I opened my eyes slowly, dragged back from sleep by nothing in particular, and the first thing that greeted me was the dim glow of the clock on the bedside table. 3:01 a.m. The numbers hovered there like an accusation. Still heavy and half-lost in sleep, I rolled over, reaching for him out of pure instinct, my hand sweeping across the space where Davis should have been.
Cold and empty.
That was enough to tear the fog right out of my head.
I turned the other way and switched on the light. The room revealed itself fully now, stripped of shadows and excuses. The bed was undisturbed. No familiar shape beneath the covers, no quiet rise and fall of breath. Just silence and the faint hum of the night pressing in. If he'd gone to the bathroom, I would've seen the light bleeding under the door. There was nothing.
Still wrapped in fog and mid-yawn, I hauled myself out of bed and called his name, more out of habit than hope, then checked the bathroom anyway, just to silence that small, nagging voice in my head.
"Babe," I called again as I stepped into the hallway, already aware of the answer my body was moving toward. My feet carried me straight to the storage room, the one with the hidden door that opened into Davis's little command center, the place he disappeared to when his mind refused sleep and demanded control.
"Babe, what are you doing up at this hour?" I asked as I stepped inside.
He sat perched on the table like a predator refusing rest, his gaze fused to the wall where photographs smothered every inch, faces and locations pinned, crossed, knotted together into something obsessive and unholy, that always made me think of late-night crime documentaries. A detective's board. A restless mind pacing itself into corners.
"I am trying to find the person who thought he had enough balls to come for me and my family," he said, without so much as a glance in my direction. His voice was calm, and the calm in it was worse than shouting. The rage he kept buried vibrated in the room, a slow burning pressure I could feel against my skin, heat coiled behind every measured word. That was when I noticed his clothes, the same ones from the funeral, the same shirt clinging to him, sleeves rolled up like he had been preparing for something inevitable, the coat abandoned somewhere behind him. He had not changed. He had not slept. While I lay in bed, surrendering to darkness, he had stayed here, locked in place, spiraling deeper into whatever promise he had already made to himself and to the person who had made the mistake of waking this part of him.
Watching my husband lose sleep over something I already knew, something my own hands had quietly set in motion, felt like being dragged in front of a mirror and forced to watch myself betray him in real time. I wanted to shake him, beg him to stop chasing ghosts, to stop tearing himself apart over some imagined monster hiding in the dark, plotting the destruction of us, when all along the threat was standing right there, breathing beside him.
The irony sat in my throat, thick and suffocating.
I was the creature. The thing he was hunting. Every hour he sacrificed, every frantic thread he tried to pull, every pin driven into that board was an act of devotion doomed to fail.
I stepped closer.
"Babe," I murmured, resting my hand on his shoulder, careful, almost reverent. "It's really late. You haven't rested since we got back."
"Since when has the night ever been a problem for us, Babra?" he said, his voice tight. "Someone out there is holding our lives like a loaded weapon. Those files they took could tear apart everything we've built. Thomas is in the ground, and whoever did this is still breathing. Thomas didn't deserve that. So tell me, how am I supposed to sleep?"
He rose suddenly, frustration spilling over him, crossed the room, and slammed another photo onto the board with more force than necessary.
"I know," I said, carefully, softly. "But staying up all night won't fix it. You're exhausted. Rest now. Tomorrow you'll see clearer, and then we can face this together."
Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they were useless. Once Davis latched onto a question, he chased it the way a player chases the ball, overturning everything in his path until he found an answer. Any answer.
He turned then and finally looked at me. Really looked.
"You know I won't rest until I find something," he said quietly. "So go back to bed."
Before I could protest, he leaned in and kissed my forehead. Gentle. Familiar. Ruinous. Then his focus slid back to the board, to the faces, the lines, the silence screaming between them.
