Page 7 of Whispers in the Night

He climbed out, locked the truck with the automatic precision of someone who’d done it ten thousand times. His body moved through the familiar routine while his mind stayed at the crime scene. Young woman. Dark hair. Symbols carved with surgical precision. A killer who’d been dormant for five years suddenly active again.

And Harper Sinclair, standing in his crime scene with recognition in her eyes and guilt written across her face.

I read the report. You ignored protocol. Went in without backup. Your partner followed you and died for it.

The words had been cruel. Silas knew that even as he’d said them. But cruelty had a purpose—it established boundaries. It made sure people understood that he didn’t want them close, didn’t trust them, didn’t need their help.

Especially people whose judgment had gotten their partners killed.

Inside, the house was dark and quiet. Silas flipped on lights as he moved through the space—living room with minimal furniture, kitchen that looked barely used, hallway leading to a bedroom and bathroom. Everything in its place. Everything controlled.

He’d learned control in the Army. You controlled your environment, controlled your emotions, controlled every variable you could because the world was chaos and chaos got people killed.

His team in Afghanistan had trusted him to control the variables. Clear the buildings, secure the perimeter, keep themsafe. And Silas had failed. One building not properly cleared. One suicide vest he’d missed. Three men dead because he’d moved too fast, been too confident, made assumptions instead of checking every corner.

Williams, Johnson, Brown. Their names were carved into his memory deeper than any symbol on any victim.

Silas stripped off his clothes—they smelled like the paper mill, like death and industrial decay. He walked to the bathroom, turned the shower as hot as he could stand, and stepped under the spray.

The water beat against his shoulders, his back, the scar tissue that ran down his left side from the blast that should have killed him. Sometimes, he wished it had. Would have been easier than carrying the weight of three deaths, three families who’d never gotten their husbands and fathers back.

He’d survived. They hadn’t. That was the math that kept him awake most nights.

Silas scrubbed at his skin mechanically, washing away the crime scene, the interaction with Harper Sinclair, the creeping certainty that this case was going to be different from anything he’d handled before. A serial killer with a five-year cooling-off period. Ritualistic elements that suggested obsession. And an FBI profiler who’d been hunting him for years.

I’ve been hunting this bastard for five years, and he just turned up in my backyard.

Her words echoed in his memory. There’d been something raw in her voice when she’d said it. Something personal. Like this killer wasn’t just a case to her—he was unfinished business.

Silas understood unfinished business.

He turned off the water, dried himself with the same methodical precision he did everything. Military corners on the towel when he hung it up. Clothes in the hamper, not on thefloor. Everything in its place because chaos was the enemy and control was survival.

In the bedroom, he pulled on fresh clothes—dark jeans, black T-shirt, the shoulder holster he wore even off-duty because being armed was as natural as breathing. The Glock settled against his ribs with familiar weight.

Four-forty-five a.m. Three hours and fifteen minutes until the meeting with Harper Sinclair and Captain Holloway.

Silas should sleep. He’d been up for twenty-two hours straight, and exhaustion made mistakes. But sleep meant dreams, and dreams meant Afghanistan. The explosion. The screaming. William’s body in pieces. Johnson calling for his wife with his last breath. Brown dying quietly, his hand in Silas’s, asking if his daughter would remember him.

She’d been three years old. She wouldn’t remember.

Better to stay awake.

Silas moved to the kitchen, made coffee with ritual precision. French press, exact measurements, water at exactly 200 degrees. The routine was soothing in its predictability. He could control this. The water temperature, the steep time, the pour.

He couldn’t control serial killers or FBI profilers or the fact that his captain was forcing him to work with someone whose judgment he questioned. But he could control his coffee.

While it steeped, Silas pulled out his laptop and opened the case file he’d started building at the scene. Melissa Wagoner. Twenty-four years old. Barista at The Daily Grind. Last seen leaving work at nine p.m. two nights ago.

Killed between ten p.m. and midnight, ME’s preliminary said. Which meant the killer had grabbed her fast, worked quickly, dumped the body in a location he’d scouted ahead of time.

Organized. Methodical. Confident.

Silas pulled up the photos he’d taken of the symbols. They were precise, almost geometric. Carved with something sharp—scalpel, maybe, or a very sharp knife. The killer had taken his time despite the time constraints. He’d positioned the body carefully. Arms at sixty-degree angles. Legs together. Head tilted slightly left.

There was meaning here. Ritual. Obsession.

Sarah Henderson, Reno, five years ago. Jessica Paul, six weeks later. Pamela Gibson, three months after that.