Detective Rowan Dyer stared at the case board in his office, jaw clenched, temples throbbing.
He hated this part—the silence between leads. The waiting. The feeling. Something about this case was off. Too ritualistic. Too clean. He'd worked homicide for nearly two decades and never seen a crime scene that looked so… orchestrated.
The symbol carved above Lila's body haunted him. Spiral within a triangle. It wasn't gang-related. Not occult in any textbook way either. He'd already checked. Rechecked. Checked again.
He was missing something.
Someone knocked on his office door.
"Come in," he grunted.
Officer Cooper stepped in, holding a folder like it was radioactive. "Uh… sir, you should see this."
Rowan raised an eyebrow. "What now?"
Cooper handed it over. "Got a call this morning. Woman claiming to be an independent journalist found a body out near the old trainyard. It's—uh—it's messed up."
Rowan flipped open the folder. Saw the photos. Eyes. Lips. Sewn shut.
A note.
A symbol.
He stared at it for several seconds, then muttered: "It's him again. Or—Jesus—someone else."
Cooper looked nervous. "You want me to pull the Lila files again?"
"No," Rowan said quietly. "I want you to find the woman who called this in."
Mara Quinn was already waiting at the front desk when they brought her up to the station. Her coat was damp from rain. Her boots were muddy. Her eyes were alert and untrusting.
Rowan stepped into the room like a bear entering a cage.
"You're Mara Quinn?"
"You're Detective Dyer?"
They didn't shake hands.
He sat across from her, flipping his pen between his fingers. "You trespassed on a closed property. You interfered with a potential crime scene. You took photographs without authorization."
"I also found a dead man with his mouth sewn shut," she replied. "You're welcome."
Rowan exhaled through his nose, trying to gauge her.
"You said you'd seen the symbol before?" he asked.
Mara hesitated.
She didn't trust cops. Not since her older sister's murder was buried by red tape and small-town politics. But something in Rowan's voice wasn't bureaucratic. It was bone-deep. Worn.
"I've been tracking it," she said finally. "For over a year. I saw it in a case in Elk Ridge—missing teen, body never found, tree carving left behind. Again in Gresham Falls—kid vanished during a town festival. Police never connected them."
Rowan's eyebrows knit together. "How did you get access to that kind of information?"
"I look where most people are afraid to," she said. "Deep forums. Black-archived message boards. Obits that don't match medical reports. People think serial killers work alone." She leaned forward. "They don't."
Rowan studied her for a long time.
"This isn't your case," he finally said.
"It's not yours either if you're about to pin it on another loner with a record."
That one hit. His jaw twitched.
"I think this is bigger than Durnville," Mara continued. "I think your girl—Lila—wasn't the start. She was the signal."
He stood abruptly. "You're done."
Mara rose too. "You're in over your head, Detective. And you know it."
Back in his office, Rowan opened the drawer he kept locked at all times. He pulled out a case file from six years ago—The Silverbird Case. A boy posed at the base of an old windmill. No blood. A missing phone. A carved symbol… same shape. No arrests.
Back then, they called it an isolated event.
Rowan lit another cigarette, even though he hated the taste. This wasn't random. It wasn't the work of a single sick mind.
This was organized.
And somewhere, behind all of it, someone was pulling the strings.
That night, Claire Holloway stepped out onto her porch, barefoot, eyes closed, face lifted toward the wind.
From beneath the sleeve of her nightgown, a symbol was faintly visible on her wrist—scarred into the skin.
She whispered a prayer that sounded nothing like any religion ever known.
And then she smiled—soft, maternal, and chilling.