Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“They won’t believe me,” Pip told herself, in her own voice now. “They never believe us.” Out loud so she would truly listen, this time. She was on her own. Charlie Green wasn’t the one with the answers; she was. She didn’t need to hear it from him, to have him tell her what to do. She had to make her own justice. She had to make them believe her: DI Hawkins, Daniel Da Silva, Ant and Lauren; all of them. Pip looked to the hammer in her land, resolve hardening even as she heard Jason’s- DT’s- car door slam shut. So disturbingly casual it sent ripples of anger and fear down her back: he was convinced he was there to murder her. To strangle her stolen face with that blue rope. To haul her off, maybe in the same car boot she’d been taken in, and dispose of her somewhere, maybe taking notes from his daughters; hiding her away somewhere she’d never be found. 

‘Come on Sarge, stay focused,’ not-Ravi prodded. 

‘I don’t know if I can do it.’ she responded, barely a whisper, hand gripped around the hammer still trembling. Pip could almost hear Ravi’s smirk. ‘Well, I certainly think you can. Go on. Do it.’ She turned the tool over until the sharp reverse-side faced her skin. Gratingly, excruciatingly, she dragged the hammer into the skin of her elbow until thick blood dripped over the cold metal. No, not enough. Her hands slick with blood- Stanley’s or hers, probably both now- she covered the hammer, every inch, soaking it into the crevices, seeping it into the wood, leaving the whole thing coated in her own blood and sweat. She inspected it, the air static with her frenzy. Then she chucked it, hard, to the tall grass by the lone building’s foundations. Some concrete evidence of her capture, able to be found even if Jason burned the whole place to the ground in his panic. Oh, there were the keys, rattling and scraping as they slotted into the door. 

Not listening to Jason Bell’s shouts of confusion and anger, Pippa Fitz-Amobi took off sprinting into the woods.

 ————————— 

Ravi Singh fiddled agitatedly with the pen on his desk. Voicemail again. He sighed, wiping a hand down over his nose and mouth, attempting to time his breathing in equal seconds. In, out, in, out, in- fuck. His fingernails dug into his sweaty palms like they were trying to claw through muscle to grate at the bones beneath. He turned a shiny, streaked cheek away from the blank screen- reflecting nothing but himself- to the window, curtains still spread wide apart despite the late hour. 6:47 pm, now 6:48. Pip said she’d be here at 5 by the latest. His parents were expecting her for the night, had made a much larger portion of food than they normally would. More like what they’d make back when Sal still ate with them. Fuck. His Sarge should not be connecting with Sal like this. The pit in his stomach was barrelling to the centre of the earth, tunnelling down to a familiar depth; one met, once upon a time, by a 14 year old Ravi who’s brother hadn’t come home that night, either.
He couldn’t keep Pip's memory in a jar next to Sal’s, he just couldn’t .

"Mum? Have you seen anything about Pip? Or-”

Even from upstairs, he could hear his mum’s sigh. “No, no word from Leanne or Victor either, before you ask again.” Ravi picked up the pen again and clicked it anxiously. “For goodness’ sake, Ravi! She’s a sensible young woman! Pippa probably just got caught up in study or something, you shouldn’t worry so much.”

He wanted to scream at her, remind her how sensible Sal had been, how that had ended up. No. He couldn’t take it back if it was spoken aloud; it would always be there, a floating concept of well-remembered terror. No mentioning Sal.

He shook his head.

Fuck it. Ravi grabbed a rucksack crumpled in the corner of his room, shoving in item after item: spare clothes, water bottle, phone charger, torch. Little Kilton had very few streetlights, and he had to be able to see any little thing on the ground. If Pip was gone somewhere- and that, he hoped, wouldn’t be the case at all- there’s no way she would have gone without a fight. As he went to shove his phone into the pocket of his trousers, he paused.
Underneath the slightly grubby clear case were the pictures. The photos he knew Pip had a matching set of, hung neatly on the corkboard which once housed Andie’s murder timeline but now kept all of her friends’ moments safe in little polaroid frames. He traced Pip’s beaming face next to his with a longing ache. Her smile, so whole and bright it made his heart skip a beat every time he even glanced at it. Her hair, loose about her shoulders for maybe the first time since the Andie-Sal investigation got serious. Her eyes, even then just a little distant, haunted. This was taken just after her EPQ presentation, at the random shitty arcade they’d found to celebrate the podcast launch in. It hurt a lot , even then, to see that look she slipped into whenever she was nervous or unfocused, framed by deep eyebags- almost purple. ( like she’d just lost a fight, he’d joked, before the photo. Her half-hearted glare fighting off a smile was not pictured.). Though, then, they’d been only a fraction of the size of the ones she’d had in the days leading up to now. Now, as Ravi called out quickly to his mum that he was going to check in at Pip’s house and slipped out the door.

