Page 2 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

The ocean always sounds like a lie in the morning. Soft, harmless. Like it hasn’t devoured bodies. Like it didn’t once nearly take mine.

I listen to the waves through the barely cracked clinic window as I set out pens for intake forms, tip the Sharpies into alignment, and stack brochures into three perfectly flush piles. The early fog hangs just outside the glass, dense and waiting, but inside it’s still. Clean. Tame.

The air smells like lemon antiseptic and eucalyptus. I let it settle into my lungs, imagining it might disinfect something inside me.

Every movement I make is part of the script I’ve carved for myself since I got here. Paper goes there. Clipboards face left. Phone ringer off before eight. It’s a small performance, but it works. No one notices a ghost if she’s useful.

Celeste breezes in exactly seven minutes late. Her heels don’t echo in the hallway; they announce. She always looks like she belongs in a different film. Sharp ponytail. Navy dress. Cool, almost bored elegance. When she sees me, she gives a soft nod.

“Morning, Mara.”

“Morning.” I keep my voice calm, keep my eyes low, just shy of deferent. Not too submissive. Not too assertive. That middle line where no one feels the need to look too closely.

She disappears into her office without a word about the fog or the schedule. Alec follows not long after, carrying two coffees and that look he always gives me—measured, warm, careful. Like he’s trying to figure out which part of me is still broken today.

I pretend not to notice.

The first hour is always quiet. A few emails, a call from a pharmacist double-checking our PTSD prescriptions, an appointment reschedule. I let the rhythm settle into me, anchor me. There are no shadows in repetition.

Until I check the mail.

There’s a handwritten envelope tucked between a new therapy journal catalog and a bill we already paid.

The envelope is thick and rough, like handmade paper.

No return address. Just my name, printed in block capitals.

It’s the kind of thing you only ever see in movies about stalkers and long-buried secrets.

I close the office door before I open it.

Inside: one sheet of unlined paper, folded once. My fingers hesitate. The paper smells faintly of smoke.

The message is short.

Did you really think I wouldn’t find you?

I stare at it. My pulse drops into my stomach, heavy and slow. Not fear—not yet. First comes the suspicion that maybe this isn’t real. Maybe it’s a cruel joke from a patient, or a misdelivered threat.

But I know the handwriting.

Caleb.

The room tilts. Not in some metaphorical, spiraling way. Literally. I reach for the edge of the desk and grip it until the cold laminate presses lines into my skin.

He found me.

I left everything behind. Changed my name on the utility bills. Wiped my online presence. Stayed out of the city. I didn’t even bring the photographs.

How did he find me?

Someone knocks once, softly.

“Mara?” It’s Alec.

I shove the letter under the drawer liner and smooth my face into something neutral.

“Come in.”

He opens the door slowly, like he expects me to shatter. “You okay? You looked pale just now before you stepped in.”

I nod. Not too fast. “Just a migraine.”

He watches me too long. I can feel him trying to decide whether to believe me. "Celeste asked me to check on you," he says finally, almost apologetic. Then, as if he senses I won't give him more, he gives a small nod and closes the door again.

I let out a breath. Then I lock the drawer.

The rest of the morning doesn’t happen in pieces.

It smears. Voices become static. I take notes in perfectly neat cursive that I never look at again.

The phone rings and I answer. I smile at patients and say what I’m supposed to.

But every moment, I see that letter again. Hear Caleb’s voice in my head.

You belong to me, baby. You always will.

By lunchtime, I can’t breathe in the staff kitchen. I pretend to warm soup in the microwave and instead stare at the digital countdown, hypnotized by numbers that mean nothing.

During my lunch break, I step out through the side door of the Seaside Trauma Clinic, the coastal wind biting colder than it was this morning. The fog has thickened to a curtain, swallowing most of the road, but just visible beyond the haze is a black car idling across the street.

It doesn’t move, doesn’t honk. Just sits there, engine humming quietly beneath the constant whisper of waves. We’re on the edge of a small town—Miramont’s quiet coast—and nobody idles here without a reason.

I don’t recognize the plate. I don’t recognize the feeling climbing up the back of my neck either.

I stand frozen on the top step for maybe twenty seconds. That’s all it takes. Enough time for suspicion to sink its teeth in.

Across the street, the café window catches a slice of fog-muted light. A man sits alone by the glass, suit jacket folded neatly over the chair beside him. Too sharp for this town. His presence snags at me in a way I can’t shake.

I’ve seen him before—here and there, in passing.

At the post office once, when someone called his name.

Elias. Or maybe Elliot. Something that began with El.

