Page 65 of White Noise

Instead, I tell him I don’t know.

By morning, my condo is full of things that prove something happened without proving the part that matters. Call logs. Platform records. A dead man several cities away. Eleven minutes of corrupted footage from last night. Another ruined recording from the private call.

Two impossible events tied together by fucking static, and me.

That’s just fucking great.

I haven’t slept. Between the operator, the police, the platform, and two different officers calling me back for the same information in slightly different ways, the morning disappears before I even realize it’s gone.

By early afternoon, I’m running on caffeine and spite.

I finally stop answering my phone long enough to shower because I can still smell sweat on my skin. I stand under the water until it goes cold, scrubbing harder than I need to, then pull on an oversized shirt and spend another couple of hours repeating the same story while carefully leaving out every detail that would make someone start wondering whether I need a psych evaluation more than a murder investigation.

By late afternoon, I’m so exhausted I feel hollow.

Then I walk past my bedroom, and stop.

The chair is still crooked. One toy is on the floor where I knocked it off the desk lastnight. The ring light faces the desk like nothing happened there.

My stomach twists. I fucking hate my own bedroom now.

That realization makes me angrier than anything else has all day.

Fuck him.

This was mine before Silas ever found me.

VioletHex was mine. The cameras, the screen, all of it was mine. I decided who watched, what they saw, when they got access and when they lost it. He doesn’t get to take that too.

I suck it up, and walk inside. I don’t turn anything on, I just sit.

The chair feels wrong beneath me at first, so I plant my feet against the floor and stay there until the urge to leave passes.

Five minutes.

Maybe ten.

Then I see him.

Not on the monitor.

In it.

The screen is powered off, but Silas is standing in the reflection behind me. The scar across his eye is impossible to miss.

I don’t move.

“Are you fucking serious?”

His smile appears in the dark glass and it only makes me angrier.

I spin around so fast the chair clips the desk behind me. “You murdered him.”

Silas is standing near the wall like he’s been there the whole time, more solid than he was before. No flicker or distortion. No weakness at the edges.

Just him. Calm and fucking smirking.

“Hello to you too.”