I woke up to the sound of someone breathing in my apartment.
Not mine.
Too shallow, too fast. A breath that didn't belong to me.
My heart jerked in my chest before my body caught up. Sheets tangled. Sweat sticky. The room was still dark—early, pre-dawn—but I knew I wasn't alone. Instinct. Survival. Whatever's left of it after two years of spiraling down a drain no one bothered to stop up.
I didn't call out. Didn't grab the lamp or my phone or anything stupid like they do in movies. I stayed still. I listened.
Silence now.
That's worse.
I scanned the shadows from where I lay, breath shallow, cold sweat sliding down the back of my neck. If someone was here to kill me, they were taking their time.
I waited another five seconds. Then I moved.
Out of bed. Fast. Silent. Hand under the mattress.
Steel. Cold. Familiar.
The Glock still had weight. I hadn't touched it in months, but I never unloaded it. That was one promise I kept.
The bedroom door was open. Had I left it open? I couldn't remember. I hadn't exactly been sober last night. But I always shut the damn door. Habit. Control. The illusion of security.
I crept down the hallway barefoot, gun low. Everything in me straining for a sound, a shadow, anything.
Then I saw it.
The front door.
Locked.
Chained.
Untouched.
And on the floor… something white. Paper. Thick. Heavy. Centered perfectly in the middle of the rug like it had been placed, not dropped.
I didn't move closer yet. Just stared. No name on it. No writing. Just a plain white envelope.
I swept the rest of the room quickly, quietly. Bathroom. Kitchen. Closet. Empty. No sign of a break-in. Windows shut, latched.
Nothing disturbed—except my nerves.
I picked up the envelope with two fingers like it might bite. Inside was a single photograph.
Old. Grainy. Black and white.
Of me.
Twelve years ago.
Back when I was still a reporter. Back when I still believed words could change anything. Before the collapse, before the trial, before the things I can't say out loud.
The photo was of me standing in front of a burned-out house. Microphone in hand. Press badge clipped to my jacket. Dead-eyed. It had been raining that day.
On the back of the photo, in neat block letters:
"YOU MISSED SOMETHING."
That was all.
I stared at those three words for a long time, heart thudding harder than it had when I thought someone was breathing in my room. My hand tightened on the edge of the envelope. My stomach turned over, slow and sour.
It wasn't the photo that scared me. Or even the message.
It was the fact that I knew exactly what house that was.
And exactly what I'd missed.
---
Twelve years ago, I stood in that ash-soaked yard in upstate New York and told America it was a tragic electrical fire.
Four dead. Mother, father, two kids. All burned beyond recognition. "Freak accident," the fire marshal had said. "Nothing suspicious."
But I'd seen the girl. Just once.
At the edge of the woods behind the house. Thin. Wild hair. Blood on her dress. Gone when I turned. I thought I imagined it. Told myself it was stress. The story didn't need more tragedy. It had enough.
I'd buried that detail. Along with a dozen others. And walked away.
Then I drank.
Then I lost the job.
Then the lawsuit. The blackballing. The ten years of radio silence.
But now someone wanted me to dig it up.
No name. No contact. Just the photo. The message. The breath I swore I heard when I woke up.
I sat down on the floor, gun in one hand, photo in the other. The sun was starting to rise. Pale light through my half-broken blinds.
I should burn it. Trash it. Pretend I never saw it. That would be smarter.
But smart hasn't been my style for a long time.
I pulled out my phone. Still had power. I didn't bother scrolling past the missed calls from my sister or the threats from the landlord. I typed one word into the search bar:
Reynolds Fire 2013.
Old articles. My article. A few archived news clips. All the same copy-pasted facts.
But no follow-up. No investigation.
The girl was never mentioned.
Because I never mentioned her.
Jesus Christ.
I don't know how long I stared at the screen before the knock came.
Three soft taps.
Like whoever was on the other side already knew I was awake.
I stood. Moved to the peephole. Held my breath again.
A woman. Mid-thirties maybe. Hair tucked into a hood. Standing too close to the door.
She looked straight into the peephole like she could see me.
