“I remember when the flyers really started disappearing,” he said. “Not one here or there. All of ’em.”
Burke’s grip tightened on the file.
“My dad hated that part,” Burke said.“He’d find the staples still in the poles, but the paper was sliced clean off.Someone used a razor. They didn't just want her gone; they wanted her forgotten.”
Scout went still.
“Hell,” he said quietly.
The moment people stopped looking.
Scout nodded toward the folder.
“You think Simms connects to all this?”
Outside, a cheer rose from the square as another livestream camera lit up.
Burke shifted his gaze toward the courthouse.
“Simms was already on my list,” he said quietly. “Just not yet.”
Scout frowned.
“Because Sinclair tied up Lauren, Sara, and Tessa.”
“Yeah,” Burke said. “We know what happened there. We know Caitlin was something else entirely.”
“To them,” Burke said, tipping his head toward the banners and cameras below, “it’s all the same now. Missing women. Mountain town. Same damn headline.”
Scout glanced back at the Caroline Simms file.
“So now we don’t get to wait.”
“No,” Burke said quietly. “Now we start with Simms. Lila Grant just forced our hand. If we don’t find the truth, she’s going to invent one. And the town is already buying tickets.”
7
Eleanor — Sky Bar Saturday Evening
Sky Bar pulsed under strings of warm lights, the courthouse glowing white at the top of its 104 steps. Below, Main Street buzzed—tents, food vendors, a ghost tour bunching near the fountain, lanterns swinging as the guide gathered his flock.
The band kicked into a bluesy cover of “Hard to Handle,” the rhythm loose and teasing, built for trouble. The bass thrummed through the floorboards, up her calves, into her chest.
April was cornered near the bar by a man in a salmon shirt who leaned too close and laughed too loud.
Eleanor slipped toward the railing.
She wrapped her fingers around the cool iron and looked down at the square. Mystery Mountain Week banners snapped in the breeze. Tourists posed at the base of the courthouse steps, trading phones and angles.
The ghost tour guide lifted his lantern high.
“And some say,” he called to his group, “if you stand at the base of these steps long enough, the mountains start whispering back.”
A few tourists laughed.
“Others say,” the guide added, lantern swinging slightly, “the mountains don’t whisper at all. They just keep what’s given to them.”
A presence stepped in beside her.
