Page 5

Vacuum tubes towered like skyscrapers, their glass surfaces gleaming with an inner orange glow. Jenna knew she was dreaming—but why was she was back here again?

“Marcus?” Her voice echoed among the giant tubes, bouncing back distorted and strange. “Marcus Derrick?”

“Go away.” The reply came from everywhere and nowhere, disembodied and wary. “I know what you are. You’re one of them.”

Jenna turned slowly, searching the spaces between the towering structures. “I’m not one of anyone, Marcus. I’m Sheriff Jenna Graves. I’m here to help find who did this to you.”

A bitter laugh cut through the humming atmosphere. “Help? That’s what they all say before they slip the knife in. You come any closer, I’ll shoot you on sight.”

“You can’t shoot me, Marcus,” Jenna told him. “This is just a dream.”

“Just a dream?” His voice lowered, taking on a conspiratorial tone. “That’s what they want you to—”

The harsh beeping of her alarm interrupted. She glanced at the clock: 6:00 AM. She’d had less than three hours of sleep since returning from the radio tower crime scene. Her body ached with fatigue as she swung her legs over the side of the bed, her bare feet connecting with the cool wooden floor.

The shower helped, but only marginally. As she brushed her teeth, Jenna studied the woman staring back at her.

The mirror was not kind in its honesty. Shadows haunted the hollows beneath her once-vibrant green eyes, and strands of short chestnut hair fell haphazardly around her face.

The creases across her forehead and the downturn of her mouth spoke of meetings with the absent, the lost, and the departed.

She was sure she looked older than her mid-thirty years.

Jenna dressed quickly and clipped her badge to her belt, checked her service weapon, and grabbed her phone. Just as she stepped onto her front porch, a patrol car pulled up at the curb. She locked her door and made her way toward it.

Jake Hawkins leaned across the passenger seat to push the door open as she approached.

“You look like you could use this,” he said, offering her a thermos as she slid into the seat beside him. The rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the car. “And this.” He placed a granola bar on the console between them.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Jenna said with genuine gratitude. She took a long sip of the coffee. “Literally. I might have fallen asleep standing up.”

As she took the coffee, her fingers brushed against his.

A jolt of electricity shot through her, an unexpected reminder of the unspoken attraction she felt toward him.

She quickly pulled her hand back and focused on the road ahead, pushing aside the fluttering in her stomach as Jake pulled away from the curb.

“We did have a late night at the tower scene,” Jake said.

She unwrapped the granola bar and took a bite. “And then a visitor.”

“A visitor? You mean...?”

“Marcus Derrick. In my dreams again. He was hostile. Paranoid. Most spirits are confused, sometimes sad. They speak in riddles, don’t understand what’s happened to them. But Marcus... he seemed aware, and extremely distrustful.”

“Can’t blame him, considering.” Jake navigated onto the highway, their route taking them toward Pinecrest. “The man was murdered and left tied to a radio tower.”

“There was something else, though,” Jenna said. “He mentioned ‘them.’ Said I was ‘one of them.’ Like he thought I belonged to some group he was afraid of.”

“Paranoid delusion?”

“Maybe.”

Jenna patted her jacket pocket, feeling the outline of the brooch she’d found at the crime scene. She pulled it out, turning it over in her palm.

“You said you were taking that to the pawnbroker yesterday, right?” Jake observed. “Any luck?”

Jenna shook her head. “No, Mr. Tyler didn’t recognize it. And my mother doesn’t remember it ever belonging to Piper.” She ran her thumb over the opal’s smooth surface.

“You should wear it,” Jake said. “Would look good on you.”

Jenna glanced at him, surprised by the suggestion. “Not exactly standard dress code.”

“Even so,” he said. “Might as well put it to good use, see if anyone recognizes it.”

She considered this, then unfastened the brooch’s clasp and pinned it to her uniform. “Not a bad idea, even though a little odd on a uniform. Though I doubt I’ll run into many antique jewelry experts in Pinecrest.”

Jake chuckled. “You never know. Chief Morgan might have a secret passion for Victorian accessories.”

They drove in comfortable silence for a few minutes, the morning sun climbing higher, burning away the last remnants of night.

“Four violent murders in the last month,” Jake said, breaking the quiet. “Hardly what I expected when I left Kansas City for the ‘quiet life’ in Trentville.” He glanced at her, his expression thoughtful. “What do you think has changed around here?”

Jenna considered his question as they passed the cheerful “Welcome to Pinecrest” sign.

“I’m not sure anything has changed,” she finally said. “Genesius County is still the same place I grew up in. Where Piper disappeared. Maybe the darkness was always there. Maybe we’re just finally seeing it.”

The Pinecrest Police Station was smaller than Trentville’s, a squat brick building that looked like it had been constructed in the 1970s and hadn’t seen much renovation since.

Jenna followed Jake through the glass double doors.

A young officer directed them to the chief’s office at the end of a narrow hallway lined with community service award plaques and faded photographs of officers past and present.

The door to the chief’s office stood ajar.

Through the gap, Jenna could see Chief Rudy Morgan leaning against the edge of a metal desk, his frame clad in a uniform that seemed too snug across the shoulders.

His hair was cropped close to the scalp, more gray than black, and his eyes were sharp, missing nothing.

Jenna rapped her knuckles against the doorframe. “Chief Morgan?”

Morgan looked up, his expression shifting from intense concentration to professional courtesy. “Sheriff Graves, Deputy Hawkins. Thanks for coming so quickly.” He gestured them inside. “You already know Colonel Spelling, I believe.”

