“We weren’t supposed to have her this long. What is the holdup, Evelyn?” Dad’s voice is low but sharp as it cuts down the hallway toward me.
“I don’t know, Wade. I just need some more time.” Mom sounds frustrated.Who is this they’re talking about? Is there someone else I don’t know about here?
“We don’t have time. You put this in motion, and now they’re on our asses about it. Christ, Ev.” The sound of Dad’s footsteps coming toward the door has me scrambling into motion back to my room. I’m not supposed to eavesdrop on adult conversations.
“Ki?” I blink, the memory dissolving as I drag myself back into the cafe. Sterling and Lila both have concern etched across their faces, eyes fixed on me like I’ve said something alarming without realizing.
I turn my head toward Lila. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?” she asks. “You zoned out there for a while; it was hard to drag you back down to earth.”
Nodding, I force a small smile. “Yeah, I was just stuck in a memory.” I glance down at my phone to check the time. “We got to go—I have to make some final calls before tomorrow.” Lila scoots out of the booth, and I slide out after her. “Later, ghost,” I toss over my shoulder to Sterling. We make our way to the car, waving to Sarah as we go out.Just a little bit longer, I tell myself.It’s almost over.
Chapter Twelve
I watch Kiera disappears through the door with a look on her face like she’s trapped in haunted memories and can’t quite find her way back. On paper, she’s living a good life, sure—but I know better than anyone that paper lies. Something is eating at her. I just don’t know what yet. After I pay, I head to my truck and pull out my phone to text Cam.
Me: Heading home. Pull up all you
can find on Kiera, please.
Cam: Got it!
After about twenty minutes, I’m pushing open the door to Cam’s bedroom. “Got anything?” I ask, against his desk.
There are a million things pulled up on his monitors. “I only found the usual—basic records, social media, charity photos—nothing juicy,” he says. “Except for one thing. After a lot of digging, I found an old post on the dark web with her name linked to something called the Cicada.”
I don’t bother hiding the edge in my voice as I drop into the chair beside him. Cam fumbles for the mouse, dragging the blurred image into the center monitor until it swallows the screen. The post looks like a screenshot of an old forum board.
Post from February 2007
Anonymous User
A group of donors is looking for help with Cicada files. Some of you may have heard about it. It’s still a work in progress. We have a 7-year-old girl, Kiera Hawthorne. Seeking a boy around 12.
A white-hot rage floods my veins.What the fuck were these people planning to do with her?“Find everything you can on this Cicada thing,” I say, jaw clenched. “Something isn’t adding up between her mom’s murder and her dad’s charity auctions.” Cam just nods as I turn and walk out. Nothing good is going to come from this.Good thing I’m already on the guest list for tomorrow night.Wade invited me, hoping that whoever’s doing the blackmailing might show their face. My money says they will, and I’ll be waiting.
I grab a sandwich and a beer from the fridge and head for my room. I pull up the cameras and watch Kiera crawl into bed, disappearing beneath the covers. Does she know about the files? Did her mom? I need to figure out exactly what she knows—and how much. The name Cicada needles at the back of my mind, familiar and wrong, but I can’t pin down where I’ve heard it outside of background searches. I finish my food, kill the beer, and stretch out on the mattress. I let darkness take me, hoping sleep will shake something loose.
I come to in a different room. Mom must have moved me after I passed out. My stomach cramps and growls. She hasn’t given me food in days—just tiny sips of water, barely enough to keep me alive. The echo of a door opening ricochets through the space. “Well, someone woke sooner than I expected.” A man I don’t recognize steps into view. “You must be Sterling… Angelina’s son.” He comes closer, and I shove myself back until my shoulders hit the wall. He’s tall, his silhouette swallowing the weak light spilling in from the open door. Dark hair slicked back off a sharp, angular face. His eyes are a deep brown—steady, watchful, edged with something like urgency. “Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you.” He lifts his hands, palms open, like he’s giving me a choice to believe him. “I know you’re confused. Your mother has been…busy. I’m here to help.”
I keep my mouth shut, just watching him. He shifts his weight, his eyes skimming the room before landing back on me. “I know you haven’t eaten. We can change that.” He pulls a small plastic-wrapped bar from his pocket. The sight of it makes my stomach roar, a raw, ugly sound in the quiet. “Just something to tide you over,” he says, taking a small step closer but leaving space between us. “It’s safe. I promise.” Every instinct I have screams at me not to trust him, but hunger has its own voice, low and coaxing. He seems to read the war on my face and softens his tone. “I wouldn’t let you starve. You deserve better than this.” My fingers curl against the floor, torn between staying pressed to the wall and reaching for the food. He studies me, a flicker of what looks like concern tightening his features. “Look, I have a plan. But first, you have to trust me enough to eat.”
I drag in a shaky breath as I weigh my options. This could be a trap, or the only chance I have to claw my way out of this nightmare. I search his face for a crack, some sort of flag saying it’s a lie. “What do you want from me?” I finally manage.
He takes a step back, hands lifting a little like he’s showing he’s harmless. “I want to help you, Sterling. There are things happening that you don’t understand yet, but we’ll take it one step at a time.” He nods toward the bar. “First, please, just eat. That’s all I’m asking for right now.”
His eyes soften, and something in the way he looks at me makes it hard to call him a liar. I glance at the protein bar again, my stomach twisting on itself, hunger and fear tangling until I can’t tell them apart. I drag in a slow breath, trying to steady the pounding in my chest as I brace myself to make a choice that could change everything.
My lungs drag in deep breaths that feel too cold for the room as I start to wake. A chill traces my spine, the echo of a nightmare laced with a memory that feels like mine—but won’t quite come into focus. Most of what happened to me when I was a kid is buried so deep I only ever see it in flashes. The reel doesn’t start playing clearly until my teenage years; everything before that lives behind a locked door in my head. My heartbeat eases from a sprint to a hard, steady thud. Sunlight slips through the curtains in pale stripes, slowly stitching reality back together as my senses come online. I stretch and roll out of bed, padding toward the kitchen. The smell of coffee drifts down the hallway, dark and bitter.I need a fucking IV of caffeine.
Cam’s hovering over the stove, one hand stirring what looks like scrambled eggs while the other scrolls his phone. “I dug up more on the Cicada thing,” he informs me without looking up. “Turns out it was run by Kiera’s dad. A bunch of families applied, but I couldn’t tell who they were—just that they all had kids and were signing up. What the hell would they want with the kids? Wade’s a piece of shit, but if he’s sex trafficking, I can’t find a single thing that sticks to him.”
“You sure know how to start a morning,” I grunt, pouring myself a mug of coffee. “Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t any good.”
“I did find one name that caught my attention. Angel…” Cam clicks off the burner, sliding the pan to the back of the stove. “There’s no way that’s your mom, right?”
“If it was, I don’t remember. There's a gap in my memory from around that age. I would think I would remember seeing Kiera and Wade, though,” I state, piling my plate with some of what Cam’s cooked. “You’d think I’d remember Kiera and Wade if they had been anywhere near my life back then.” I drop into a chair at the table. “I’ve got that gala tonight. Wade’s convinced his blackmailer’s going to show. If I can smoke them out, maybe they’ll know more about Cicada.”