Page 32 of Whispers in the Night

Silas glanced at her. She was watching the gym entrance, but her posture suggested she was really paying attention to him. “Why?”

“Because we’ve been sitting here for two hours and I’m going to lose my mind if we don’t talk about something.” She finally looked at him. “And because you mentioned your team. The ones you lost. I want to understand.”

Silas’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “There’s not much to tell. We were clearing a compound. I was on point. Missed a suicide vest. Boom. Three dead, two critically injured, three permanently disabled. End of story.” He’d already told her this before. He didn’t know why she wanted him to repeat it.

“That’s the facts. I want to know how you felt about it.”

“How do you think I felt?” The words came out harsher than he intended. He took a deep breath, keeping his stare fixed on the gym. “Guilty. Responsible. Like I’d failed the men who depended on me to keep them alive.”

“Same as I felt about Michael,” Harper said softly.

“Yeah. Same as that.” Silas stared out the windshield, seeing not Summit Fitness but a compound in Afghanistan. Hearing not traffic sounds but explosions. Screaming. The terrible silence after. “I was supposed to protect them. That was my job. And I failed.”

“What were their names?”

The question caught him off guard. “What?”

“Your team. The ones who died. What were their names?”

No one had ever asked him that. Not his CO, not the Army therapists, not the cops he’d worked with since. They wanted to know about his trauma, his PTSD, his adjustment to civilian life. But no one had asked about the men themselves.

“Corporal James Williams,” Silas said quietly. “Specialist Tyler Johnson. Private First Class David Brown.” The names came easily, carved into his memory like the symbols werecarved into the killer’s victims. “Williams had a kid on the way. Johnson was supposed to go to college after his deployment. Brown wanted to be a cop, actually. That’s partly why I became one—felt like I owed it to him to do the thing he never got to do.”

“What about the others? The ones who survived?”

“Sergeant Mike Harrison—lost both legs, medical discharge. Specialist Andrew Kim—traumatic brain injury, still in therapy. Corporal Luis Martinez—severe burns, multiple surgeries.” Silas’s voice was flat, reciting facts because that was easier than feeling. “They all reached out after I got stateside. I never responded. Couldn’t face them. Couldn’t see what I’d done to them.”

“That must be lonely,” Harper said. “Carrying all that guilt alone.”

“Safer that way. Can’t hurt anyone else if you don’t let anyone close.”

“Is that why you work alone? Why you didn’t want me on this case?”

Silas finally looked at her. In the dim light from the parking lot, her face was half in shadow, but her eyes were clear and understanding. “Yes. When you work alone, nobody dies because of your mistakes. Nobody pays for your failures.”

“But nobody shares your successes either,” Harper said. “Nobody’s there to pull you back when you’re drowning. Nobody sees you as anything more than the sum of your failures.”

The words hit harder than they should have. Silas turned back to the gym, but he could feel Harper’s gaze on him.

“I made a bad call six months ago,” she continued. “I moved too fast, didn’t wait for backup, and Michael died. And ever since then, everyone looks at me like I’m broken. Like I’m damaged goods. Like that one mistake defines everything I am.”

“I looked at you that way,” Silas admitted.

“I know. And maybe you were right to. Maybe I am broken.” Harper paused. “But you know what I realized? Being broken doesn’t mean being useless. It just means being human. We all make mistakes, Silas. The question is whether we let those mistakes destroy us or whether we learn from them and keep going.”

“Which one are you doing?”

“Honestly? I don’t know yet.” She smiled sadly and gazed out the window into the night. “Some days I think I’m getting stronger. Other days I wake up from nightmares and wonder why I’m still alive when Michael isn’t. But I keep showing up. Keep doing the work. And maybe that’s enough.”

Silas was quiet for a long moment. Outside, the last few gym members were leaving. The parking lot was mostly empty now. If the killer was coming, he should have been here by now.

“You’re not broken,” Silas said finally. “You’re dealing with trauma. That’s different.”

“So are you.”

“Yeah. So am I.” They both turned at the same time and he met her eyes. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe carrying it alone isn’t the answer. Maybe...” He trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentence.

“Maybe we carry it together,” Harper finished quietly. “Just for this case. Just until we catch him.”