The walls of her home blurred into the walls of interrogation rooms. The smell of morning coffee soured into the metallic tang of blood on old photographs.
Ember Carter was forgetting she had a life outside the case.
Ryan noticed it first in small ways. She kept her phone face-down, snatched it up when it buzzed. She stayed out late without explanation, her eyes distant even when she sat right beside him.
Then came the moment that broke something in him.
One night, Ryan sat in his car after a late business dinner. Across the street, he spotted Ember—her hood drawn up, moving quickly beside a tall man. They slipped into an alley, voices hushed.
Ryan's breath caught. He leaned forward, trying to glimpse the man's face. But before he could, they vanished into the shadows.
Jealousy burned first. Then dread.
Was she meeting someone? Was it an affair?
Or something worse?
Meanwhile, Ember was unraveling.
She spent hours poring over the Greenfield files, piecing together timelines, scouring every photograph, every timestamp. But still the number haunted her.
03:15.
It mocked her, a black hole in her memory.
Every victim from 2014 to 2017 carried a number. Every one pointed back to her.
Her head throbbed. She hadn't eaten. She hadn't slept properly in days. Even Marcus noticed during their last encrypted call.
"You're unraveling, Ember," he warned. "Step back before you lose yourself."
She whispered more to herself than to him: "He's been talking to me since the beginning. I just didn't listen."
Her reflection in the dark computer screen looked like a stranger—hollow eyes, pale skin, obsession carved into every line.
At home, Ryan tried to reach her, but the distance stretched like a fault line.
"Ember," he said one night, voice soft, searching. "What's happening to you? You don't talk to me anymore. You don't even look at me."
She froze in the kitchen, her mind racing with numbers, files, photos. His words brushed past her, muffled by the storm inside her.
Finally, she whispered, "I'm sorry, Ryan. I can't—" She faltered. "I just can't right now."
She turned away.
Ryan's chest ached with something he couldn't name—suspicion, fear, heartbreak.
And in that silence, Ember felt the killer's shadow closing in tighter. Because Vance's warning still echoed in her mind.
He's chasing you.
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The Whispering Cipher
غموض / إثارةEvana Carter seems to have it all: a loving husband, a quiet home, and the life of a devoted wife. But when Ryan leaves for work each morning, Evana steps into a hidden world no one suspects-one where encrypted messages, unsolved cases, and coded mu...
