Chapter 38: Thunder and Blood
The record player had been skipping for the last twenty minutes. A faint, persistent tick-tick-tick at the end of a worn-out Billie Holiday track, a sound so soft it was more a vibration in the air than a noise. Mia heard it from the depths of a thin, fraying sleep. It was the metronome to her nightmare.
She was back in her studio. The smell was wrong—linseed oil and turpentine twisted into something sharper, chemical, like cheap cologne over sweat. Her hands were slick with paint, but it was too dark, too thick. She wiped them on her jeans, leaving black streaks. The headlights of a car bled through the high windows, freezing her in the glare. A shape moved in the shadows by the flat files.
Tick-tick-tick.
She couldn’t see his face. Only the glint of a gold ring as his hand came up. The script was a swirling, indecipherable smear. He stepped into the light. It wasn’t Silas Trent. The features were blurred, shifting. He leaned close, his breath hot and sour against her ear. His voice was a graveled whisper, intimate and horrifying.
“Ethan sends his regards.”
Mia’s eyes snapped open a second before the thunder cracked. The sound wasn’t outside. It was inside her skull, a white-hot detonation of understanding. She screamed. It was a raw, torn sound that ripped through the lavender-scented calm of her apartment.
Ethan was on the floor beside the couch in an instant. He’d been dozing there, a blanket twisted around his legs, a paperback splayed face-down on the rug. He didn’t turn on the light. He just found her in the gloom, a thrashing silhouette against the faint blue glow of the streetlights bleeding through the blinds.
“Mia. Mia, look at me. It’s me.” His voice was sandpaper, thick with sleep and instant, electric fear.
She couldn’t stop screaming. It was less a sound now and more a continuous, breathless expulsion of terror. Her hands scrabbled at the air, at her own throat, as if clawing the words away.
He gathered her. Not gently, but firmly, pulling her shaking body against his chest, pinning her arms to her sides in a containment of pure panic. Her back was to him, his arms locked around her, her spine against his heartbeat, which was hammering against her ribs.
“I’ve got you. You’re safe. You’re in your apartment. It’s Ethan. I’ve got you.” The words were a mantra, whispered into the hair at her temple, spoken over and over until they started to drown out the echo of the whisper in her head.
The storm outside unleashed, rain sheeting against the window in a sudden, violent drumbeat. It mirrored the chaos inside her.
She sobbed then, the screams dissolving into ragged, wrenching gulps of air. She twisted in his grip, turning to bury her face against the worn cotton of his t-shirt. Her fingers, frantic, clutched at the fabric of his sleeves, her nails biting into the muscle of his biceps through the thin material. He didn’t flinch.
“He knew your name.” The words were muffled, wet, torn from a place deep in her gut. “Ethan, he knew your name.”
The world stopped. The tick-tick-tick of the record player became the only sound, a cruel, mechanical heartbeat.
Ethan’s arms tightened around her. “What?”
“He whispered it.” She pulled back just enough to look up at him. In the dim light, her face was a mask of tear-streaked horror, the yellowing bruises around her eye a sickly shadow. “Right before he… he leaned in. His breath was on my ear. He said ‘Ethan sends his regards.’”
The air was sucked from the room. Ethan felt it go, a vacuum of pure, cold dread.
He’d imagined a thousand scenarios since the attack. A random thief. A stalker who’d seen her work. A wrong-place, wrong-time monster. He had armed himself with all of them, preparing to be her rock, her shield against a faceless evil.
This was different. This was a poison-tipped arrow aimed directly at his heart through her.
“No,” he breathed, the word a denial of the universe itself.
“He said it.” Her voice was small, shattered, but horribly certain. “It’s why I ran. It wasn’t just the ring, or the car. It was that. He said your name. I heard it. I heard it, Ethan.”
She was trembling violently, a fine, constant shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. He rubbed his hands up and down her arms, a rough, instinctive gesture, but his mind was racing down a dark, twisting path. Sends his regards. It was personal. It was a message. It was a game.
“Okay,” he said, and his voice was a strained wire. “Okay. This changes things.”
“Why?” she pleaded, her blue eyes searching his green ones for an answer he didn’t have. “Why does he know you? What did you do?”
The question, born of pure terror, hit him like a physical blow. What did you do? He recoiled internally. His writer’s mind, always working, conjured awful possibilities. An article he’d written? A social media post? Someone from his past, from a life he’d left behind? He thought of the manuscript for his novel, still unsubmitted, full of dark characters and darker motives. Was it something there? Paranoia bloomed, thick and choking.
