Chapter 1: Black Coffee and Bad Intentions
The neon sign buzzed and sputtered outside the window, painting the booth in pulses of watery red light. Colson Newman watched the way it made the black coffee in his mug look like a tiny, contained oil spill. He stirred it, the spoon making a precise, dull clink with each revolution. Eleven stirs clockwise. A pause. Seven counterclockwise. It was a ritual, a way of ordering a world that felt perpetually off its axis.
Across the empty diner, the jukebox cycled through its exhausted playlist. Midnight Train to Somewhere oozed from the speakers, a saxophone sighing over the relentless hum of the industrial fridge. It was the only other sound, that and the soft, deliberate scrape of his spoon.
He knew she was still here. He’d felt her presence the moment the last trucker had paid his bill and shuffled out into the mountain night. He didn’t look up, not yet. Let her look. Let her wonder. The town had been doing plenty of that since he’d arrived.
Her footsteps were quiet on the checkerboard linoleum. Not aiming for him, not directly. She was over by the jukebox, her shadow stretching long and lean in the neon. He could see her reflection, fractured and warped, in the chrome napkin dispenser on his table. Her finger trailed down the glass, reading song titles she probably knew by heart.
Indie. Short for Indiana, a name too big for this town, for the girl wiping down counters and refilling sugar jars. It didn’t fit her, he thought. Something else simmered under her surface, something the hollow creek and the prying eyes hadn’t managed to stamp out.
The radio behind the counter, always tuned to the local station, crackled to life with a jingle too cheerful for the hour. Then, the flat, weary voice of the news anchor cut through.
“…remains no suspect in the series of break-ins along Ridge Road. Sheriff advises residents to keep doors locked and report any unusual activity. In other news, the search for missing hiker Alicia Briggs has been downgraded to a recovery operation, with families expressing…”
Colson stopped stirring. The spoon rested against the ceramic. He lifted his gaze, slow, and found her eyes already on him. She’d turned from the jukebox, a clean rag frozen in her hand. The news washed over her face—a slight tightening at the corners of her mouth, a faint shadow in her hazel eyes.
Everyone in Hollow Creek heard that report and looked at their neighbors with a fresh, thin suspicion. He saw her fight the instinct, her knuckles whitening on the rag.
“Lousy company for a Thursday night,” she said finally, her voice cutting through the saxophone’s lament. She nodded toward his cup. “You nurse that thing for three hours, it’s gonna file for divorce.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile. It was an acknowledgment. “The coffee’s terrible. I’m respecting its persistence.”
She moved then, not back to safety behind the counter, but toward his booth. She stopped a few feet away, leaning a hip against the red vinyl of the opposite seat. “Most people, they get bad coffee, they leave. Or they complain. You just… study it.”
“Most people are easily disappointed,” Colson said, his grey eyes holding hers. They were the color of a winter sky just before a storm, intense and unsettlingly direct. “I find low expectations save a lot of time.”
“That’s a bleak way to live.”
“It’s an efficient one.”
She watched him for another long moment. The neon blinked, casting her in red, then leaving her in the dim yellow of the overheads. He could see the faint dusting of freckles across her nose, the way her bottom lip was slightly fuller than the top. He cataloged it all, the way a man studies a map of unfamiliar terrain.
“They say you’re living out at the old Miller place,” she said, casual, testing the water.
“They say a lot of things.”
“They say you paid cash. That you don’t talk to anyone. That you’re maybe the one creeping around Ridge Road.”
He didn’t flinch. He’d heard the whispers, saw the way mothers pulled their children closer on the sidewalk, how men in the hardware store fell silent when he approached. He let the silence stretch, thick and charged, until she shifted her weight.
“You planning on asking me what I say, Indie?” he finally asked, her name a soft, deliberate exhale.
She blinked, caught. “Do you care?”
“More than you’d think.” He pushed the mug away, the movement fluid and controlled. “I think you’re curious. I think you play that jukebox every night until you’ve heard every song, just for something to do. I think you listen to that radio and you don’t just hear news, you hear stories. And I think…” He leaned forward, just an inch, and the atmosphere in the diner compressed. “…you’re bored out of your mind.”
A flush crept up her neck. Not from embarrassment, but from a sudden, sharp recognition. He’d seen her. Truly seen her, in a way no one in Hollow Creek ever bothered to. It was unnerving. It was thrilling.
“Bored people do stupid things,” she retorted, but her voice had lost its edge.
“Yes,” he agreed, his tone dropping, becoming almost intimate. “They do. They talk to strangers. They ignore good advice. They wander off trails.” He let the reference to the missing hiker hang between them for a beat. “But you’re not stupid, Indie. You’re waiting.”
“For what?”
“For something real to happen to you.”
The words landed, heavy and true. She swallowed, her throat working. The diner seemed to hold its breath, the fridge’s hum now a frantic thrum in his ears. He wanted to reach across the space and trace the line of her jaw, to see if her skin was as warm as it looked in the sickly light. He wanted to pull her into the shadow of his booth and ruin every naive, small-town idea of romance she’d ever had. He wanted to mark her, so that forever after, the thought of any other man’s hands on her would feel like a cheap imitation.
The radio crackled again, a burst of static that made her jump.
“…updated bulletin. The vehicle belonging to Alicia Briggs has been located abandoned at the trailhead. Personal effects remain inside. Sheriff’s department is asking…”
The announcement sliced the tension with a cold, serrated edge. Indie’s eyes flew back to his, wide now, the playfulness gone, replaced by a dawning, sober fear. The real world, violent and unexplained, had just shouldered its way into the diner.
Colson didn’t look at the radio. His gaze never left her face. He saw the fear, and something in him, something dark and possessive, purred at the sight. Good. Let her be afraid of the world. It would make her his so much easier.
He stood up, slowly, sliding a ten-dollar bill under the mug. He was taller than she remembered from across the room, his presence seeming to swallow the space around the booth.
“You should lock up,” he said, his voice quiet, final. “The world’s full of people who see a flickering light and think it’s an invitation.”
He walked past her, close enough that she could smell the clean, cold scent of him—pine and night air. He didn’t touch her. The not-touching was its own kind of violence.
The bell above the door jangled as he pushed out into the dark. Indie didn’t move, rooted to the spot, the cold from the vinyl seeping through her jeans. Her heart was a trapped bird against her ribs. She rushed to the window, peering out into the parking lot.
His silhouette was just visible under the one working streetlight, climbing into a dark truck. He didn’t drive off immediately. He just sat there, a darker patch of night in the driver’s seat. And she knew, with a chilling certainty, that he was watching her reflection in the diner’s glass, just as he had all night.
Watching, and calculating the exact distance between curiosity and possession. The break-ins, the missing girl… they were noise, a distracting chorus. The only crime taking root in Colson Newman’s mind was how thoroughly, and how beautifully, he was going to ruin Indie for anyone else. The truck’s engine turned over, a low growl in the silence. Then the red taillights bled into the black, disappearing toward the old Miller place.
Inside, the neon sign gave one last, frantic buzz and went dark.