It was quiet on the road towards Pip’s house. The journey, as familiar to him as the feel of their hands wrapped around each other, seemed to drag on for hours- the six and a half minutes sticking in place for twice the length they should. For the ninth time, Ravi glanced at the digital clock set into the dash. (7:04 PM.)
He pulled into the driveway too fast, knocking into one of Leanne’s potted plants and sending the dirt spilling out with a sharp crack.
“Shit-” He hopped out, reaching to shovel the soil back in with bare hands: then he spotted it. The chalk figure . It was much closer than before, and alone. Or, at least, he thought it was- until he looked up and saw them, the other four, climbing up the wall, the last one reaching to Pip’s slightly ajar bedroom window with an outstretched arm. He recoiled, almost falling back into the path of a speeding SUV. Ravi’s whole body shook fiercely as he took in the sight of the hands in front of him, smeared with chalk dust and debris. He swayed even as he stood again, not walking back to the pot, not reacting when the light in their porch lit and two people rushed outside to meet him. 

“Ravi! What are you doing here this late? Pip said she was going to yours-” Victor paused, creasing his eyebrows. “Why are you here? You’re welcome at any time, you know that, but where’s our Pippa?”

He couldn’t find it in himself to respond.

“Ravi, dear, do you know where Pip is? She left a good few hours ago now.” Leanne had her hand on his shoulder, and her usual smile was gone, replaced by a frown as she gazed searchingly into his eyes. In answer, Ravi simply lifted one hand and pointed towards the chalk drawings, shaking his head slowly. 

He could hear the sharp intakes of breath, of course, and the stuttering start of sentences that died on the same lips they were born from. It simply washed over him. If he refused to let their panic set in, maybe he could change the reason behind it- remove the catalyst, and just hold her in his arms again. Vaguely, he felt a tear roll down a numb cheek. It must be his but he couldn’t tell; everything was so quiet, so surreal, so devoid of meaning and sense. It was like every new sensation was a wave- pointlessly cresting shallow before retreating unnoticed.

He was inside now, sitting at the table opposite Pip’s parents. He couldn’t recall moving at all. Shifting uncomfortably in the wooden chair, Ravi knew the words he had to say, knew the exact pronunciation and formation of his mouth to bring them about, knew the fallout of pain and fear and anger they would cause. (Too well, too well- )

“Pip has a serial killer stalker. And now she’s missing.”

M

                           I

                                                        S

                                                                       S

                                                                                                   I

                                                                                                           N

                                                                                                                            G.

—————————

Sorry, Ravi. Mum. Dad. Josh. Cara. I love you all.
I trust you, Ravi, more than anything. You can do this, solve this one without me.

Mostly. 

Where to start?

—————————

If, when, Pip returned, she would have a go at him for sharing her secrets. But the cat was out of the bag now, really and truly. If Ravi had felt like he was swimming through time before, this was when he broke for air. The second he began to explain, everything was sharper, stark, almost hyperreal; it was like the air was too cold and it cut at the back of his throat every time he shakily managed an inhalation. Pip’s parent’s faces came all at once into focus and he could make out every mild wrinkle, every concerned crease digging through their foreheads, every pore and microexpression that hinted at coursing anxiety. Victor tilted his head forwards just slightly. Ravi could tell the look in his eyes was disbelief (and worry for Ravi’s state of mind). What parent could believe that? He fought through the discomfort and embarrassment, squeezing his eyes shut tight until colours bloomed in the dark.

“What do you know about the harassment Pip was getting online?”

Leanne coughed a little. “Well, I know it existed. She’s a very independent girl, of course, never likes to burden us with that kind of hate she’s getting, even though she knows we’d support her through it-”

“Wait, sorry, what has this got to do with a serial killer? Can we get back to that bit please?” Victor interrupted. Victor never interrupted, he was always patient- it almost made Ravi guilty, in a way.

“They’re connected. Here-” He pulled out his phone, scrambling to find the image of Pip’s spreadsheet (always a spreadsheet) about her stalking, “-she made a list. It started online, that same message: ‘Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? ’. Then headless roses in her car, headless stick figures, headless birds.” He paused for breath, seeing the colour fade slightly from both of their faces. 

