It was 2:17 a.m. when the phone rang.
Mira didn't move at first. She lay in bed, eyes open, staring at the ceiling where shadows danced like ghosts in the dark. Rain tapped against the window like a nervous hand trying to get inside. She could hear it — not just the sound, but the loneliness behind it.
She knew who it was before she checked.
No one ever called this late unless something had gone terribly wrong.
Still, she didn't answer.
The screen lit up with her own name.
**Mira Kade**
Twice.
Then stopped.
She waited for the silence to return, thick and familiar, but instead, the notification blinked on.
One new voicemail.
Her thumb hovered over the delete button. Habit. Self-preservation. Most nights, voicemails were bad news or desperate pleas from people who thought a forensic psychologist could read minds.
But tonight felt different.
She tapped play.
At first, only static. Then:
> "Mira. Listen carefully. You have seven days before the Red Door opens. If you fail again, thousands will burn."
A pause.
Breathing.
Not just any breathing.
Hers.
> "Don't trust Jonah. Don't go to the hospital. And above all—"
A sharp click.
Silence.
Mira sat up, heart hammering against her ribs.
That voice…
She knew that voice.
Because it was hers.
She played it again.
And again.
Each time, the same words. The same cadence. The same tremble in the final syllable, like the speaker was afraid of what came next.
She reached for the lamp, flicked it on.
The room flooded with light, revealing stacks of case files, journals, and notebooks filled with her handwriting. The walls were bare except for one framed photo — her parents, smiling beside a younger version of her brother.
She hadn't spoken their names out loud in years.
Mira stared at the phone. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
This had to be a prank. A cruel joke. Or maybe some glitch in her brain replaying old fears. It wasn't the first time trauma had whispered back at her.
She had spent the last decade learning how to keep the past locked away — buried under research papers, therapy sessions, and cold-case consultations. She had built a life around logic, data, patterns. That was her world. Not this… nonsense.
Yet, as she sat there, another part of her stirred — a whisper in the back of her mind.
What if?
What if this was real?
She shook her head. No. Of course it wasn't.
Still, she couldn't ignore the way her body reacted — the goosebumps crawling up her arms, the dryness in her throat, the pulse in her temples like a second heartbeat.
She forced herself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The grounding technique she used with clients after traumatic events.
Except now, she needed it for herself.
She glanced at the clock. 2:24 a.m.
Too early for anything rational to happen. Too late for anything good.
She got up, wrapped herself in a worn-out robe, and walked into the kitchen. The fridge hummed. She opened it, took out a bottle of water, and drank half of it standing there.
Her apartment was small but organized. Everything had its place. It was the only way she could sleep at night.
On the counter was a stack of reports from her latest consulting gig — profiling a string of unsolved disappearances in Portland. The police weren't calling them connected yet, but Mira could see the pattern. The ages, the locations, the missing details — all aligned with a specific kind of predator. A planner. A collector.
She flipped through the pages now, scanning the photos, the notes, the maps. But her mind kept drifting back to the voicemail.
Seven days.
Red Door.
Thousands will burn.
She closed the folder and dropped it onto the counter like it had bitten her.
Enough.
She needed to sleep. Needed to reset. Maybe tomorrow morning, everything would feel absurd again. Like a fever dream. Like nothing more than a side effect of stress and insomnia.
She walked back toward her bedroom, but before she could reach the door, her tablet buzzed.
Again.
She turned.
Another notification.
Local news alert.
> **BREAKING: Portland Woman Found Dead in Apparent Arson Attack**
Mira's stomach dropped.
She scrolled down.
Details were sparse, but the location was there.
And so was the name.
*Carly Voss.*
Her breath caught.
Voss wasn't a common last name.
And this woman — whoever she was — shared Mira's.
She clicked on the article, fingers trembling slightly.
The story said the fire started in an abandoned warehouse downtown. Body found near the entrance. Cause of death likely smoke inhalation. Investigators were still working on identifying the victim, but a name had been released based on personal effects found nearby.
Carly Voss.
No other details.
No photo.
No cause.
Just a name.
Mira stared at it.
Something about it gnawed at her.
Like déjà vu, but darker.
She leaned closer, reading the sentence again.
> *"Cause of death likely smoke inhalation."*
She swallowed hard.
The exact same phrase had been in her file — the official report from the fire that killed her family.
She remembered it word for word.
She had read it too many times.
She backed away from the tablet, suddenly feeling like the room was closing in.
This couldn't be a coincidence.
Could it?
She grabbed her phone again. Opened the voicemail. Played it once more.
> "You have seven days before the Red Door opens. If you fail again, thousands will burn."
Mira's skin prickled.
Fail again.
Fail what?
She pressed her palm to her forehead, trying to steady herself.
This was insane.
But the truth was, she had seen enough trauma, enough grief, enough madness in others to know when something wasn't just in her head.
And this? This felt real.
She moved to her desk, pulled out a notebook, and wrote down every word of the message. Then she circled the key phrases.
Red Door. Seven days. Fail again.
She added the name: *Carly Voss.*
Underneath, she wrote: *What did I fail before?*
There was no answer.
Only the quiet ticking of the clock.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Time was moving.
And something was coming.
She didn't know what.
But she was going to find out.
---
As dawn breaks, Mira finds herself drawn to the crime scene. Against her better judgment, she visits the burned-out warehouse where Carly Voss was found. What she sees there chills her to the bone — a child's drawing left near the ashes. When she picks it up, she realizes the image matches a memory she never knew she had.
And someone has been watching her.