Chapter 4 Flat words

Zane's POV

"Are you finished?"

The words hit harder than they should have, mostly because they were the first thing anyone had said to me all night that didn't sound afraid of me.

Three words, flat and even, like I'd interrupted her lunch break instead of just torn into her while my sister's body was still warm twenty feet away.

"Did you just fucking ask me that?"

She didn't blink.

"Do you have any idea who I am?"

Nothing. Not even a flicker.

I turned, scanning the room for someone…anyone… with actual authority, and landed on the older guy who'd been giving orders since I walked in. Vance….Chief something.

"Who the fuck brought this college girl here?"

My voice cracked on the last word and I hated myself for it.

"I asked to speak to whoever's in charge."

"This is Special Agent Island Meyers," Rob said, calm in a way that made me want to put my fist through the wall.

"She's the best we've got."

The best you've got. Sure. The fucking best.

She stood there in a dark coat like she'd walked into another ordinary crime scene, her hands loose at her sides and her face unreadable. My baby sister was lying in the other room with her eyes gone, and this woman looked like she was reviewing a parking ticket.

"Special agent my ass."

I laughed, and it came out uglier than I meant it to.

"You expect me to believe the FBI sent someone who looks barely old enough to rent a car?"

Still nothing. It made me angrier.

"How many murder scenes have you actually handled? How many killers have you caught? Because from where I'm standing, you look like you graduated from Quantico last week."

She tilted her head slightly, like she was deciding whether I deserved an answer at all.

"The only rookie in this room," she said, "is the man who thinks money can buy him answers."

That landed somewhere it shouldn't have. Somewhere true. I hated her for finding it that fast.

"Don't," I said, lower now. "Don't you dare stand there and act like you know anything about me."

"Look, Mr. Chandler…."

Her eyes didn't move off mine.

"I know you're going through a lot right now. Believe me, I just need to find who did this.”

I turned away from her.

"The star on your sister's face,"

She continued, and something shifted in her voice, just slightly, just enough that I noticed,

"The star matches an unsolved homicide from ten years ago."

Something in my chest cracked open.

"Don't do that."

My voice wasn't steady anymore.

"Don't you fucking do that. Don't stand there and turn my sister into some headline in your case file."

"That's not what I…"

"She wasn't a symbol."

I was shouting, I think, though it felt far away, like someone else's voice was doing it.

"She wasn't part of your case. She was Katie. She hated coffee that wasn't sweet enough. She fell asleep during every single one of my games and pretended she'd watched the whole thing. She was twenty-two years old and she was supposed to fly home in four days, and she was Katie."

"I know how old she was."

Something moved behind Island's eyes that wasn't procedure.

"I know she was twenty-two. I know she was supposed to fly home in four days. I read her file before I got here.”

"Her file..."

I said it, like it tasted wrong in my mouth.

"That's what she is to you. A file."

"No...That's not what I said."

I looked at her again and something about her name finally caught up to something in the back of my skull.

Meyers… I'd heard it before. Not from tonight, but from somewhere further back, somewhere I'd spent ten years trying not to think about. A name buried beneath years of anger. A name attached to the day everything changed. A name my mother used to say when she thought I wasn't listening.

"Meyers," I said slowly. "Island Meyers. That's right. You look just like her, and you even carry her name.”

“What?... what are you talking about?”

"Your mother..."

My voice had gone somewhere I didn't recognize.

"Your mother was Vicky Meyers, right?"

Her eyebrows pulled together.

"Yes."

A pause.

"Why?"

Like she genuinely had no idea what connection I was making.

"What does my mother have to do with this?”

The room tilted.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Excuse me?"

"Island Meyers…"

I laughed, and there was nothing funny in it, nothing at all.

"You've got to be kidding me. Out of every agent in this city, they sent me you?"

"I don't understand what…"

"Your mother destroyed my family."

My voice cracked.

