Page 43 of Scarred By Sin

Ray stared at the floor between his feet, and his jaw worked silently for several seconds. Then he raised his head and stared at Sylvie with an expression that had changed entirely. The guardedness was gone. So was the reserve that he’d maintained throughout the interview. What remained was something raw and urgent.

“You should be careful out there.” Ray’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“What do you mean by that, Mr. Freeling?”

Something moved behind his eyes that he chose not to give voice to. He then shook his head slowly, as if at a loss himself.

“I don’t know. That scarf…I don’t know. I just don’t know. Nestor seemed uncomfortable. Maybe even afraid, now that I think about it more. I didn’t ask about it again, and I wish I had.”

Nestor had been afraid. Not isolated, not eccentric, not consumed by grief. Afraid. Of something…or someone. And he’d carried that fear silently, the same way Porter had carried his observations about Gwenyth’s condition without connecting the dots.

What exactly had been taking place on that estate?

Sylvie left her card on the coffee table and asked Ray to call if anything else came to mind. He walked her to the door, flipped on the living room light, and stood on the porch as she made her way to the SUV, his thin frame silhouetted against the doorway.

She was behind the wheel with the door closed before she allowed herself to process what Ray Freeling had just given her. A scarf on a doorframe that, in all likelihood, hadn’t belonged to Gwenyth. And a man who had been afraid in the weeks before he disappeared.

19

Bobby ‘Bit’ Nowacki

July 2026

Thursday — 7:12 pm

Bit was standing in front of the open refrigerator when his phone buzzed against the counter. A plate with the last slice of pepperoni pizza from the box Sylvie had brought back from town sat on the counter beside him, and he smiled at the sight of Zoey’s name on the display. The kitchen was warm despite the evening hour, the old appliances radiating heat that the house’s stone walls held onto long after the sun had shifted away from the windows.

“Hey, there.”

“Please tell me you’re coming home this weekend.”

“I honestly don’t know what day we’re headed back to D.C.” Bit reached into the fridge for a soda. The shelves were stocked with the groceries Porter had bought on his previous run into town, and the reminder hit Bit harder than he expected. He pushed the sudden unease aside. “It definitely won’t be in time for the garage sales on Sunday, though. I’m sorry.”

The silence on the other end stretched into the kind of pause that meant Zoey was recalculating her weekend. He hated that type of quiet. It was the kind that meant she wasn’t angry yet, but she was building a case, and by the time she finished constructing it, he’d be apologizing for things he hadn’t even done.

Men never won when women went quiet.

It was a universal truth that transcended culture, geography, and the fact that Bit could hack a federal database but still couldn’t figure out the right thing to say when his girlfriend stopped talking. To buy himself some time, he listened in on Brook and Theo’s conversation drifting in from the dining room. Their voices were muffled by the hallway but distinct enough to catch fragments.

The federal crash investigator was leaning toward an accident. Worn brake lines, a sharp curve, no evidence of a second vehicle. Porter Voss had died because his truck was old and the road was unforgiving, not because someone had run him off the pavement.

“Bit, I can’t spend an entire day with my mother without you. You know what she’s like. Last time, she reorganized the spice rack and told me my curtains were depressing.”

“Your curtains are a little depressing.”

“That is not the point.”

Bit grinned now that Zoey was complaining. Complaining, he could work with. Complaining meant the silent phase was over, and he was back on solid ground. He was about to offer a counterargument involving her mother’s lemon bars, which were genuinely exceptional and almost worth the unsolicited interior design critiques, when he caught movement at the far end of the kitchen. He turned to find Gwenyth standing in the second doorway that led to the back end of the house.

His phone slipped from his fingers and clattered against the tile floor.

She stood motionless, both hands hanging at her sides, the gray cardigan draped over her thin frame like a shroud. Her hair fell straight and uncombed past her shoulders, and she was staring directly at him with an expression that offered nothing. The fluorescent light above the stove caught the sharp angles of her face, and her bare feet were pale against the dark threshold.

No greeting.

No movement.

“Bit? Bit, are you there?”