Chapter 2: Threads in the Dark

The morning after the diner encounter, Seattle wore the hangover of rain: puddles steaming in the weak sun, newspaper hawkers shouting the day’s small tragedies. Lena carried her recorder and a battered notebook like charms, but the muffled ache behind her ribs was real and constant - the hollow left by Sarah’s absence. The police had declared Sarah’s death an accident, then quietly closed the file. Lena had called it a lie before she had ever seen the body.

Her editor and good friend, a veteran named Adam with a gray pencil always stuck behind his ear, told her to be careful.

“You are chasing ghosts, kid. Play with what you got.”

But Lena was already down in the gutters of Seattle, collecting the frayed threads others refused to touch.

At the diner she found Mrs. Larkin, the waitress who had served Sarah the last night she had been seen alive. The woman’s hands shook like leaves when she refilled coffee cups. Lena sat, set the recorder between them, and kept her voice low.

“Sarah wanted to know more about the Rathbones,” Mrs. Larkin said, finally, eyes darting to the window. “Who don’t look at you.” Her fingers traced a chipped saucer.

“She - she said someone was following her.”

That line cut clean through Lena’s practiced calm. Following. Not coincidence. Patterns, she knew, were less empathetic than grief.

A local medical examiner’s report, she had managed to pry loose contradicted the police summary. There were marks on Sarah’s wrists, faint but consistent with heavy restraint. Time of death overlapped with other killings in the last month. A name kept appearing in connection with anonymous donations and unseen construction permits: Rathbone Holdings.

At a municipal meeting that afternoon, the Rathbones’ charity arm proposed a redevelopment plan for the old mill - land where several of the victims had been found. The community hailed it as salvation. Lena sat in the back row and scribbled details as officials praised the family’s generosity. Jeremy Rathbone did not attend. His absence was its own kind of presence.

That night, when she reviewed her notes in her tiny apartment, the pattern came into a portrait: power, money, and a hush that spread like oil over Seattle. The Rathbone family offered solutions that solved public problems and quietly blocked questions. And they moved with the kind of precision that suggested they expected no one to cross them.

A sudden knock at the door broke the quiet of Lena’s apartment. It was not a polite rap, but a series of sharp, deliberate blows. Lena froze, her hand hovering over her notebook. It was too late for Adam, and too early for any of the late-night drunks she occasionally had to shoo away from her building. She crept into the peephole and looked out.

The man in the hallway was a stranger, but his expensive suit and unnerving stillness marked him as someone outside of Seattle's usual orbit. He was not looking at the door; he was looking straight into the peephole. Lena's breath caught in her throat. She backed away, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. The knocks came again, harder this time.

“Lena,” a voice, cold and smooth as river stone, called out from the other side.

“We know you’ve been asking questions about the Rathbones.”

Lena did not answer, her mind racing. How did they know her name? Who was this man? She grabbed her phone, her fingers fumbling as she dialed Adam's number. The man outside seemed to anticipate her move.

“Don’t bother,” he said, his voice now a low rumble.

“The Rathbones have a vested interest in the town’s peace, and you are… disturbing that peace.”

The line connected, and a sleepy-sounding Adam answered.

"Lena? It is late, kid. What's up?"

Before Lena could speak, the man outside her door spoke again, his voice now laced with a chillingly polite threat.

"A word of advice, Miss Young. Sometimes, the most important stories are the ones you choose not to write."

A click, then a dial tone. The line was dead.

"Lena?"

Adam's voice crackled on the other end, but Lena couldn't respond. She stared at the phone in her hand, the weight of it a sudden, crushing burden. The silence from the hallway was more terrifying than the knocking had been. She knew, with a bone-deep certainty, that they were not just following her. They were watching her. And they were ready to act.

The quiet, like a predator, settled back into her apartment. Lena looked at her notes, at the names, the dates, the connections she had so painstakingly unearthed. She had a choice to make. She could heed the warning and drop the story, disappearing back into the safety of anonymity. Or she could push on, knowing that the ghosts she was chasing were now very much alive, and they had just come to her door.