Then she mouthed something.
I had to squint.
"They're listening."
I didn't move. Didn't open it.
She waited five seconds, then slid something under the door.
A second envelope.
This one thicker. Yellow. Addressed to me in sharp cursive.
Then she walked away. Calm. Unhurried. Like she'd done her part.
I watched until she disappeared down the stairwell.
My hands were shaking when I pic
ked up the envelope.
Inside: a flash drive.
A burner phone.
And a note.
"You lied. They buried it. Now someone's killing the ones who knew."
The first time I held a burner phone, it was to interview a whistleblower who ended up dead in a river three days later.
The second time, it was given to me by the lawyer who told me to stop digging.
This was the third.
I didn't touch it right away. Just stared at the cheap plastic casing like it might detonate in my hands. The flash drive sat next to it, innocuous and silent.
I turned the envelope over. Nothing else. No signature. No instructions.
Just that single line:
"You lied. They buried it. Now someone's killing the ones who knew."
I hadn't spoken to anyone about Reynolds in over a decade. Not even Ellie. Especially not Ellie.
So either someone had access to sealed records… or they were there.
Like me.
My apartment felt smaller now. Thicker with history. I paced once, twice, then went to the corner where my ancient laptop sat gathering dust and resentment.
I powered it on.
It coughed to life, slower than I remembered. I disabled the Wi-Fi. Just in case. No cloud backups. No auto-syncs. No digital fingerprints.
I plugged in the flash drive.
One folder.
"SEE FOR YOURSELF."
Inside it: five files.
— A series of photos. Surveillance quality. Low-res.
— A PDF of a coroner's report dated four months ago. Name redacted.
— A video, labeled simply "INTERVIEW."
— A map.
— A text file: "Timeline."
I opened the PDF first.
The body was found in a motel near Albany. Woman. Mid-thirties. Cause of death: "Exsanguination due to deep lacerations at the wrists. Manner: Undetermined." But the photos in the folder—taken from the motel's parking lot—showed her entering the building alone, and two hours later, a tall man in a dark coat exiting through the back, face obscured by the grain.
The report didn't call it murder.
But the photos did.
I moved on to the "Timeline."
It was sparse but damning.
2013: Reynolds fire. Official cause: electrical malfunction.
2014: Journalist (me) discredits conspiracy theories surrounding the fire in a televised segment. Case effectively closed.
2016: Survivor possibly sighted in juvenile mental health facility in Virginia. Records sealed.
2018: First suspicious death of involved responder (firefighter, ruled suicide).
2020–2024: Three more deaths. All deemed accidents or self-harm. All had ties to the initial case.
2025: Source attempts contact with J. Mercer. No response.
I swallowed.
I hadn't gone by J. Mercer in years. Not since I scrubbed my bylines and tried to forget who I used to be.
But someone hadn't forgotten me.
I opened the video next.
Grainy, vertical frame. Like it had been recorded on a phone hidden in a coat pocket.
A girl sat across from the camera.
Couldn't be more than twenty.
Twitchy. Pale. Eyes like she hadn't slept in weeks.
"My name is Leah," she said quietly. "I think I'm the only one left."
My throat went tight.
Leah.
She had a sister. Or had. Back then.
"People think it was a fire," she continued. "It wasn't. They locked us in the house. My dad tried to fight them. They shot him. I watched my mom burn. They told us it was our fault."
She paused.
"They said they were cleaning up loose ends. That no one would believe kids anyway."
The screen shook slightly as the person filming shifted.
"I saw the reporter. He looked right at me. I was at the tree line. I thought maybe he'd come find me. He didn't."
I stopped the video.
My chest hurt.
Twelve years of denial cracked like a bone.
---
I didn't sleep that night. Just sat in my chair, the laptop humming low, staring at my own reflection in the black screen.
Morning light crept through the blinds, indifferent and sterile.
I finally picked up the burner phone. It was already on. One contact in the call log.
"PRIVATE."
I hit redial.
Two rings. Then a click.
"You opened it," a voice said. Female. Measured. I recognized it. The woman from the hallway.
