We walked like the night was still holding us by the collar.
Ryan kept one hand pressed to his back where the bat had landed, shoulders set too stiff, breath controlled in a way that didn't fool anyone. Every few steps his face tightened for half a second, like pain was trying to rise and he was forcing it back down.
Nate stayed a pace ahead of us, knife gone now, hands shoved into his jacket pockets as if he'd never held anything sharp in his life. He talked too much. Not in full stories—more like fragments tossed into the air to see if they would stick.
"You guys always yell at strangers like that?" he said without looking back. "Bold. Respectable. Stupid, but respectable."
Ryan let out something that might've been a laugh. "We didn't exactly plan it."
"Yeah, I could tell." Nate's head tilted as if he was listening to something we couldn't hear. "You're not from around here. You don't have the look."
"What look?" I asked.
Nate shrugged. "Like you're already tired."
Ryan glanced at me once, quick and unreadable, then looked forward again. "You said you saw Jimmy three days ago."
Nate's pace slowed, just enough to show the question had weight. "I said maybe. Don't make it dramatic."
"It matters," Ryan said.
"Everything matters to you," Nate muttered. Then, louder, like he'd remembered he was supposed to be funny: "Fine. I saw him. Tall, thin, looked like he hadn't slept in a week. Didn't talk much. Like you." He nodded at me as if we were in on a joke together.
My stomach tightened at that, and I didn't know why.
The streets thinned as we moved away from the alley and back toward the parts of town that were pretending to be normal. A couple of dim shop signs buzzed under weak bulbs. A stray dog watched us from behind a trash bin and didn't move.
The adrenaline was leaving. That was the problem.
With it gone, everything I had been holding back started creeping in: the sound of the bat hitting Ryan's back, the way my legs hadn't obeyed me, the moment Ryan had called my name and I hadn't moved fast enough.
Hope had been there for a second—Jimmy might still be alive.
Now even that hope felt suspicious, like something that had slipped into my pocket when I wasn't paying attention.
Nate stopped near a narrow building with chipped paint and a staircase that looked tired of holding itself up. He glanced up at one of the windows, then at us.
"You can crash at my place," he said, like he was offering us a cigarette. "It's close."
Ryan hesitated. "We don't want to impose."
Nate snorted. "You're already imposing. But whatever. Better than sleeping outside like idiots."
He started up the stairs without waiting. Ryan followed after a beat. I followed last.
Halfway up, Nate looked over his shoulder, grin quick and wrong.
"Just don't make a sound," he said. "He's not big on noise"
He said it like a punchline. Ryan gave him a polite smile that didn't reach his eyes.
I didn't smile at all.
Inside, the apartment smelled like damp fabric and old cooking oil. The lights were off, and Nate didn't turn them on. He moved through the darkness like he knew every obstacle by muscle memory, like he'd learned the hard way what happens when you bump into things.
"Sit wherever," he said.
There wasn't much to choose from. A couch with a torn armrest. A plastic chair pushed against a wall. A small table cluttered with empty cups and a cracked phone charger.
Ryan lowered himself carefully onto the couch, jaw clenched. Nate rummaged through a cabinet and tossed him a small bottle of water.
"For your heroic wound," Nate said.
Ryan took it anyway. "Thanks."
Nate glanced at me. "You gonna stand there all night or what?"
I sat on the plastic chair because it felt like the least amount of commitment. My hands were still faintly shaking, so I locked them together and pretended I was just tired.
Nate turned the TV on, volume low—so low it was mostly light flickering on the wall. A man's voice spoke without meaning. Nate didn't watch it. None of us did.
For a moment, the room held a kind of quiet that felt almost safe. Not because it was peaceful—because it was contained. Four walls. A ceiling. No open street. No alley. No bat.
Ryan drank a mouthful of water and looked at Nate. "You said your father—"
A heavy sound moved somewhere deeper in the apartment. Not a voice. Not footsteps. More like a chair shifting, or someone turning over in bed.
I notice Nate standing still, like his life is flashing in his mind.
His head angled toward the sound, eyes narrowed as if he was counting the seconds between noises. His shoulders were perfectly still.
Then he blinked once, like he'd reset himself, and leaned against the counter with a grin that felt pasted on.
"He sleeps light," he said. "Old man's got ears. Like a bat. Not the fun kind."
