Page 48 of Whispers in the Night

“Take a break,” Silas suggested. “Go to the bathroom, splash some water on your face. I’ll keep watch.”

In the restroom, Harper stared at herself in the harsh fluorescent light. She looked tired, older than her thirty-two years. Dark circles under her eyes, tension lines around her mouth. She splashed cold water on her face, tried to wash away the growing certainty that they were failing.

Another woman would die tonight. Maybe she was already dead. And they were sitting here drinking overpriced coffee, accomplishing nothing.

When Harper returned to the table, Silas had ordered fresh drinks. He pushed a cappuccino across to her—extra shot, just how she liked it. He’d remembered.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Tell me something else,” Silas said. “Something that has nothing to do with death or cases or darkness.”

Harper almost laughed. “That’s a tall order for people like us.”

“Try anyway.”

She thought about it, searching her memory for something untouched by tragedy. It was completely random but… “I like thunderstorms. When I was a kid, my mom would hide in the basement during bad storms, but I’d sit on the front porch and watch. The lightning, the rain, the way everything smelled clean after. Like the world washing itself.”

Silas smiled, and it transformed his entire face. Made him look younger, less haunted. “That’s beautifully weird.”

“Your turn. Tell me something good.”

“I restore old motorcycles,” Silas said. “Started when I was sixteen. There’s something satisfying about taking something broken and making it run again. Right now, I’m working on a 1972 Triumph Bonneville. Found it in a barn in Oregon, completely rusted out.”

“What color are you painting it?”

“Deep blue. Classic.” He glanced at her. “I’d like to show it to you sometime. When this is over.”

The words hung between them, heavy with implication.When this is over.As if there was an after. As if they’d still know each other when the case was closed and Harper went back to Nevada and Silas stayed here in Blackridge.

“I’d like that,” Harper said, and meant it more than she should.

Three p.m. became four. Four became five. The shop cycled through the afternoon crowd, the early dinner rush. Harper’s eyes burned from staring. Her body ached from sitting. And still, nothing.

“He’s not coming,” she said again at seven p.m.

This time, Silas didn’t argue.

***

At ten p.m., the barista started closing up. “Sorry, folks, we’re shutting down.”

Harper and Silas packed their laptops in silence, the weight of failure pressing down on both of them. Fifteen hours of surveillance. Fifteen hours that could have been spent actually investigating, following leads, doing something useful.

Instead, they’d drunk coffee and watched innocent people live their lives while somewhere out there, a killer was free.

The drive back to the cabin was tense and quiet. Harper stared out the window, watching streetlights blur past, her mind already racing ahead. What had they missed? How had the pattern been wrong? Where was the killer selecting his victims if not at the coffee shop?

“It’s not your fault,” Silas said into the silence.

“What?” She turned to look at him, her eyes adjusting to the darkness of the cab, the only source of light the steady glow of the dash and the intermittent flashes of streetlamps as they passed under them.

“Whatever you’re thinking right now—that you missed something, that you should have known, that this is your failure. It’s not.”

Harper’s throat tightened and she shook her head. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“Yeah, I do. Because I’m thinking the same thing.” Silas kept his eyes on the road, his hands steady on the wheel. “We dideverything right. The pattern was solid, the logic sound. He just didn’t show.”

“Or he saw us and stayed away.”