“I don’t know,” he said, and the admission tasted like ashes. “I swear to god, Mia, I don’t know.”
The record player’s needle finally scraped into the run-out groove with a loud, grating hiss. The sudden silence was worse than the noise.
He shifted, moving to sit beside her on the couch, keeping one arm around her shoulders. She curled into his side, her head on his chest, listening to the frantic rhythm of his heart. They sat like that for a long time, watching the rain slash diagonal lines across the window, two small figures in a pool of lamplight surrounded by a dark, unknowable threat.
“Ruiz needs to know this,” Ethan said finally, his voice flat. “First thing. It wasn’t random.”
Mia nodded weakly against him. “It means he was waiting for me. It means he knew who I was to… to get to you.”
The puzzle pieces on the table weren’t just a forgotten game. They were a taunt. Her memory was coming back in jagged, dangerous shards, and each one seemed to cut him deeper.
Ethan stared at the scattered pieces of blue sky. He thought of the river walk, the taste of rain and cheap beer, the droplet on her eyelash. A memory so pure it felt like it belonged to another lifetime. That memory had drawn a target on her back. A target with his name on it.
His arms tightened around her. The gentle friend, the secret admirer, was gone. In his place was something harder, colder, resolved. The fear was still there, a icy pool in his stomach, but now a current of furious purpose ran through it.
“I’m not leaving you,” he whispered into her hair, a vow this time, not a comfort. “Not for a second. Not until we find him.”
Outside, the storm raged on. But inside, a different kind of storm had just begun, quiet, ruthless, and deeply, terrifyingly personal.
But inside, a different kind of storm had just begun, quiet, ruthless, and deeply, terrifyingly personal. They stayed like that for a long time, Ethan’s chin resting on the top of her head, his mind cycling through every face from his past that could hold such a specific, calculated venom. The rain slowed to a dull tap-tap against the glass. Mia’s breathing evened out, but the tension in her shoulders hadn’t lessened; she was coiled, a spring waiting for the next jolt.
“I should call Ruiz now,” he said, his voice rough from disuse.
“No.” Her hand, still clutching his sleeve, tightened. “Don’t let go. Not yet. Just… a few more minutes.”
He settled back, granting the unspoken plea. The lamplight made the bruises on her face look like spilled ink, a violent contrast against her pale skin. He watched her eyes track the shadows on the ceiling, the furrow in her brow deep with a concentration that had nothing to do with the present moment. She was sifting through the dark, sticky fragments of that night, trying to fit the whispering voice to a face in a photo Ruiz would show her tomorrow.
“You’re thinking too loud,” she murmured, her voice barely a breath.
“Can you blame me?” His own whisper was sharp. “Someone used my name like a weapon. On you.”
She finally turned her head to look at him, her blue eyes cavernous in the low light. “That’s what’s freaking me out the most. It wasn’t ‘nice tits’ or ‘give me your wallet.’ It was that. It was for you.” She swallowed, a difficult click in her throat. “I was just the… the delivery system.”
The clinical phrasing, so unlike her, broke something in him. It was the artist in her, reducing the horror to a stark composition. A message. A medium. The thought made him feel sick.
“Don’t,” he begged, his fingers digging into his own palm where his arm rested across her. “Don’t talk like you were just some object. You’re everything.”
The words hung there, too big, too raw for the fragile space between them. He hadn’t meant to say it. Not now, not like this, not when she was a bruised puzzle missing half its pieces. But the terror of the last hour, the acid drip of the attacker’s taunt, had burned away every cautious layer.
She went very, very still. He could feel her heart hammering against his side.
“Ethan…”
“I love you.” The statement was simple, blunt, a stone dropped into a still pond. He said it looking straight at the ceiling, unable to bear the confusion he knew would be on her face. “I have for… god, for years. Since that stupid river walk argument about movie endings. Maybe before. I don’t know.”
Silence stretched, thin and taut. He forced himself to continue, the words spilling out in a quiet, relentless stream.
“I know you don’t remember. I know right now, I’m just the guy who might have gotten you hurt. But that kiss by the river? That was me being a coward. It was me finally spitting out a fraction of what I actually felt. What I feel.” He finally risked a glance down at her. Her expression was unreadable, a mixture of shock and something else—fear, or pity, he couldn’t tell. “I’m telling you now because that bastard used my name to scare you. I need you to know what my name actually means. What it’s always meant. Even if you can’t remember a single second of us.”
A single tear escaped the corner of her eye and traced a path through the bruise on her temple. She didn’t wipe it away. She just stared at him, her lower lip trembling slightly.
