Page 5 of Whispers in the Night

Her hands were shaking.

She’d come to Blackridge to hide, to heal, to escape the job that had cost her everything. And now she was diving back into the darkness—partnered with a man who despised her, hunting a killer who’d haunted her for five years.

Harper started the engine and pulled out of the lot. In her rearview mirror, she could see Silas Kane standing in the loading dock entrance, silhouetted against the work lights, watching her go.

This was going to be a disaster.

But as she drove through the pre-dawn streets toward her empty cabin, Harper felt something she hadn’t felt in six months: purpose. The nightmare that woke her every night was Michael’s death, her failure. But this—this case—was something she could actually do something about.

Even if it meant working with Detective Silas Kane and his razor-sharp contempt.

Even if it meant facing her demons all over again.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Ellery:Play nice with the locals.

Harper’s laugh was bitter. “Too late for that,” she muttered, and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.

The sky was starting to lighten, purple giving way to gray. Another sleepless night nearly over. Another day beginning.

And in just four hours, she’d be walking into Blackridge PD to officially start a partnership with a man who’d already decided she was responsible for her partner’s death.

Harper gripped the steering wheel tighter and pressed the accelerator.

She’d faced worse. She’d survived worse.

She could survive Silas Kane.

Probably.

Chapter 2

The dead woman’s eyes were open.

Silas Kane had seen a lot of death in his thirty-six years—first in Afghanistan, then in homicide—but something about open eyes always got to him. Like the victim was watching, waiting for him to figure out who’d done this to her.

I’m working on it, he thought, crouching beside the body.Just give me time.

Three-seventeen a.m. The call had come in at two-forty from a night security guard who’d been doing his rounds at the old paper mill. Poor bastard was currently sitting in a patrol car, throwing up everything he’d eaten in the past week. Silas couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t the kind of thing you forgot.

The victim was young—early twenties, he’d guess. Petite, maybe five-three, with dark hair that spilled across the concrete like an oil slick. She wore jeans and a light sweater, both intact except where the killer had cut through them to access skin. The cuts were precise. Deliberate. Someone who knew what they were doing with a blade.

But it was the positioning that made Silas’s gut twist.

Her arms were arranged above her head at a specific angle, hands placed just so. Her head tilted left, chin elevated, exposing the long line of her throat. And carved into her torso—carefully, almost lovingly—were symbols that Silas had never seen before.

Circles within triangles. Intersecting lines. A pattern that meant something to the killer, even if Silas couldn’t read it yet.

“Detective?” One of the crime scene techs—Stratton—approached with a camera. “We’re ready to start documentation.”

“Give me another minute.”

Silas pulled out his phone and snapped his own photos, making sure to capture the angles, the positioning, the symbols. His mind was already working, building a profile the way his Army psych-ops training had taught him. Male, most likely. Organized—this kind of scene staging took time and control. Patient. Intelligent. Someone who planned.

Someone who’d done this before.

The thought made his jaw clench. Blackridge was a small city, maybe forty thousand people. They got domestics, the occasional gang shooting, drunk drivers. Not this. Not ritualistic murders with symbolic carvings.

Which meant either the killer was new to the area, or he’d been very, very careful until now.