"She took my father and left my mother sitting in that kitchen for years waiting for someone who had already chosen not to come back, left my little sister crying every single night because her dad decided some other man's wife was worth more than his own kids. And you expect me to stand here and believe the universe just accidentally sent you into my house tonight?”

For one second, Island didn't move at all.

Then I watched it land. Recognition breaking across her face like ice cracking under weight. Like she wasn't just hearing my anger, like she was remembering her own. Her jaw tightened. Something in her eyes went somewhere far away and came back changed.

"Your father," she said quietly. "Zane Chandler. Your father is…."

"Was," I said. "Was my father. Before he disappeared on some boat with your mother and neither of them had the decency to leave a body behind so we could actually bury them."

Island's composure came back so fast I almost missed the moment it slipped. Almost.

"Your father wasn't the only person who disappeared from someone's life that day,"

She said, her voice steadier than it had any right to be.

"I lost a mother too."

For one second, I almost saw past the name and past the anger. She wasn't just the daughter of the woman who hurt my family, she was someone who had lost someone too.

Then I looked toward the room where Katie lay, and the anger came back.

I didn't answer her. I couldn't.

Because Katie was lying twenty feet away with her eyes carved out of her face, and the woman standing in front of me… the woman the FBI had sent to find her killer, was the daughter of the same person who'd started tearing my family apart a decade before some monster finished the job.

"Get out," I said.

"I can't do that."

"I said get out."

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, my hands shaking so bad I nearly dropped it.

"You have any idea how many people answer when I call?" I said. "One word from me and you're off this case by morning."

"Probably a lot of people answer," she said, unbothered. "Doesn't change anything."

"Then you know exactly how easy it'd be for me to get you removed."

"Try."

Just that. One word, and she turned and walked toward the kitchen where two of her people were crouched by the door frame, already talking about something else, like I hadn't just threatened her entire career.

"Unbelievable," I muttered, low enough that only I heard it. Or thought I did.

I followed her, mostly because I didn't know what else to do with my body. She crouched near the front door, studying the security panel on the wall like it might confess something.

"The security system was disabled before entry," she said. "Not forced. Whoever did this either had the code or knew how to bypass it cleanly."

"Could be random," one of the techs offered.

"It's not."

She said it the way most people say the sky is blue.

"He knew her schedule, knew the house would be empty. There's no panic in this scene, no rush. He wanted this found exactly the way it was found."

I stood in the doorway and listened, and something ugly settled low in my stomach. Not because she was wrong, but because she wasn't. She wasn't guessing or performing competently for the room. She was seeing something none of the officers around her were seeing, and some small, furious part of me understood exactly what that meant.

She was good. And if she was good, I might actually need her… the daughter of the woman who'd broken my mother's heart into pieces small enough to bury with her.

I couldn't stand there anymore. I went upstairs, past the tape, into Katie's room. Her coffee mug sat on the nightstand, half-full, gone cold hours ago. Her hoodie hung off the desk chair, sleeves inside out the way she always left them. Her phone lay face-up on the bed, screen locked on some text she'd sent me that morning about my empty fridge.

I sat on the edge of her bed and let myself feel it, just for a moment. Long enough to remember her voice.

Then I heard Island's voice drift up from downstairs, still talking about the killer, the pattern, the case, and the anger came back faster than the grief left.

Because it wasn't just Katie's murder anymore. It was tangled up with everything my father took from us, everything her mother took, ten years of silence and a boat that never came back with any bodies on it.

I watched Agent Meyers leave my house an hour later like she owned the place, walking out into the flashing lights the same way she'd walked in… steady, unreadable, untouched.

Everyone else looked at her like she was our best chance while I saw the daughter of the woman who'd helped destroy my family standing in the wreckage of what was left, telling me she understood.

She didn't understand anything.

And I was going to make damn sure that before this was over, Island Meyers regretted stepping back into the wreckage her family had left behind.