“Ethan…” she started again, her voice choked.
He shook his head, a quick, jerky movement. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to feel anything. I just needed you to hear it. From me. Not from him.”
He held his breath. The record player was silent. The rain had stopped. The only sound was the faint hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen and the too-loud beating of his own heart. He had thrown a grenade into the center of their world, and now they were both lying in the silence, waiting to see if anything was left intact.
Mia slowly untangled herself from his arm and sat up. She looked small and wrecked on the big couch. She studied her own hands, her fingers tracing the lines of her palms as if reading a map to a place she’d forgotten.
“I remember the taste of the rain,” she said, so softly he had to lean in. “And your hands were cold. And you were shaking.” She looked up, her eyes glistening. “I don’t remember loving you back. But I remember… I remember feeling safe after. Even though the kiss was a mess. Even though we didn’t talk about it for weeks. I felt safe.”
It wasn’t a reciprocation. It wasn’t a happy ending. But it was a truth, pulled from the wreckage. It was a piece of the puzzle, a shard of blue sky.
Before he could process it, before he could even breathe again, his phone buzzed on the coffee table, scattering the puzzle pieces she’d been working on earlier. The screen lit up the dim room with a harsh, blue-white glow.
It was a text from Ruiz. The preview line was stark and clear against the darkness.
Silas Trent skipped bail an hour ago. He’s in the wind. Armed. Do not leave the apartment.
The phone buzzed again, a second, more insistent vibration against the wood.
The blue-white glow painted the scattered puzzle pieces in harsh relief. It looked like a bomb had gone off on the coffee table, all their quiet, patient work obliterated.
Ethan’s stomach dropped through the floor. His breath stopped.
“Who is it?” Mia’s voice was small, tentative, already bracing for the next blow.
He didn’t want to pick it up. Picking it up made it real. It let the cold, digital truth into this fragile, lamplit space they had carved out between confession and memory. He picked it up.
The full text message glared at him.
> Silas Trent skipped bail an hour ago. He’s in the wind. Armed. Do not leave the apartment. Units are en route to your location for precaution. DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR FOR ANYONE. Confirm you’ve seen this.
“Ethan?” Mia was sitting up straight now, her fear momentarily eclipsed by his frozen posture.
He handed her the phone without a word. Watched her face as she read it. Watched the fragile hope from moments before—the taste of rain, the feeling of safety—evaporate like a drop of water on a hot stove. Her lips parted. No sound came out. Her knuckles whitened around the device.
“Okay,” she said, her voice unnervingly flat. She placed the phone gently back on the table, screen-down, as if it were a live grenade. “Okay. So he’s out.”
“Units are en route,” Ethan repeated, the phrase sounding hollow, bureaucratic. He was already moving, his body operating on a primal, protective autopilot. He crossed to the front door in three long strides, checked the deadbolt, the chain. They were engaged. He peered through the peephole. The hallway was empty, lit by a flickering fluorescent tube.
It felt insufficient. A deadbolt. A chain. A piece of glass in a door.
“He knows where I live,” Mia stated. It wasn’t a question. The apartment, their sanctuary, was now a known coordinate. A soft, lavender-scented trap.
Ethan turned from the door. He saw her sitting there, small against the big couch, the yellowing bruises on her face a roadmap of violence. She was looking at her hands again, but now they were curled into loose fists in her lap.
“Armed.” She tasted the word. “What does that mean? A gun? A knife? Like last time, but… more?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Ethan’s voice was low, stripped of all its earlier gentleness. It was the voice of a man building a wall between them and the world, stone by stone. He walked back to her, kneeling on the rug again, but this wasn’t about comfort. This was about a perimeter. “What matters is he’s not getting through that door.”
Her blue eyes lifted to meet his. The shock was fading, replaced by a slow-burning, terrifying clarity. “He said your name,” she whispered. “He knows who you are. He knows we’re… connected. He wasn’t just after me in my studio. He was sending you a message. And now he’s out. He can finish it.”
The logic was airtight and chilling. It wrapped around Ethan’s lungs and squeezed.
He reached for her hands, pried them open, and laced his fingers through hers. Her skin was cold. “Listen to me,” he said, forcing his voice into a calm he didn’t feel. “Ruiz knows. Help is coming. We are not alone in this.”
She shook her head, a barely-there tremor. “You should go.”
“What?”
“You should leave.” Her gaze was fierce now, burning with a desperate, protective fury. “If it’s you he wants, if this is about some… some stupid thing from your past, then you’re the target. Not me. Not anymore. He used me to get to you. If you’re not here, I’m just some girl he already beat up. I’m not worth the risk.”
