Chapter 27

I zipped the suitcase with a sharp tug, the finality of the motion not quite matching the churn of doubt in my gut. Something was amiss—a piece of this twisted puzzle still eluded me.

"Let it go, Eva Rae," I muttered to myself, my fingers trembling as they clasped the suitcase handle. "Your family is waiting for you."

The house echoed with the hollowness of my departure, each step toward the front door amplifying the uncertainty that clawed at the back of my mind. I heaved the suitcase into the trunk, the thunk resonating like a gavel on judgment day. My hands swept over the pockets of my jeans, confirming keys, phone, and the ever-present sense of duty.

I slid behind the wheel, the leather of the driver's seat embracing me like an old friend. The engine roared to life, insistent and ready. I cast a last glance at the rearview mirror—the Airbnb shrinking away—and then, nothing but the road ahead.

The highway unfolded like a gray ribbon beneath a sky heavy with unspoken secrets. Cars blurred past, their drivers unknowing of the storm brewing within me. With every mile marker I passed, determination sunk its teeth deeper into my resolve.

"You gotta let it go, Eva Rae," I whispered to the open air, foot pressing harder against the accelerator.

But I couldn't. Of course, I couldn't. It kept nagging at me, pulling me. My foot hesitated on the pedal; mybreath hitched.

"Dammit," I exhaled, wishing I just wouldn't care so much. But I did, and that was my downfall.

I had to go back. I could never live with myself if I didn't. I simply couldn't leave an unsolved mystery behind.

The wheel jerked in my hands, tires squealing objections—a quick turn toward an exit carved into the asphalt like a desperate plea. I returned to I95 in the opposite direction.

Going back.

My heart thudded, the engine growled, hungry for truth, while my fingers drummed on the steering wheel. Doubt was a bitter taste at the back of my throat.

"You need to find the truth." The words tumbled out, unbidden. A mantra. "Before you can go back. Before you'll be able to let this case go."

The familiar turns loomed up, somber and foreboding. My car, an extension of will and fear, hurtled toward the house where Angela's life had spilled out over polished hardwood.

Each mile devoured brought me closer to the maw of revelation. The house stood sentinel, windows like vacant eyes. I parked with a screech, heart a drumroll against my ribs.

This was it—the dive back into the abyss.

"Show me," I breathed, hand finding the grip of my gun with practiced ease. "Show me what I missed."

Gravel crunched underfoot as I killed the engine and swung the door wide. The house loomed, a silent sentinel to secrets and lies. My sneakers hit the pavement, each step deliberate, echoing in the stillness that hugged the crime scene. No yellow tape fluttered in the breeze anymore; it had been three years, and the world seemed oblivious to the horror that had unfolded within these walls.

I rang the doorbellandthen waited. There was no car in the drivewayandno lights spilling from inside. When no answer came, I looked through the windows but saw nothing but vacant rooms inside.

I knocked.

"Will?" My voice sliced through the silence, hopeful yet wary. I listened, heartbeat drumming in my ears. Nothing.

I walked to the back and grabbed the sliding door that was still left unlocked. I walked inside.

"Will? It's FBI Agent Thomas. I need to talk to you. Are you home?"

The air felt stagnant, heavy with the absence of life. The void answered back—no footsteps, no breaths, just the whisper of dust settling into the grooves of time-worn floorboards. It didn't look like Will had been back here after being released. Everything looked just like when I was here last.

"Okay," I muttered, steeling myself. Adrenaline surged, visceral and sharp. "Let's take a look."

I stepped over the threshold, the weight of the unseen pressing close. It was as though the house had swallowed Angela whole, erasing her existence with a gulp of shadows and silence. But I was here to make it spit out the truth, however long it had been biding its time in the darkness.

I moved swiftly, my eyes raking over the mundane details of a life interrupted—of Will staying there for three years before his arrest. Three years after his wife had died in this very place. How did you do that? How did you cope with that? I once lost a dog very suddenly when I was younger, and I could barely be in my own apartment after that. But Will had lived herefor three whole years. And then he had been arrested. One morning a couple of months ago, they had come for him, and no one had lived here since. I noticed the scatter of magazines on the coffee table, a half-empty mug of cold coffee crowning its ceramic surface.

The stairs loomed before me, wooden and unassuming. I could almost see her there—Angela, poised for a descent she'd never complete. The banister seemed to shiver with the ghost of her touch. My gaze crawled upward, tracing the path of her fall, and I shook the image from my mind.

Room by room, I scoured, flipping cushions and rifling through drawers—an intruder searching for the jagged piece of this puzzle. But each space yielded nothing, pristine to an unsettling degree. The kids had gone to live with their grandmother when their mother died. Yet their rooms still stood the same—like mausoleums over a time lost. The stairs leading me back down had been cleaned; you couldn't see the blood that was in the pictures in the case files anymore. The handprint on the railing was gone, too. It was like it had never happened.

Yet it had. And it creeped me out as I walked down the stairs, grabbing the railing as if I was afraid to suffer the same fate.

What made her fall? Was she drunk? On drugs?

The case files told me she usually had great balance. She had even been a ballerina as a child. But the toxicology report also told me that she had no drugs in her system.

Could it be just an accident? Was I wrong about my strange feeling that it wasn't?

Something caught my eye: the door leading to the screened-in back porch.

I opened the sliding door and stepped out. The screen was ripped in places, and the area mainly served as a place for them to store their patio furniture.

"Stay sharp; look for anything abnormal," I murmured to myself.

And just like that, something in the corner caught my eye.

"Hello, what have we here?" The words were a whisper, a ghost's breath.

Moving closer, the porch surrendered its prize.

"What on earth…?"

The revelation was sharp, a shard of glass in my mind. This changed everything. The narrative, the suspect, the motive—they were all intertwined in this macabre story.

I swallowed hard, the taste of betrayal bitter on my tongue. Trust, once broken, turned the world into an alien landscape. Here, beneath the earth, surrounded by whispers of the past, I stood on the precipice of a staggering truth.

And it was making my blood run cold.