I remember thinking then that he didn’t belong, polished edges against a place worn thin by salt and sea air. He looks just as out of place now.

His hands move with exact precision—folding the paper, lifting his cup, setting it down again. He doesn’t look at me, not directly, but something in the angle of his head makes my stomach tighten. Like I’ve been catalogued and filed away. The thought lingers even after I retreat inside.

Back inside, my heartbeat is sharp in my ears. But the brief moment I spent outside linger still, those twenty seconds where I stood frozen on the top step stain the rest of my day. My mouth is dry. My hands keep flexing. I check the clinic locks three times before closing.

By nightfall, I’m back in my apartment, all the windows shut. The place smells like tea and lavender and the faint bite of bleach.

I check the closet.

Then under the bed.

Then the door lock.

Then again.

My therapist once told me this kind of ritual was common in survivors. A way to reclaim the narrative. A way to push back against the creeping dread that the past is somehow still breathing in your walls.

But that was before I got a letter.

Before the black car.

Before the look in Alec’s eyes told me I’m not hiding as well as I thought.

I turn off the light. Lie in bed. Eyes open.

Somewhere in the dark, a phone buzzes softly.

Not mine.

I don’t move.

If I don’t move, maybe the world won’t either.

But outside my window, the ocean still roars.

Louder now.

Louder every night.

I shut my eyes. Count backward from fifty. Try to convince my muscles they aren’t coiled springs. But my body doesn’t believe me.

A soft creak splits the silence, above me.

The unit above mine is empty. Mrs. Ketteridge, the old woman who used to live there, moved out weeks ago. I haven't heard a sound from that place since—until now.

I wait. It might be the building settling. It might be the wind shifting wood. It might be nothing.

Another creak. Slower. Closer to where I lie.

I sit up.

My ears reach harder than my eyes do in the dark. Straining.

Then—barely audible—a voice. Just one word, carried like breath against a closed window.

“Mara.”

I freeze.

But it was soft. So soft I could have imagined it. My brain has made worse things up before. Has filled silence with memory more times than I can count.

I hold still. Every part of me is silent, except my heart. That, I can’t control. It pounds too loud, as if trying to signal something—or someone—back.

I don’t move. I don’t call anyone. I just sit there, wrapped in that awful in-between place where you don’t know what’s real.

Eventually, I lay back down.

But I don’t close my eyes.

I don’t sleep.

The sound may have been real. Or it may have been a ghost I carry with me. I’m not sure which one terrifies me more.

The air doesn't change. The silence doesn’t either.

I lie there, hours passing like ghosts brushing past my skin.

I keep thinking I hear things. A scrape.

A knock. A muffled click from the kitchen, which I checked three times.

But every time I sit up, there’s nothing.

Just the same apartment I’ve tried to make mine.

Safe, small, predictable. It feels like a lie now.

The ocean outside no longer sounds like the sea. It sounds like breath. Hungry and constant.

I pace the apartment around 3 a.m., barefoot, arms crossed tight against my ribs.

I don’t turn on the lights. It feels like breaking a rule.

Like light will make something real that I can still pretend isn’t.

I check the peephole again. Still nothing.

But I can’t shake the pressure that someone was there. Or still is. Waiting. Watching.

I make tea just to hold something hot. Let the steam burn my nose. It doesn’t calm me.

At some point, I doze. Not sleep. Just that shallow hovering where your brain still tugs at every sound. I don’t remember lying down again, but when my eyes open, light is crawling up the far wall, and the clock says 7:04 a.m.

I’m still in yesterday’s clothes. My back aches from the angle I slept. My mouth is dry. I move slowly, not because I’m tired, but because it feels like if I move too fast, something will snap.

I shower longer than usual. Let the water scald until my skin stings. I put on a soft gray sweater, jeans, and boots I can run in. I pull my hair into a low knot. Minimal makeup, just enough to hide what the night did to me.

I double check the locks. Again. Purse, keys, pepper spray. I open the door.

The hallway is empty.

Still, I keep my steps quiet.

Outside, the fog hasn’t lifted. It clings to the trees, to the roof tiles, to the back of my neck like breath.

I walk to work with my hands tucked deep in my pockets, shoulder tight against the chill. A gull shrieks over the cliffside, and I flinch before I can stop myself.

When I push through the clinic’s front doors, the warmth inside feels artificial. Like it’s pretending too.

The morning receptionist is already there. She gives me a nod. I nod back.

I sit. I breathe.

I tell myself: This is a new day.

But everything in my body whispers: No, it’s not.

Not really.