The Echo Always Comes Back
The sound of clapping shouldn’t echo like that.
Not unless it’s meant to.
It rattled in my head the whole ride back from the warehouse, louder than Liam’s questions, louder than the hum of the cruiser’s engine. My sister’s charm bracelet was still in an evidence bag on my lap, every little metal charm winking at me like it knew something I didn’t.
“How sure are you?” Liam finally asked.
“About what?”
“That it’s hers.”
I didn’t look at him. “I bought it for her on her twelfth birthday. You think I’d forget?”
He didn’t answer after that. Smart.
Back at the precinct, the place felt wrong. Not just busy — wrong. Too many eyes tracking me as I walked past, like they’d all just heard the latest gossip. In this job, you learn real quick: if they’re looking at you like that, it’s either because you’ve caught something big… or you’re about to fall hard.
I dropped the bracelet on Juno Reyes’s desk. She was halfway through a bag of pretzels, tapping away at her keyboard.
“Tell me it’s clean,” I said.
She didn’t even look up. “Define clean.”
“Not planted. Not fake.”
Juno sighed, finally taking the bag. “Fingerprints are wiped, but the clasp? That’s worn from years of use. The charms are scuffed in all the right places. Grace… this isn’t a replica.”
The floor seemed to tilt again, just like in the penthouse. “You can trace it?”
“Maybe. But if whoever left it’s smart, they didn’t buy it new. They’ve had it a long time.”
“Like since the day she disappeared,” I muttered.
Juno glanced up at me. “You think she’s alive?”
“I think somebody wants me to think she is.”
I spent the afternoon digging through the warehouse’s security feeds. Or what was left of them someone had looped the cameras for exactly thirty-seven minutes before the body was found. Clean, professional work. Not the kind you learn from watching late-night crime docs.
I was about to shut it all down when something caught my eye: frame 1227. Just for a blink, one of the cameras flickered — and in that half-second, a shadow crossed the far doorway. Too tall for Liam. Too broad for Marcus. A limp in the left leg.
My stomach tightened. I’d seen that gait before.
Back when I was sixteen.
Back when I was running down an alley, screaming my sister’s name.
By nightfall, the city felt smaller, like every streetlight was a spotlight aimed at me. I stopped by my apartment long enough to switch jackets, grab my backup Glock, and check my locks. Twice.
The voicemail was waiting when I came back into the living room. No number. Just a time stamp.
I pressed play.
That same low voice: “You’re close.”
I swallowed. “Close to what?”
Silence. Then: “Don’t make me take her away again.”
I didn’t sleep. Didn’t even sit down. I spent the whole night cross-referencing every case file I’d worked in the last ten years with every missing persons report from the year my sister vanished. At 3:17 a.m., I found it.
A pattern.
Three women had gone missing in the last two months. All in their late teens when they vanished, all presumed dead, all from the same three-block radius where my sister was last seen.
Two of those disappearances had never made the news.
Someone had kept them quiet.
By morning, I was back in Evelyn Trent’s office.
She didn’t bother offering me a seat. “You look like hell.”
“You’ve been keeping things from me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Careful.”
“Three missing girls. Two never reported to the press. All from the same place my sister disappeared. You gonna tell me you missed that?”
She lit another cigarette. “It’s not your case.”
“It is now.”
“Grace—”
“No,” I said, leaning over her desk. “Someone is dragging my sister into this, whether she’s dead or not. If you think I’m gonna sit on my hands because it’s politically inconvenient, you don’t know me at all.”
Her jaw clenched. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
I smiled without humor. “That makes two of us.”
I left before she could answer. By noon, Juno had pinged me with something new.
“You’re not gonna like this,” she said over the phone.
“Do I ever?”
“One of the girls on your missing list? Her name’s Mariah Levens. Guess whose building she lived in?”
“Tell me.”
“Virelli Tower. Same penthouse victim’s address.”
My grip on the phone tightened. “Get me everything on her. Now.”
The apartment where Mariah had lived was already gutted fresh paint, new carpet, the kind of fast turnover landlords use when they want to erase a bad memory. But memories have a way of bleeding through.
In the back closet, behind the hanging rack, I found it: a strip of wallpaper with something scratched into the plaster beneath.
Four words.
Almost invisible.
Written in a shaky, desperate hand:
HE HAS A KEY.
The sun was going down when I got back to my car. My phone buzzed again. No caller ID.
I answered.
“You’re chasing shadows,” the voice said.
“Then step into the light.”
A pause. Then: “Tonight. Pier 19.”
The line went dead.
Pier 19 was half-condemned, all rust and splinters. By the time I got there, the fog had rolled in off the water thick enough to choke. My boots echoed on the wood as I walked past dark warehouses, every one of them with doors hanging open like broken mouths.
Halfway down the pier, I saw it.
Another envelope.
Sitting dead center on the planks.
I crouched, picked it up. My name again, all caps. Inside a single Polaroid. My sister, older now, eyes wide, mouth gagged. And behind her… a shadow with a limp.
A creak sounded to my left.
I turned, gun raised.
Out of the fog, a figure stepped forward.
“Grace,” they said softly.
Then the world went black.