“We saw the pigeons. I just assumed it was a cat- those new neighbours have one, and you know what they’re like.” She leaned in again towards his phone. Ravi could tell when she reached it by the almost comical way her eyes widened. PS. Remember to always kill two birds with one stone. “Right after the second pigeon…” She shared a look with Victor. She gulped. “Surely, though, this doesn’t mean a serial killer? It’s fucking worrying that somebody- with bad intentions, clearly- knows where we live, but what makes you think this is a… murder?”

“Not a murder. She’s not dead, she can’t be-” He caught himself.
This, he mused vaguely, is worse than what the police interrogation will be. He could yell and scream at Hawkins, get him to do something, but all he was doing here was telling the parents of the girl he loved more than life itself that she was likely in mortal danger. With no exit. Just preventable situations, and laughable reasoning to why he couldn’t just keep her safer. “I mean, ” he continued slowly, “I mean that we researched. Do you remember hearing about the DT killer? Slough Strangler?”

Their expressions returned to tight-lipped sympathy. “Yes, dear, we followed that one quite closely: Billy Karras. But he’s in jail now. You know that?”

Ravi took a not-at-all calming breath, then exhaled deeply. “It’s the wrong man. Billy confessed after a 9 hour long interview! And then rescinded his confession! Pip showed me the transcript after she got it from the police, 102 pages, all leading questions. English wasn’t his first language, he didn’t know what was being asked of him, I read it myself. Only an idiot or a crook could read it and think it made him guilty. The real killer is out there- and he was after Pip.”

Ravi told them about the similarities in Julia Hunter and Pip’s case. The stick figures, increasing by one victim after Julia’s death; the prank phone calls from untraceable numbers; the time frame. His speech finished, he let it sink in. 

Surprisingly, Leanne and Victor shared a look instead of refuting him outright, sending him away like the probably crazy man he was. She mouthed something that looked like ‘do you think…’ , and Victor nodded back.
They didn’t let him stay puzzled for long. She coolly informed him of last night and Pip’s speakers. Her reluctance and obvious avoidance of the truth paired with a scary lack of resistance towards taking all the blame.
“She was so distant, it was like she was still half-asleep. But she couldn’t have been, because she was up and talking to us. It… it wasn’t the bluetooth, was it? It was him. The DT killer. And,” he paused, allowing Ravi to absorb all of that. “I- I think there was something else, too. Pippa isn’t scared at loud noises just because they’re loud, she’s always been weird like that.” He chuckled- then stopped himself, mouth falling steeply. “I think I saw her drop something as we came in. A sheet of paper, or a bit of clothing, maybe?”

They searched her room. 

It was so quintessentially Pip that it made his eyes sting to look at it- clothes, pens, files and folders strewn about in that ‘organised mess’ type of way that she thrived in. If it was a little messier than usual, the papers slightly more frantically written, it was unnoticeable. Ravi’s eyes drew themselves automatically to the murder board like they had so many times before, when they proved Sal’s innocence. And then, just below it, on the carpet abandoned, a crumpled sheet of paper. 

‘Ready for my next trick?’

“Shit! Shit. Shit. ”
Victor rarely swore. It made Ravi jump a little to hear him yell it so loud, booming, filling the room. They all knew the DT Killer’s next move, just like any standard magician: make you disappear. 

Where was his Sarge now? With him ? Not dead, she couldn’t be with Sal-

Leanne’s wide eyes met his, unflinchingly. “You- Ravi. We need to find out who did this. Please. 

Our Pip. Gone.”

—————————

Somewhere, in the black of night, a warehouse burned . 

Chapter Text

Ravi hadn’t gone home that night. The hours drew on, leaving him sleeplessly curled up on Pip’s crumpled mess of duvet with his head resting listlessly on folded knees. 

One text to his parents, frantic paragraphs sent in which he even found himself avoiding gloating that he was right. Jokes seemed to avoid him. He’d found no humour in Josh’s bed-headed appearance as he came in to complain that Pip had woken him up. The idea of laughing, smiling even, without her next to him to give him a half-menacing, half-loving glare was foreign somehow. Out of reach. Gone.
The rest of their friends had got enough calls to wake up any of them who’d been sleeping. Cara was there on the first ring; Ravi guessed she hadn’t been sleeping either. He couldn’t hope to replicate nor forget that noise that had escaped her when he said Pip was missing; it was like she’d just lost a limb, deep and guttural and jarring, only a second long but so much deeper than any of the hundred questions she’d asked him. Naomi soon joined her, their faces reflecting back off of Ravi’s eyes as they glazed from the bright light. Nat was next. Luckily Jamie, Connor and her had been having a film marathon night together and were still all together, asleep on the sofa until his incessant calling. 

