mismatched hands, the antique dress, the blue ribbon threaded through hair that possibly belonged to someone else. A centerpiece arranged for us to discover and puzzle over. Fingertips burned beyond recognition.
An offering?
A blueprint?
I flip to the oldest crime scene photograph. The farmhouse altar with its rough wooden surface. A spiral carved deep into the wood behind where the body was displayed—crude but deliberate, like it was meant to channel something. Dalia used to run her fingers over this photo for minutes at a time, like it held frequencies only she could hear.
Something about it always felt unfinished.
I squint at the image, studying every shadow and groove. Then I dig through Locke’s compiled notes, searching for the delivery records. The manifests from Amberfield Transport. And there it is—stamped faintly on one of the shipping crates, barely visible in the documentation photo. The same damned spiral. They’re using identical imagery across victims, across years, across every aspect of their operation. A signature carved in flesh and wood and metal.
We have already made this connection, though. But something about the spiral tugs at my memory, like I have forgotten something important.
What if Ruth wasn’t just murdered? What if she was meant to be transformed, reconstructed into something else entirely? What if the ritual failed, leaving them with pieces instead of perfection?
Building something new from broken parts. One body at a time. One victim at a time.
A vessel crafted from suffering, molded into whatever twisted vision drives Jonas Vale’s commune.
My throat goes completely dry. I push back from the desk like the air itself has turned toxic.
Please, God, don’t let Dalia be walking into that place to become the final piece of whatever they’ve been trying to build for the last decade.
I don’t remember leaving the records room.
One moment I’m staring at that spiral symbol, Ruth Quinn’s smiling face burning itself into my retinas, and the next I’m halfway down the corridor toward Kelsi’s workstation, my heart trying to hammer its way out of my chest.
The bullpen hums with its usual chaos—ringing phones, shuffling papers, someone arguing loudly about court schedules. None of it penetrates the static filling my skull. All I can focus on is the growing certainty that Dalia has walked directly into the hands of people who specialize in turning human beings into art projects.
I find Kelsi in her natural habitat, hunched over her terminal with headphones on, face illuminated by multiple monitors displaying maps, facial recognition software, and streams of code that look like digital hieroglyphics to me.
I tap her desk harder than necessary.
Kelsi jumps, yanking her headphones off. “Jesus, Elias. You can’t just—” She stops, really looking at me for the first time. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I need to ask you something.” My voice sounds distant.
She straightens immediately, picking up on the urgency radiating from every inch of my body. “Okay…”
“Did Dalia seem off to you yesterday?”
Kelsi blinks, processing. “You mean like—beyond her normal level of obsessive intensity?”
“Yeah.”
A long beat passes. I watch her face change as she starts putting pieces together.
“You’re really worrying me right now,” she says quietly.
“Can you still track the burner phone?”
She gives me a look that’s equal parts exasperation and concern. “You mean the burner phone you both swore didn’t exist anymore? The one I specifically taught you how to monitor?”
“Please.”
Kelsi studies my face, reading the desperation I’m trying to hide, then nods and starts typing. I wait in suffocating silence, watching data scroll across her screens.
Her fingers freeze on the keyboard. “No signal. Nothing since yesterday morning.”
The words hit me like physical blows.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Kelsi asks but I’m already moving toward the exit before she finishes the question.
I can’t stay here. Can’t pretend to file reports and attend meetings while Dalia is walking into that nightmare.
I have to find her.
ns216.73.216.146da2