Ryan didn't push. He just nodded slowly, like he'd filed the information away.
I watched Nate's hands. His fingers were tapping his thigh, too fast, too constant. He noticed me watching and stopped.
"So," he said, turning too quickly. "Farm. Town's Hill Farm, right? Why do you care?"
Ryan looked at me. He was giving me the chance to answer, like he always did—letting me hide behind his words if I wanted to.
I didn't.
"Someone from our office disappeared," I said. "We think he came here."
Nate's expression flickered—something between interest and irritation. "People disappear all the time."
"Not like this," Ryan said quietly.
Nate rolled his eyes. "Sure. Your missing office guy is special. Whatever helps you sleep."
I didn't respond. I didn't know what to say to someone who could treat violence like weather.
Ryan shifted on the couch and winced. Nate noticed it and clicked his tongue.
"Hold on," he said.
He disappeared into a hallway and came back with a small first-aid kit that looked too old to be clean. He tossed it to Ryan.
"Don't bleed on my couch," he said, then added, as if he couldn't help himself: "My father hates stains."
Again, like a joke. Again, like a warning.
Ryan opened the kit and started wrapping his back as best as he could. Nate paced the small room, restless energy rubbing against the walls.
I tried to slow my breathing. In my head, the alley replayed anyway. My body remembered the freeze better than it remembered the movement. The moment before I lunged, when Ryan had been pinned and everything in me had locked up.
I hated that part of myself. The part that waited.
But even as I hated it, I could feel it hovering, ready to return the moment the world felt too sharp.
Eventually, Nate yawned like he wasn't exhausted enough to have earned it.
"You can sleep here," he said, waving vaguely toward the couch and floor. "I'll take the other room."
Ryan shook his head. "We should leave before morning. We don't want to—"
"Yeah, yeah." Nate's eyes flicked toward the hallway again. "Just… don't talk loud."
He disappeared.
Ryan lay back on the couch carefully, face turned toward the ceiling. The TV flickered without sound. I sat in the chair, too tense to lie down, too tired to stay upright.
In the dim light, Ryan looked older. Not in years. In weight.
"John," he said softly.
"Yeah?"
"You did good back there."
I swallowed. My throat felt tight. "I was late."
Ryan didn't argue. He didn't comfort. He just said, "You moved."
It wasn't reassurance. It was a fact.
And facts, somehow, felt worse.
I slept in pieces.
Every time I drifted, a sound pulled me back: a pipe knocking, a distant car, the faint shift of something in the hallway. Once, I heard a voice—low, rough, angry—and then silence. I couldn't make out the words.
I didn't try.
Morning came gray and thin. Light seeped through the curtain like it was tired.
Ryan was already awake, sitting on the edge of the couch, shoulders hunched forward, eyes fixed on nothing. When he noticed me watching, he straightened slightly.
"We go to the farm," he said.
It wasn't a suggestion. It was the only thing holding him up.
I nodded automatically. Then my mouth opened before my brain could stop it.
"Maybe we should ask around first."
Ryan's eyes narrowed. "Ask who?"
"People," I said, too quickly. "Someone might know—if Jimmy was here, if he went somewhere else. We can get a clearer picture before we—" Before we walk into whatever is waiting there, I meant. Before we confirm something I'm not ready to confirm.
Ryan stared at me. He didn't call it fear. He didn't call it avoidance. He just studied my face like he was trying to understand what wasn't being said.
Then he nodded once. "Fine. Ten minutes. We ask. Then we go."
Relief flickered through me—sharp and shameful. Ten minutes bought time. Time bought distance. Distance bought numbness.
Nate appeared from the hallway, hair messy, shirt wrinkled, expression already defensive. He looked at us with a smirk face and said,
"You're leaving early."
"We're asking around town," Ryan said.
Nate's smirk faded into something flatter. "Don't bother."
Ryan raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
Nate shrugged. "People don't like questions."
"That's not an answer," Ryan said.
Nate smiled again.
Outside, the town looked worse in daylight. Paint peeled. Signs were sun-faded. A cat sat in the middle of the road like it owned the place.
We tried the nearest shop first. A woman behind the counter didn't look up when we walked in. Her hands kept moving, stacking items that didn't need stacking.
Ryan asked politely, "Excuse me. We're looking for Town's Hill Farm."
