Page 77 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

He let out a rough, low laugh that made his chest expand beneath the charcoal shirt. "Yeah, well. I had a momentary panic about that."

As we began to eat, the playful banter settled into a comfortable, rhythmic hum. But while he spoke, my mind was busy doing what it always did. I was cataloguing him. I watched the precise way he used his knife, cutting the steak into uniform, deliberate pieces.

I noticed that he ate his vegetables first, almost mechanically, before touching the meat. He didn't drink between bites; he waited until his plate was half-empty before reaching for his water glass.

When he was thinking about a response, his eyes would drift slightly to the right, his eyelashes casting long shadows against his cheekbones, and his blinking would slow down to a nearly imperceptible rate.

It was an obsessive sort of observation, a frantic gathering of data, but it didn't feel cold. It felt like I was memorising the geography of him, piece by piece.

"You're quiet," he noted, setting his fork down and looking across the table at me. "Usually, I can't get a word in."

"I'm appreciating the artistry," I said, gesturing to my plate. "And I'm listening. You have that look on your face, Detective. The one where you're carrying the weight of the whole county."

Elias sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, his fingers rasping against his short hair. "It's the case. It's just... Fuck it’s haunting me."

"The missing women?" I asked softly, leaning forward. I almost forgot to touch my food, my attention entirely arrested by the shift in his demeanour.

He nodded, his jaw tightening. "Eight of them now. Fucking eight. Over the last few months. All from the surrounding valleys, all within a thirty-mile radius of Blackridge. No bodies. No forensic footprints. It's like they just walked into the trees and dissolved."

"Eight," I repeated, the word tasting heavy and cold. "And there's nothing connecting them? No common thread?"

"One," Elias said, his voice dropping an octave as he leaned in, his eyes dark with a frustration that ran deep into his bones. "A necklace. A silver chain with a small, stylized letter 'A' pendant. We found it in the forest a few days ago. We still trying to find out what this fucking necklace has to do with this case.”

I listened, my expression perfectly neutral, my mind spinning at a terrifying speed. I was utterly fascinated by the mechanics of his mind, by how a detective constructed a reality out of thin air. No, I thought, comparing his words to my own internal map of the valley. I wouldn't have looked at the diner first. The highway is too open. He's looking at the transit points, but the missing woman couldn’t have gone just like that. It had to be someone that isn't a traveller. He's local.

"The 'A'..." I murmured aloud, tilting my head. "An initial? Or a trophy?"

"We don't know," Elias admitted, his gaze fixed on his wine glass. "Walker thinks it’s an initial. He spent the last few days cross-referencing every resident with an 'A' name within fifty miles. It's a waste of time. It’s too fucking obvious. I told him but he wanted to anyway."

Oh, I thought, a small thrill of intellectual appreciation running through me. That’s clever. He knows Walker is chasing ghosts.

"If it's a trophy, the person is letting you know he's watching you," I said, keeping my voice light, almost conversational, though my eyes were tracking the tiny twitch in his temple. "He's playing with the department."

"He's fucking playing with me," Elias corrected grimly. "Walker doesn't care. He's too busy keeping the town council happy and ensuring the tourists don't get spooked but I'm the one who keeps finding the fucking files on my desk."

"Then it's a good thing you're stubborn, Detective," I said, offering him a soft, reassuring smile. "A less frustrating man would have given up by now."

He looked up, his dark eyes locking onto mine with a sudden, intense gravity that made my breath hitch for the second time that night. The heavy warmth of his presence seemed to narrow the entire world down to just the two of us sitting in this small, wood-scented room.

The dinner ended in a softer, slower rhythm. We cleared the plates together, our shoulders brushing in the narrow kitchen, the shared silence between us now thick and charged with a dangerous, unspoken heat. He insisted on walking me back to my cottage, despite my protests that a few steps was hardly a perilous trek.

The night air was freezing, the valley fog rolling in thick and white between the birch trees. I wrapped his heavy blue jersey which he gave me tighter around myself, my boots keeping pace with his large, steady strides. He didn't speak much on the walk back, but he kept his arm close to mine, his massive frame shielding me from the biting wind.

When we reached my porch, the white-painted wood looked ghostly in the moonlight. I climbed the first two steps, turning around so that I was standing slightly above him, bringing our eyes to the exact same level.

Elias stood at the bottom of the steps, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his broad shoulders squared against the cold. The amber light from my window caught the rugged lines of his face, the dark fringe of his eyelashes, and the small, steady pulse in his neck.

"Thanks for dinner, Honey," I murmured, my voice dropping into that soft, dazed register I’d used earlier on the couch. "The steak was excellent."

"Seraphina," he said, the corners of his little smile gone.

"Just... stay inside tonight. Keep the doors locked."

"Be safe?" I teased gently.

"Always," he whispered.

He started to take a step back, preparing to turn into the fog, and that was when the impulse hit me. It didn't come from a place of calculation or planned seduction. It was just a sudden, overwhelming need to break the space between us, to anchor myself to the solid, warm reality of him before the silence claimed the night again.