After that, in three separate homes, nobody slept.

Having now been awake for twenty four and a half hours, Ravi stepped out the door of his missing girlfriend’s house and into the crisp september air. It felt so normal that you would hardly be able to tell the worst thing in the world had just happened. A thick fog still gripped around corners and low tree roots. The six of them met there, just at her front porch. The gap they left as a circle was formed- muscle memory, an instinct more than anything- was left unfilled even when it was clocked, an unspoken deliberate message to whoever was probably watching the house.
And he was probably watching the house, because he’d been there again. Between Ravi stepping outside to get new pictures of the stick figures at 12 AM and now, he must have been: because they were gone. The thought of DT standing on a ladder, shrouded in all black, wiping the evidence away just mere metres from where he had lain on Pip’s bed was honestly terrifying. Not more terrifying than the fact that he thinks he’s done with Pip.
If he’s here, where is she?

“And you still haven’t reported this to the police, why? ” 

Ravi swallowed, snapping out of the spiral. Nat had touched on something he’d debated a long time about with Leanne and Victor, setting out pros and cons, eventually deciding on what they all hated- but the lesser of two evils. If the others didn’t agree with his choice, he wouldn’t know how to react. Pip wasn’t officially reported missing yet, but she was in every other sense of the word; the same way Andie Bell wasn’t dead officially for months, even though everybody knew she was. All of their friends, her family, and his parents knew. Enough people to look for her when she disappeared. In the end, the three of them agreed on twelve hours until they called up the police and filed a case for her. It was to ‘avoid wasting police time if she came back fast’ , they’d said , not one of them believing that would happen. It was against every bone in all of their bodies to not ring up Hawkins personally, in hysterics, and beg him to bring their Pip home- but they all agreed nonetheless. It was still an unknown if she was actually missing, technically, and she could, theoretically, just be going away quietly for the night without telling them. Hypothetically. But they all were so painfully aware it was so untrue. In any case, 9 AM was fast approaching. He’d have to make the worst phone call of his life at some point.

“I mean, she could still come back at any time, we really have no evidence that she was kidnapped. Well, we all know it, but the police won’t.” he winced to admit it out loud, but was grateful for the reluctant agreement at any rate. 

“If we find any evidence at all, we call the cops.”

By 8:19 AM, nobody had made any progress. Not so much as a hair. Ravi’s eyes were still clear as ever while he walked down Cross Lane, unnecessary torch in hand, but his mind was back at the last phone call his Sarge had made to him. Her voice was slurred, incomprehensible, but she sounded so scared he wanted to crawl through the screen and shield her forever. He didn’t care what had happened as much as he cared that it made her so frightened, terrified, and he just wished he could draw that fear out of her and carry it himself so that she would never feel that way again in her life. Their life, together. He wondered if she was scared now, too.

He didn’t even register it at first, when he heard the crunch of glass beneath his boot. 

It was just another sound, like the soft whispers of the wind.

Until, he suddenly realised, it wasn’t.

Ravi gazed down, squinting his eyes slightly- then widening them massively, letting them almost eclipse the rest of his face, because

because there was no way he wouldn't recognise his Sarge’s phone anywhere.

Even if it was shattered on the pavement.

—————————

From the shelter and relative safety of her tree branch,  Pip watched Jason’s car drive along that road again. Her eyes followed the slow, steady pace it kept, imagining the way he scanned for her, eyes straining to see over the hedgerow separating them. It was all she could do to hope he wouldn’t look up. 

Her foolproof DNA plan had almost got her caught, to begin with. Clearly, DT had very quickly noticed which direction his attempted victim sprinted off in, and began to follow. The heaving, clattering sounds his footsteps made- always in groups of six; six bullets at a time, again and again (and again and again and again and again) - lurked as a phantom in her memory, just far enough behind that she had time to hide, but not enough that he wouldn’t find her . Just when she thought she was making good ground, through the brush where her tracks were smothered by piles of dead and rotted plants, she noticed her trail. Little patters of blood, staining the dirt and gleaming red under the moonlight. And he was crashing, panting as he followed that perfect little path of breadcrumbs to his ultimate prize- his freedom. He probably thought she was going to find a house, call up the police, try and catch him out.

That’s where he was wrong.

