Cornering David

Sarah didn't go back to the hoarder house. She drove straight to the industrial park on the edge of town, her eyes glued to the rearview mirror. The dark SUV remained a shadow in the distance, hanging back just far enough to be deniable.

She knew David Thorne’s schedule. He worked the graveyard shift at a regional shipping hub, a job that allowed him to exist in the margins of the world. Sarah pulled into a gravel lot adjacent to the employee entrance, the undercarriage of her car scraping against the uneven ground.

She waited. The humid night air pressed against the windshield, blurring the harsh security lights of the warehouse.

At 10:55 PM, David’s beat-up sedan turned into the lot. He stepped out, his movements stiff, his head ducked low as he adjusted the strap of a heavy canvas bag. He looked like a man who had been apologizing for his own existence for twenty-seven years.

Sarah slid out of her car. "David."

He flinched so violently he dropped his keys. When he saw her, the color drained from his face, leaving the thin, jagged scars on his neck looking like purple welts. He didn't pick up the keys. He turned and began to walk—not toward the warehouse, but away, toward the line of dense woods bordering the lot.

"Sarah, go home," he rasped, his pace quickening into a panicked jog. "You’re going to get us both killed. Your mother... she called my mother again. She reminded her about the agreement."

"The agreement is a lie, David! It’s a cover for attempted murder!" Sarah sprinted after him, her boots crunching over the gravel. "She’s doing it to Lily! She’s timing her compliance right now!"

David reached the edge of the woods and stopped, his chest heaving. He turned, his eyes wide and wet with a terror that made him look twelve years old again. "I can't. I'm nothing. I'm just the boy from the woods. I don't exist."

"You exist to me." Sarah reached into her tote bag, her fingers closing around the vacuum-sealed plastic. She yanked it out and threw it at his feet.

The heavy plastic hit the gravel with a dull, wet thud. The stiff, rust-stained wool of the letterman jacket was visible through the clear casing. David stared at it, his entire body beginning to tremble. He looked like he was going to vomit.

"The medical logs say it was an accident," Sarah said, stepping into his personal space, her voice a low, vibrating blade. "But I found this in the floorboards. Why would she keep a bloody jacket if it was just a hunting mishap, David?"

David fell to his knees, his hands hovering over the bag but not touching it. "She didn't let me take it off. She made me wear it while she wrote in that notebook. She wanted to see how the wool absorbed the heat."

Sarah’s stomach turned. She reached into the bag and pulled a small, yellowed polaroid from the interior pocket of the jacket—one she’d missed in her initial panic.

The jacket tag said 1987. But the photograph of Elena wearing it was dated 1999. She took it as a trophy.