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Elara barely slept.
The words she overheard—they're here… but the journal——looped endlessly through her mind. When dawn finally came, she felt raw, her nerves stretched thin like thread about to snap.
Miles was already up. He moved around the kitchen with casual ease, humming tunelessly as he scrambled eggs. The scent of burnt toast filled the air. Cass sat at the table, hair mussed, half-asleep over his coffee.
When Elara entered, Miles's grin was instant and too bright. "Morning, sleepyhead."
She forced a nod, pretending not to notice the sharp gleam in his eyes. He knows. He suspects I heard something.
And so, as she slid into the seat across from Cass, she made her decision: if Miles was testing her, then she'd test him back.
Her trap had to be small, believable. Not so obvious Miles could laugh it off, not so reckless that Cass would catch her.
She waited until Cass excused himself for a shower. The moment the bathroom door closed, steam hissing through the old pipes, she set the bait.
"I couldn't sleep last night," she said casually, buttering a piece of toast she had no intention of eating. "So I went through Dad's journal again."
Miles didn't look up from pouring coffee. "Yeah?"
"I think I cracked part of it." She kept her voice light, disinterested. "There's a name scribbled in the margins, like… a contact. Westover. Might mean nothing."
Miles paused. The tiniest pause—but enough. He set the coffee pot down with too much care, then turned toward her with a smile that didn't touch his eyes.
"Huh. That's… something."
Elara kept her gaze steady. "Probably just a false lead. I mean, why would Dad hide a name if it wasn't dangerous?"
"Why indeed," Miles said softly.
He sipped his coffee, watching her over the rim of the mug. The silence pressed too long. Then, just as abruptly, he shrugged. "Well, if you figure out who this Westover guy is, let me know. Maybe he's got treasure maps tucked under his mattress."
Elara forced a laugh. Inside, her pulse was hammering.
Because now she had something: the way he'd latched onto that name, too quickly, too intently.
When Cass rejoined them, dripping and cheerful, Miles slid seamlessly back into his easy banter, teasing Cass about his terrible appetite for black coffee. To Cass, nothing seemed wrong. To Elara, every word was blade-edged.
Later, when Cass left to run a quick errand—a convenience store down the block—Elara was ready for stage two.
She walked to the spare room, deliberately leaving the journal splayed open on the desk. But not just anywhere—on a page she had doctored, where she had carefully scrawled the word Westover in faint pencil at the margin, as if it had been there all along.
Then she slipped out, pretending to search her bag in the living room, ears straining.
Minutes ticked. Then—soft footsteps. A creak of the door hinge.
She held her breath.
Miles.
Through the thin walls, she heard the rustle of pages turning. Too long, too deliberate. He was looking, confirming what she'd planted.
When he returned, he did it silently, but his timing betrayed him: he reappeared in the living room, feigning a yawn, just as Cass's footsteps echoed up the stairwell.
"Everything good?" Cass asked, holding up a bag of groceries.
Miles grinned. "Better than good. I was just telling your sister we should all get some air later. Too much time inside makes people twitchy."
His glance flicked toward Elara. A needle-thin smile.
He knew she was twitchy. And now, she knew he had taken the bait.
That night, Elara stayed quiet while Cass and Miles played cards at the kitchen table, their laughter bouncing off the walls. She watched them—Cass so open, so blind, and Miles too smooth, too calculated—and felt the growing chasm between her and her brother.
When Miles excused himself to grab drinks, Cass leaned over, whispering:
"Why are you glaring at him like he killed your cat?"
Elara stiffened. "Don't you notice anything? He's… off."
Cass frowned. "He's just Miles. He's always been like this."
"No. Not like this." She lowered her voice further, her words trembling with urgency. "He's hiding something. I don't know what, but it's about the journal."
Cass's jaw tightened. "You're paranoid. Miles has had my back since forever. He wouldn't—"
Footsteps. Miles returned, setting down two cans of soda, one for each of them.
The argument died on Elara's lips. But Miles's gaze lingered on her just a second too long, as if daring her to finish the thought.
That night, Elara couldn't resist pushing one step further.
She wrote a note on a scrap of paper, in her father's style of shorthand. It looked authentic, though it meant nothing:
"Westover—dockyard, Tuesday. Beware the hollow."
She folded it and tucked it between the pages of the journal, making sure it would fall free if someone rifled through.
Then she hid awake, feigning sleep.
At 2 a.m., soft creaks stirred the silence. The sound of the journal being lifted, pages shuffled. A faint thud as the note slipped free.
Miles's intake of breath was sharp, audible even across the room.
Elara lay still, her heart slamming against her ribs.
Then silence. The journal returned to its place. Footsteps receded. A door clicked shut.
Morning came with brittle sunlight. Miles cooked again, acting as though nothing had happened. But when Elara glanced at him, she saw the faintest twitch in his jaw, the faintest tension in the way he carried himself.
He had taken the bait. He believed the note.
But then, as Cass busied himself with the groceries, Miles leaned closer to her, his voice barely above a whisper:
"You shouldn't write things down you don't mean, Elara."
Her blood froze.
His smile didn't falter. He turned away, clapping Cass on the back, joking about the eggs.
But Elara couldn't shake it.
He hadn't just taken the bait. He had seen through it.
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