Her hands paused for half a second. Then resumed.
"I don't know," she said.
Nate leaned against the doorway like he belonged there. "She knows," he said cheerfully.
The woman's eyes flicked to him—sharp, warning. Nate lifted both hands as if surrendering.
Ryan tried again. "We're looking for a man. Tall, thin. Came through here recently."
"I don't know," she repeated.
Her voice didn't change. But something in the air did, like the room had decided it was no longer open to us.
We left.
Next, a man smoking outside a mechanic's shop. Ryan asked. The man exhaled smoke and stared past us like we weren't there.
"Don't know," he said.
A teenager sitting on steps, earbuds in. "Don't know."
A cashier at a small grocery store. "Don't know."
It wasn't hostility. It wasn't mystery. It was exhaustion—like answering would cost them more than it was worth.
After the fourth "don't know," my relief had turned into something else. A tightness behind my ribs. Because now the delay wasn't buying safety.
It was buying the feeling that we didn't belong here, and the town wanted us gone.
Ryan stopped walking abruptly and turned to me. "Enough."
I didn't argue. I couldn't. The avoidance had failed, and now it felt like cowardice instead of caution.
We started toward the open land beyond the clustered buildings, past the last row of houses where the town thinned into fields and quiet.
The farm sat farther out than I expected. The road became dirt. The air smelled damp, metallic underneath the soil. The wind had nothing to hit, so it moved freely, cold against my face.
When we reached the gate, it wasn't locked. It wasn't guarded. There were no signs, no warnings, no dramatic symbols.
Just a wooden fence leaning slightly, like it had given up resisting gravity.
Ryan pushed it open.
The hinge squealed—a thin, sharp sound that made my shoulders tense.
Nate muttered, "Great. Announce ourselves. Brilliant."
We stepped inside.
It was empty.
Not "abandoned" empty. Not "crime scene" empty. Just… empty.
A barn. A small house. Tools left where someone might've set them down and forgotten. The kind of forgetfulness that didn't belong to a careful person.
Ryan moved with purpose, scanning windows, doors, corners. Nate lagged behind, eyes darting, jaw tight.
I walked slower. Every step felt like it was deciding something for me.
Inside the house, the air was stale. Dust in the corners. A table with a cup half-full of something that had gone dark and thick. No food smell. No warmth. No sign of someone living comfortably.
We found the desk in the back room.
It wasn't dramatic. It was just a desk. Cheap wood. Papers scattered. A drawer half-open.
Ryan stopped.
I stepped up beside him and saw it.
The stain sat near the edge of the desk—brown-red, dry, uneven. Not enough to be dramatic. Just enough to refuse being nothing.
My throat closed.
Ryan leaned closer, careful, eyes moving like he was trying to read something that wouldn't hold still.
Nate crouched.
"Yeah," he said. "That's blood."
Ryan glanced at him. "You sure?"
Nate nodded. "Old."
The word lodged somewhere deep.
"How can you tell?" Ryan asked.
Nate shrugged. "Color. Edges." He tapped the desk once. "If this was recent, this place wouldn't feel this quiet. Town doesn't stay quiet when something fresh happens."
I felt it then—the shift.
Nate straightened, brushing dust from his hands. "Whatever happened here…" He paused, not for effect, just careless timing.
"It already had a head start."
My chest hollowed.
A head start.
Asking around.
Ten more minutes.
Buying time I didn't have.
My jaw locked. I swallowed, but the movement didn't reach my throat. Heat crept up my neck, settled into my face, heavy and obvious. I could feel it there—like a mark I couldn't wipe away
Ryan's eyes flicked toward me.
I didn't look back.
Behind us, Nate shifted. "Hey—" he said, then stopped.
I heard his breath hitch when he saw my face.
"Oh," he said quietly.
He rubbed the back of his neck. "That wasn't—" He gestured once, vague and useless. "I talk too much."
I nodded too fast.
"It's fine," I said.
It wasn't.
Ryan said nothing.
That silence pressed harder than anything Nate had said
The guilt settled—not sharp, not loud. Just weight. The kind that reminded me why I wait. Why I delay. Why routine feels safer than choosing.
I stepped back from the desk.
Not from the blood.
From the certainty creeping in.
Whatever happened here didn't need us anymore.
And whatever came next wouldn't wait for me to be ready.