Page 77 of Whispers in the Night

He nodded, already lumbering to his feet. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

The drive was quiet, both of them lost in their own thoughts. When they arrived at the cabin, the earlier interrupted moment hung between them like a question.

Silas seemed to sense her uncertainty. “No pressure,” he said quietly. “We were both running on adrenaline earlier. If you want to just sleep, that’s fine.”

Harper thought about it. She was exhausted, yes. But she was also still feeling the pull toward Silas, the desire to finish what they’d started.

“I don’t just want to sleep,” she said. “But maybe...slow? We’ve been running at full speed for days. Maybe we just...exist together for a bit?”

Silas smiled. “I can do slow.”

They changed into comfortable clothes and settled on the couch. Silas pulled up a movie on his laptop—something light and mindless. Harper curled against his side, his arm around her shoulders, his warmth seeping into her.

They didn’t talk about the case. Didn’t talk about Webb or victims or evidence. They just existed together in comfortable silence, the movie playing unwatched, both of them slowly unwinding from days of relentless pressure.

Harper felt herself drifting, lulled by Silas’s steady breathing and the security of being held. For the first time in what felt like forever, she felt safe enough to let go.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“For what?”

“For being patient. For not pushing. For just...being here.”

Silas pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Harper fell asleep like that, wrapped in Silas’s arms, the weight of the case temporarily lifted.

Tomorrow they’d hunt killers again. Tonight, she let herself just be.

Chapter 15

Harper woke on the couch, still wrapped in Silas’s arms. Gray morning light filtered through the windows. For a moment, she let herself just exist in the warmth and safety of his embrace before reality came crashing back.

The operation. Oliver Webb. A killer still out there.

She shifted, and Silas stirred, his arm tightening around her reflexively before his eyes opened.

“Morning,” he murmured, his voice rough with sleep.

“Morning.” Harper checked her phone. Six-thirty a.m. “We should get moving. Final day of the operation.”

They went through their morning routine with practiced efficiency—coffee, showers, changing into work clothes. But there was a new awareness between them now, a tension that had nothing to do with the case. Every time their eyes met, Harper felt the pull of unfinished business.

At the station, the mood was tense. Day three of the operation and they had nothing but a suspicious transient who might or might not be their killer.

“Webb spent the night in his van three blocks from Riverside Apartments,” Morris reported. “Woke up around six, drove to a fast-food place for breakfast, now he’s parked near the library.”

“Just existing,” Harper said, frustrated. “No overt suspicious behavior. No contact with potential victims.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” Silas suggested. “Maybe he knows we’re watching and is staying clean.”

“Or maybe he’s not our guy,” Holloway said, entering the conference room looking more refreshed than she had felt in…longer than she could remember. “I’ve got the mayor breathing down my neck about costs. We’ve had forty officers on overtime for seventy-two hours with nothing to show for it. I need results or I need to pull the plug.”

“Give us until noon,” Harper said. “Six more hours. If Webb doesn’t do anything incriminating by then, we’ll reassess.”

Holloway nodded reluctantly. “Noon. Not a minute longer.”

The morning dragged. Webb drove around Blackridge, stopping at a park, a convenience store, back to the library. Normal, boring behavior. Harper watched the surveillance feeds until her eyes burned, willing Webb to make a mistake, to give them something they could use.