"You were in my apartment," I said.
"You left your window lock broken. That's a problem, considering what you used to know."
"I didn't know anything," I snapped. "If I did, I would've—"
"No, you wouldn't have," she interrupted. "You did what they counted on. You buried it. You drank. You self-destructed. Like everyone else."
I clenched my jaw.
"Why now?"
"Because they're cleaning house again. And you're still breathing."
I let that hang in the air. My pulse thundered in my ears.
"You want me to investigate?"
"I want you to remember."
She hung up.
---
By 10:00 AM, I was on the subway to Manhattan.
I hadn't been back to the Tribune building in over a decade. I left that place in disgrace—publicly fired, privately threatened, blacklisted so fast it gave me whiplash. Most people forgot I ever existed.
But maybe one hadn't.
I still knew the side entrance. Still knew the front desk guy's rotation. I slipped in behind a delivery crew and rode the elevator to the sixth floor.
It hadn't changed much. Still that sour coffee smell and too much fluorescent light. Still the posters of Pulitzers won by people who forgot where they came from.
I found her in a corner office she definitely hadn't earned yet.
Madeline Cho.
My former editor. My former friend.
She was typing fast, two phones beside her, voice clipped on a Bluetooth call.
"Hold on," she muttered into the headset when she saw me. Then: "I'll call you back." She stood. "Jesus. What grave did you crawl out of?"
"Miss me?"
"You look like shit."
"Good to see you too, Maddie."
She folded her arms. Her eyes narrowed.
"What do you want?"
"Information. Off the record."
She snorted. "You lost your record twelve years ago."
I held up the flash drive.
"Remember Reynolds?"
Her face froze.
"I buried that file," she said.
"You shouldn't have."
She didn't move. But the air changed.
"I'm not opening that here," she said. "Come back at nine. After the interns leave."
"Can't wait that long."
"Then you're on your own."
I paused. "People are dying."
She looked me dead in the eye.
"They died back then too. And no one cared."
---
I left the office with nothing but a sour taste and the distinct feeling I was being watched.
I told myself I was being paranoid.
But I still took the long way home.
Four blocks from my apartment, I spotted him.
Tailored coat. Aviator shades. Not the typical mugger or junkie from my part of town.
He kept stopping whenever I did. Looking in store windows. Pretending to check his phone.
I crossed the street. He did too.
I turned into a bodega, slipped out the back, doubled around through an alley.
Lost him.
Maybe.
When I got back to my building, my door was cracked open.
Just an inch.
I didn't go inside.
I walked right past it, calm as ever, down the hall and out the back exit.
Then I texted the woman on the burner:
"They're here."
Seconds later, the phone rang.
Her voice was low. "Did you see who?"
"No. But someone's been watching me."
"Don't go back. You're burned."
"Then what now?"
"You want the truth? You need to go back to where it started."
"Reynolds?"
"No. Before that. Look at the map again. The red circle."
I pulled it out of the envelope, hands trembling slightly.
There—near the bottom—circled in red:
St. Dymphna Institute. Reston, Virginia.
I stared.
"That's a children's psych facility."
"Used to be. It's private now. Changed hands. Changed names. But that's where Leah was. And maybe she left more than just that video behind."
My voice was quiet. "Is she still alive?"
A pause.
"She was. Two weeks ago."
Then the line went dead.
---
I sat in a 24-hour diner off 7th Avenue for an hour after that. My thoughts were ice-cold static.
St. Dymphna.
I remembered the name. Barely. It came up once in a Reddit thread about the Reynolds fire. A conspiracy theory buried in misspelled rants and schizophrenic syntax. I dismissed it at the time. Like everyone did.
But now…
Now a woman was dead. A girl I'd seen and ignored was calling me out from beyond a screen. And someone had been in my apartment twice in the same night.
I stared down at my coffee.
I hadn't touched a drink in forty-one days. A miracle. A punishment. Depends on the day.
Today, I wanted to burn the whole bottle.
But instead, I opened my phone and searched for a bus to Virginia.
One-way.