In this room, surrounded by the veracity of who I am and what I’ve done, I’m every bit as sealed away from the outside world. I feel safe in spite of the gory details that infuse this space.
Today, Luke is finishing the last addition to the house. I’ll move my investigation into the new office, where it will be hidden; out of sight. I’ve sat in this room for three months, walking around the hatch in the floor, knowing what we sealed down in the cellar.
We welded the hatch closed.
And we never spoke of it again.
Instead, I leaped over the process and dove straight into a new obsession. There was no returning to the job as a detective, but that doesn’t mean I lost the fire, the passion to solve crimes.
We are who we are.
Luke has moved his projects to the garage, where he creates his art in peace, no longer enclosed by death and decay. His artwork is a disguise we use to conceal what we do. Another kind of door.
Understanding how to move on was as simple as a toss of Luke’s coin.
Taking revenge on the men who brutally harm and injure doesn’t bring back the lost lives of victims. It doesn’t change a damn thing. Even Luke admitted that there was no peace in the savage kill; his hunger only grew with each, more and more until the monster almost swallowed him.
There’s another side to the coin that Luke’s pain wasn’t allowing him to see.
I circle the name, then tap the window to draw his attention. He places the hammer in his tool belt, ready for this next part.
Mariana is fifteen. She was taken four months ago. Her family has posted flyers all over their hometown in Venezuela. She vanished during the day. She vanished with no clues…except for the ones only Luke and I can decipher. Because we have inside knowledge of Phiser.
For every name scrawled across the files, we focus not on retribution, but on finding what was lost.
Recovering the lost girls is not atonement for the decimated bodies in the cellar. It’s not an offered amends to dodge hell, or whatever damnation Luke and I may deserve. It’s the answer to the riddle of us—of who we are.
Jules was lost forever. Laura was lost forever. But their memory will live on with every life we recover and bring home to their loved ones. It’s the beauty found on the other side of darkness.
And one day, when Luke and I are nothing but ash ourselves, this house will be tore to the ground and the hatch ripped open. The cellar door will be unsealed and the remains of our darkest truth will be brought into the light.
For now, in this suspended moment of time that belongs only to us, I walk through our house with the comfort that, I have no regrets. I circle my arms around the monster that haunted my dreams, stare into his crystalline blue eyes, and finally understand the seduction of power.
Why run from the storm when you can control its destructive path.