I stayed a moment longer, watching him, knowing nothing I said could pull him out of that room. When I finally turned away, each step felt heavier than the last, the truth pressing down on my chest, settling in deeper with every inch of distance between us.
"Babra… you are a fascinating woman. And I mean that in the most entertaining way. How can you stand beside your husband and mourn wth him, when you are the one responsible for his beloved Robert's death?"
The words followed me down the corridor, clinging like smoke. They echoed inside my skull long after the voice itself had vanished, curling, mocking, savoring its own cruelty. Whoever he was, he enjoyed the sound of my unease. Enjoyed knowing he had slipped beneath my skin. And as I pushed open the bedroom door, one truth hardened in my chest: I had to find the man behind that voice, and soon.
I shed my nightclothes without ceremony, slipped into my bathrobe, and went straight to the bathroom. No hesitation. No pause. Only momentum.
The shower came alive, water striking my body with relentless force, as if it meant to bruise answers out of me. Trying and failing to drown my thoughts. The truth was simple, though it refused to feel light. My husband had nothing to fear. Not about the files, not about any of it. I had them. Every last one. I may not have built the bomb, but I was the one who pressed the button. And now all that remained was the waiting. The counting. The quiet knowledge that when it went off, it would take everything with it.
"…someone hacked my computer and tampered with my investigation."
The words of the so called computer savvy guy I had hired crashed back into my head, sharp enough to make me twist the tap and kill the shower midstream. Silence flooded the room, thick and sudden. Even the bathroom felt altered, as if the walls had leaned in to listen.
Hacked.
The word echoed, ridiculous and almost funny.
Hacked? I thought, mockery curling at the edges of my mind. So much for computer savvy. I nearly clicked my tongue, disappointment tasting metallic on my palate. Either he had been careless, or someone far more deliberate had been standing two steps ahead of all of us.
And that was when it hit me.
This hadn't been an accident. Not a single second of it. Every move had been measured, paced with the patience of someone who enjoys the long game. Every loss placed just where it would hurt most. It was no longer unthinkable that Brenda's death itself had been engineered, just another piece sacrificed to reach me. The letter, the files, the fear, all of it part of the same design.
A sacrifice meant to draw blood from me.
And it had worked.
The scope of it unsettled me. It was larger than I had allowed myself to believe. Larger than pride, larger than grief. Everything was connected. I only needed to still my mind long enough to see the pattern clearly.
Over the years, my husband and I had made enemies. That was no secret. Power attracted resentment the way blood attracted sharks. We had faced them one by one, dismantled threats with practiced efficiency.
But this one was different.
This one understood patience. Understood intimacy. He did not come for us head-on. He slid between us. He planted doubt where trust had lived. He set a chain in motion that led us precisely here, each link disguised as coincidence. And now it was obvious where it had begun.
Brenda.
The thought left a bitter taste on my tongue.
Had he killed my best friend.
He had arranged it all to point back at my husband, and that was how he got inside my head. How he made me doubt. Clever bastard. I almost admired it.
Almost.
My thoughts spiraled, then finally snapped into place. A trap. Beautifully constructed. And I, like a fool drunk on my own intelligence, had walked straight into it. Reduced to a marionette, dancing on strings I hadn't seen.
"Son of a bitch," I whispered, the final pieces settling with a cold, brutal clarity.
I stepped out of the bathroom and dried my hair, my reflection staring back at me with unfamiliar calm. My husband was never the target.
I was.
This was not a shared battlefield. This was not a war we would fight side by side as we had so many times before. This one belonged to me alone.
I finished drying my hair, then opened the wardrobe. Jeans. A white T-shirt. And my favorite black leather jacket, worn soft with history. From the drawer, I took out my Ruger Single Six Convertible. Fully loaded. Comforting in its weight. I tucked it securely behind me, grabbed my keys, and slung the jacket over my shoulder.
The plan had already taken shape in my mind, clean and unforgiving. There was no room for doubt now.
This was war.
My war.