Spelling, standing across the room from the chief, nodded curtly. “Sheriff. Deputy.”

“Colonel.” Jenna acknowledged him.

The office was crowded with the four of them inside. Photos were spread across Morgan’s desk—crime scene images from the radio tower where Marcus Derrick’s body had been discovered.

“Colonel Spelling was just bringing me up to speed,” Morgan said, gesturing to the photos.

“Did you know Marcus Derrick?” Jenna asked him.

The chief shook his head. “Only by reputation. Local oddball. Kept to himself. Heard he made some big money in tech years back, then went off the grid. Literally.” He gestured toward the door. “I can take you out to his place now, if you want to see for yourself.”

She replied, “Let’s go.”

With Jenna the passenger seat of Morgan’s SUV and Jake riding in back with Colonel Spelling, they bounced along county roads, then turned onto a narrower highway flanked by dense pine forest. After fifteen minutes, Morgan slowed and pointed to an almost invisible dirt track cutting between the trees.

“Here we go. Not exactly advertising his location, was he?”

The dirt road wound deeper into the woods, branches occasionally scraping against the vehicle’s sides. After nearly a mile, the trees opened into a small clearing where a single-wide mobile home sat on concrete blocks, its once-white exterior now a weathered gray.

What caught Jenna’s attention, however, was not the mobile home itself, but the industrial-sized dumpster sitting nearby, overflowing with what looked like discarded electronics.

They exited the car and took a closer look.

Jenna saw circuit boards, computer monitors, smartphones, and various components she couldn’t identify.

“Wait until you see inside the trailer,” Morgan said.

Yellow police tape cordoned off the area around the mobile home’s wooden deck steps. At the base of the steps, Jenna noticed a patch of disturbed earth, the pine needles scraped away to reveal churned soil beneath.

Morgan came to stand beside her, pointing. “This is where we think the struggle happened.”

“Did you find the murder weapon?” Jake asked, joining them.

“Maybe,” Morgan pulled out his phone, swiped through several images, then showed them a photo of a black cord. “This was found tossed in the bushes over there. Lab says it’s consistent with the ligature marks on the victim’s neck.”

Jenna studied the image—a simple black cable, the kind used for electronics or appliances, and also the same kind that had been used to bind the body to the radio tower.

Then Morgan swiped his phone again and brought up another image—of a semiautomatic pistol lying on the ground.

“The gun was registered to Derrick. And it had been fired recently—the magazine was short just one round. It looks like he might have fired it in self-defense. But judging from the lack of blood, he didn’t hit anybody. A lot of good it did him.”

“Let’s see inside.” She nodded toward the mobile home.

Morgan lifted the police tape for them to duck under. The front door had been sealed with evidence tape, which Morgan broke to let them in.

The interior appeared undisturbed by the struggle that had taken place outside. A small living area opened directly into a kitchenette. Beyond that, Jenna could see a short hallway that presumably led to a bedroom and bathroom.

What dominated the space, however, was the equipment. Modern shortwave receivers, all of them in a curious state of disrepair, sat alongside vintage models, which were perfectly intact. Tools, soldering equipment, and component parts were organized on shelves along one wall.

But it was the centerpiece that drew Jenna’s attention like a magnet.

On a sturdy oak table in the middle of the room sat an antique ham radio set.

Unlike the dismantled digital equipment surrounding it, this was a behemoth of another era—its metal casing worn but polished, dials and meters arranged across its face like the controls of a time machine.

And rising from its back were eight vacuum tubes.

A chill ran down Jenna’s spine. Was that where she had been? The tubes were smaller, of course, nothing like the towering structures from her dream, but the parallel was undeniable. She moved closer, drawn by the eerie familiarity.

“That’s old school,” Jake commented, coming to stand beside her. “Must be sixty, seventy years old?”

“Vacuum tube technology,” Colonel Spelling noted. “Obsolete by the 1960s when transistors took over.”

Jenna barely heard them. In her mind, she was back in that strange dreamscape, Marcus’s paranoid voice echoing: “I know what you are. You’re one of them.”

She reached out, not quite touching the radio’s surface. “He was afraid,” she murmured. “Afraid of modern technology.”

Morgan made a sound of agreement. “Look at this place. Every modern device torn apart or discarded. But this old dinosaur—” he gestured to the vacuum tube radio, “—this he kept pristine.”

Jenna moved around the table, studying the radio from all angles. A notebook lay open beside it, pages filled with diagrams and notes in a cramped, urgent hand. She leaned closer, reading a passage circled several times in red ink: “THEY CAN’T TRACK THROUGH TUBES. NO CHIPS, NO SIGNALS.”

“He believed someone was tracking him through microchips,” she said, straightening. “Modern electronic components.”

“Paranoid delusion,” Spelling stated flatly. “Common among hermit types.”

But Jenna wasn’t so sure. Something about Marcus’s terror felt genuine to her, both in her dream and in the frantic notes. She turned to the dumpster visible through the window.

“He was purging his home of all modern electronics,” she said slowly. “Recent purge, based on that dumpster. Something spooked him badly enough to accelerate whatever fears he already had.”

She was silently connecting points. Something frightens Marcus badly enough to purge all modern electronics from his home.

He’s murdered outside his home, then his body is transported to a radio tower miles away and wired up as some kind of message.

Who was he so afraid of? Had he been threatened, or was he just suspicious of everyone?

Marcus’s voice echoed in her memory: “That’s what they all say before they slip the knife in.”