He let out a slow breath. “Right now, we have two confirmed victims. One is a police officer who was missing for thirty years. Now deceased. The other is a woman who vanished six months ago. The male victim’s in the morgue at Waverly County. He has around-the-clock surveillance.” He paused and swallowed. “The woman is at Blackwell Institute. She’s… a shell. Uncommunicative. Catatonic. Found walking partially clothed on the shoulder of Route 83. Alone.”
He looked at two of the newer agents. “Start profiling both. Names are Henry Byron and Mara Dwyer. I want to know everything about them—family, associates, mental health history, last known sightings. Then I want a list of every missing person from Waverly County and all adjoining jurisdictions over the last thirty years. Use old files. New ones. Doesn’t matter.”
One of them hesitated. “Sir… do you think there are more?”
Alex didn’t blink. He just nodded.
He turned and walked over to Brad. The fact that Brad hadn’t asked about Charlotte told him everything—he knew. Brad said quietly, “I asked Isobel to re-profile Ward. Byron surfacing, the condition of the woman… it’s clear Ward wasn’t acting alone. He passed on his methods.”
Alex gave a tight nod. “Told my team to do a search on every missing. Told them to look deeper. Molly performed the autopsy. It was a shit show. Spinal injections. Craniotomies. Electroshock therapy.”
Alex glanced around the room. “I need your patrol guys checking out every piece of abandoned real estate in Waverlyand the border counties. Cabins, sheds, boarded-up warehouses, storm cellars, everything.”
“Done,” Brad said before his lips spread into a dry smile. “Sorry you missed Ethan’s welcome speech. He lectured that if anyone so much as breathes a word of this to anyone, they’re done. Officially, we’re all attending a specialized course in modern policing tactics. You’ll find the folders on the chairs, thanks to his wonderful wife stealing the ME’s color printer at dawn. He did just enough to break the ice.”
Ethan ended his call and walked over, face unreadable. “That was the warden. Ward’s dead. About twenty minutes ago.”
Alex closed his eyes.
“Charlotte’s still there,” Ethan added. “Still with Graham Cullen.”
That name hit Alex like a punch to the ribs again.
Brad and Ethan both looked at him now—waiting, not asking. But the question hung there. Is she going to be a problem?
Alex didn’t answer right away. He wanted to get to work, start running the chessboard. But this wasn’t just strategy. It was Charlotte. He walked toward the far corner of the room with Brad.
Ethan followed. “You okay?”
Alex gave a tired shrug.
Ethan handed him a file. “Cullen’s personnel jacket. Official stuff first—good cop. Solid record. Eight years partnered with Charlotte. Retired five years ago. Married four years back, after he came out.”
Alex nodded slightly. Did Ethan tell him that to take away any jealousy? It didn’t help. Charlotte had provoked a deeper hurt. Loss of trust. Betrayal. He should be with Charlotte at the prison.
Ethan looked away. “What’s not in the file—things went south between them after her promotion. Charlotte cut him out. Real clean. The fallout got worse when Cullen got rough during an interrogation. She reported it. Disciplined him. Two-day suspension.”
Brad winced. “That’ll do it.”
Alex stared at the file in his hands, all of it pressing down—Charlotte’s silence, Cullen’s reappearance because she wanted it that way. Ward’s death. People were coming out of the ground like ghosts. Everything she buried was clawing its way back to the surface.
And Charlotte… if she was unraveling, he’d feel it. And he did.
Alex spent the rest of the morning buried in the Ward file, the edges of each page curling with age and exposure, building a slow, steady crush in his chest. He read in silence, highlighter and pen untouched. There was nothing to mark. It was all important. Every name, every date, every unexplained piece of pain.
There were fifteen victims found near death, all exhibiting similar symptoms: extreme emaciation, severe dehydration, muscle atrophy, and psychological trauma so deep, it bordered on dissociation. Most were discovered in remote or abandoned locations — basements, storage sheds, hunting cabins — all within a sixty-mile radius of Waverly County. Despite immediate medical intervention, ten of them died within seventy-two hours of being found. The official cause was listed as multi-organ failure, but Alex had seen the photos. It looked like their bodies had simply given up. He wondered if the torture was performed elsewhere, and they were dumped where they were found.
Five victims had survived long-term. Their files were thinner but somehow worse. Three remained in medical institutions, completely nonverbal. One, a woman named Janessa Cole, wasprone to violent outbursts and had been restrained for her own safety. Another, Nolan Grier, was blind and mute, often found clawing at the corners of his room as if trying to dig his way out. The third, Tyler Chan, hadn’t moved or spoken since being found. He just sat, blinking, responding only to changes in light. None of them gave anything the doctors or law enforcement could use — no names, no places, no leads. Just silence.
The remaining two had been listed as "released to family custody." But when Alex cross-checked the addresses, both had long since gone cold. One house was foreclosed and empty, the other burned to the foundation. No forwarding contacts. No updated records. They’d vanished all over again, and no one in the department did any follow-ups after Charlotte retired.
And then there were the common threads. All of the victims had gone missing without explanation. Most were between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. All had spent significant time alone before they disappeared — long-haul truckers, out-of-town students living in off-campus housing, seasonal workers. People whose absence could go unnoticed, at least for a while.
Ward’s name didn’t appear in any official report until Charlotte linked him to a property where two victims were found nearly dead. Even then, there was no clear connection—no pattern. He denied knowing anything about it. But now that Alex was reading it again, knowing Byron had reappeared, knowing Charlotte had seen the victims with her own eyes — the pattern was screaming.
Whoever Ward was working with, they didn’t kill. They kept people. Broke them. Hollowed them out. And some of them were still missing.
Alex closed the folder slowly, fingers pressed hard into the cover. They had always assumed Ward was the monster. Now he wasn’t so sure. There had to be others. And judging by the condition of Henry Byron, what if the people taking over whatWard did were worse? Were there living victims? Or worse—was there another dumping ground?