The sheer, stupid bravery of it knocked the air out of him. He actually laughed, a sharp, humorless bark. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Ethan, I’m serious!”
“So am I!” His grip on her hands tightened. “That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. He hurt you. He whispered my name while he did it. That makes it mine. All of it. The debt, the fear, the anger. It’s mine now, too.”
He leaned forward, his forehead almost touching hers, his green eyes holding her blue ones prisoner.
“And I am telling you the news,” he said, each word a hammer strike, “because you have a right to know the danger we are in. But I am also telling you this: I am not leaving this apartment. I am not leaving this couch. I am not leaving your side. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not until they catch him and put him so far under a jail he forgets what sunlight looks like.”
A tear escaped, tracing the path of the old one down her bruised cheek. “He’s armed, Ethan.”
“So am I,” Ethan said, and the quiet ferocity in his voice was something entirely new.
Mia blinked. “What?”
He released one of her hands and reached behind the couch cushion. His fingers closed around the cool, heavy handle of the old, claw-headed hammer Mia used for stretching canvases. He placed it on the coffee table next to the scattered puzzle pieces. It looked absurd and profoundly lethal.
“It’s not a gun,” he admitted, the ghost of a grim smile touching his lips. “But it’s solid steel. And I know how to use it.”
She stared at the hammer, then back at his face. The fear in her eyes didn’t vanish, but it mixed with something else—a wild, incredulous spark. A laugh bubbled up in her throat, choked by tears and terror. It came out as a wet, shaky snort.
“You’re an idiot,” she whispered, squeezing his hand.
“I’m your idiot,” he corrected, his thumb stroking the back of her hand. “And your idiot has a plan.”
“Which is?”
“We call Liv. Right now. She needs to know not to come over. Then, we turn off this lamp. We sit here, in the dark, by the window. We watch for the police cruisers. And we wait.”
He said it with a certainty that brooked no argument. It was a plan built on the only materials he had: vigilance, proximity, and a primitive tool.
Mia nodded, a single, sharp dip of her chin. The helplessness was receding, pushed back by a shared purpose, however simple. “Call her. Put it on speaker.”
Ethan retrieved his phone, the screen still burning with Ruiz’s warning. He found Liv’s contact, hit dial, and placed the phone between them on the couch cushion.
It rang twice.
“Do you two have any idea what time it is?” Liv’s voice was sleep-roughened, but there was no real annoyance in it. “If this is about who should have won the 2007 Oscar for Best—”
“Liv,” Ethan interrupted, his voice tight. “Silas Trent skipped bail. He’s armed. Cops are on the way here. Do not come to Mia’s. Do not even think about it.”
The line was silent for three full seconds.
“Okay,” Liv said, and all the sleep was gone, replaced by a crisp, clinical focus. “Windows locked? Door deadbolted?”
“Yes,” Mia answered, her voice stronger now.
“Good. I’m getting dressed. I’ll be there in fifteen.”
“Liv, no—” Ethan started.
“You don’t get to ‘no’ me, Bellweather. You’re my people. I’m not sitting across town. I’m coming. I’ll park right under a streetlight and honk twice. You watch for me. You see me, you see the cops right behind me, then you even think about that chain.”
“Liv, it’s not safe,” Mia pleaded.
“None of it’s safe, Mia. Hang tight. I’m on my way.”
The call disconnected. The silence that followed was different. It was charged, but purposeful. They had a direction. A next step. A friend in the dark.
Ethan stood, walked to the lamp, and clicked it off.
The room plunged into a deep, velvety gloom, broken only by the faint orange haze of the streetlights filtering through the blinds. The world outside seemed to recede. The only things that existed were the sound of their breathing, the solid weight of the hammer on the table, and the warm pressure where their hands were still joined in the dark.
They moved to the window, side by side, knees touching. Ethan peeled back a slat of the blind just enough to see the rain-slicked street below. It was empty. No cars. No movement. Just the sheen of water on asphalt and the lonely glow of the sodium lamps.
Mia rested her head against his shoulder. “You meant what you said before,” she murmured into the darkness. It wasn’t a question about the threat outside.
“Every word,” he said, his eyes scanning the shadows between the streetlights. “Even the stupid ones.”
“They weren’t stupid.”
Below, a car turned onto the street, its headlights cutting twin paths through the rain. Ethan tensed, his free hand drifting toward the cold steel on the table. The car drove past, its taillights dissolving into the mist.
They waited.