Page 1 of Whispers in the Night

Chapter 1

Six months earlier

“Harper, wait—”

Michael's voice cracked through the comm, but Harper was already moving. Three steps into the warehouse. Five. The darkness swallowed her flashlight beam like water.

“I've got movement,” she whispered. “Northwest corner.”

“Negative. Fall back. That’s an order—”

The world exploded.

Fire bloomed orange and red, a flower of destruction that reached for her with hungry fingers. The blast wave hit like a physical thing, lifting her off her feet. She flew backward, slammed into concrete, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear, couldn’t—

“Michael!”

His name tore from her throat. She scrambled forward on hands and knees, toward the inferno that used to be the northwest corner. Smoke choked her. Heat seared her face.

A hand—she saw a hand in the rubble.

She reached for it, fingers stretching, almost there—

The hand crumbled to ash.

Present day

Harper Sinclair jerked awake with a gasp that sounded too loud in the cabin’s darkness. Her heart hammered against her ribs.Sweat plastered her tank top to her skin, despite the April chill seeping through the windows.

Just a dream. Just the same goddamn dream.

She pressed her palms against her eyes until she saw stars. Three a.m. Same time she woke every night. Her therapist would call that “significant.” Harper called it hell.

The mandatory leave was supposed to help. Six months away from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. Six months to “process the trauma” and “regain her equilibrium.” Six months in this too-quiet cabin in Blackridge, Washington, where the only sounds were wind in the pines and her own thoughts screaming at her in the dark.

It wasn’t working.

Harper threw off the covers and padded to the kitchen, her bare feet silent on the cold hardwood. She didn’t turn on lights. She knew the layout by now—two months of sleepless nights had mapped every corner. Coffee. She needed coffee, even if it was the middle of the night. Sleep wasn’t coming back.

As the pot burbled to life, she stared out the window at the forest pressing close around the cabin. She’d chosen this place specifically for its isolation. Thirty minutes outside Blackridge proper, at the end of a winding dirt road, surrounded by Douglas firs that blocked out most of the sky. Private. Peaceful.

Lonely as hell.

Her phone buzzed on the counter, making her jump. Who the hell called at three in the morning?

The screen showed a name that made her chest tighten:SAC Ellery.

Her former supervisor. The man who’d signed off on her mandatory leave. The man who’d looked at her with pity and disappointment after Michael’s funeral.

Harper considered letting it go to voicemail. She’d done that with the last dozen calls—from Ellery, from other agents, fromher mother. Everyone wanted to check on her. Everyone wanted to make sure she wasn’t drowning.

She was drowning. But she’d be damned if she’d let them watch.

Against her better judgment, she answered. “It’s three a.m., Ellery.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” His voice was tense in a way that sent her instincts prickling. “I need you to listen, Harper. There’s been a murder in Blackridge.”

Her fingers tightened on the phone. “I’m on leave. Call Seattle.”