No, Pippa Fitz-Amobi had no intentions of going to the police herself. In time, they would- the same people Jason Bell had held over her head the whole time he was stalking her. Now we’re both going to find out the answer to that one, aren’t we DT?

Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

Pip knew both her family (blood related or not) and the DT killer too well. He would try to cover this up, look for her. And for that reason, she’d have to be very careful when she led Ravi straight to his undeniable guilt. He had to solve her case; be the one with the puzzle pieces. She could hand them to him, sure, but he’d have to put them together himself this time. This was the only way, to abandon them for a time, because as well as she knew her loved ones and attempted murderer, she also knew the justice system. This particular system played, completely inconveniently, into the hands of one DI Richard Hawkins- close friend of Jason Bell- and Daniel Da Silva- the son Jason never had. 

(Practically one of them.)

The only way to have her case examined at all was evidence.
That’s all she had to create.

Pip considered this calmly, all the while frantically tearing a strip of fabric off the seam of her grey hoodie and wrapping it too tight around her elbow. Bastard. I liked this hoodie. 

Not allowing herself to waste a single second more, she’d sprinted as fast as her numb legs could carry the body attached awkwardly on top of them. Everything felt disjointed, depersonalised. It must be a little past 7 PM, but she had no way to check- the moon was half full, but she could glean nothing else. The Ravi in her head had been completely silent since her escape. For the first time, now devoid of any sound aside the quiet rattle of wind, Pip felt completely alone.

Another few close calls led her to the top of a tall tree, out of sight. Watching for him as he circled again and again round the single lane guarding the forest boundary. 

Once he gets back to the warehouse, that’s when I make a break for it.

—————————

If the operator was trying to interrupt Ravi with all the standard questions, they stopped abruptly when he said those magic words: Pip’s missing.

He felt like he lost a bit of himself when he saw the phone, to be honest. Both it and his heart were completely shattered on the tarmac, strewn carelessly like disused toys. The main body was clearly shifted under a pile of damp leaves, just tucked by the kerb in a rushed attempt to hide it. But he hadn’t been able to hide the ring of fractured glass and splintered camera lens, and so that too was photographed by forensics, when they arrived. 

It was a testament to the Amersham police service, both that the rate with which they screeched to the end of Cross Lane caused a wake of dried leaves behind each and every car, and that Ravi had the specific number memorised because of the amount of times he and Pip had had to do their job for them. 

Shockingly, Hawkins himself had come straight out to the scene. Ravi wasn’t very familiar with the man, besides televised interviews and what Pip had told him. (Pip wasn't here to tell him anything anymore-)
The older man pulled him aside before he even had a chance to open his mouth.

“Hello. It is Ravi Singh- isn’t it? ”

He stuttered for a second. “Yes- it is, yes. So, Pip-”

Hawkins held out a creased hand, turning his other cheek away from Ravi. 

“Hang on just a second, young man. I want try and keep this report more casual- as it were-  before the official interviews, statements and the like, but I do need to remind you,” he coughed a little, “that you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.” He glanced up from where he was now retrieving a notebook and pencil, noticing his raised eyebrow. “Standard procedure, you know. We don’t even have the beginnings of a case yet, let alone a court hearing.”

“Can I explain what’s happened to Pip now?”

“Yes, Mr Singh, that would be much appreciated. I’m afraid my staff couldn’t pick up much more over the phone than ‘urgent’, ‘missing’, and ‘Detective Hawkins’.” He arched his own eyebrow at that last one. In truth, Ravi had only been parrotting the same detective he knew Pip had been talking to, before her- before, 

“Well, Detective Hawkins- sir-” sir?? “I- well- Pip’s missing. Nobody’s seen her since about 3 PM yesterday. She told her parents, and me, that she would be staying the night at mine, there no later than 5- but she never turned up. Do you- do you know about her current stalking incidents?” He cringed at his informality, awkwardness, but dammit, he had to report the love of his life missing no matter the bruise to his gleaming public image. 

Hawkins stood up noticeably straighter, clearly taken a little aback. “Why yes, Miss Fitz-Amobi did report some.. incidents, as you put them- but they were written off as little more than coincidences.” He paused, looking almost guilty all of a sudden, “In fact, I called her just four days ago, inquiring about them, and she said they’d gone away.”

The groan Ravi released at hearing that was unrestrainable. Typical Pippa, discrediting herself to police probably minutes before she was kidnapped. She never had good luck, no matter how lucky she appeared- it was always skill. Ravi had luck, but only because he’d found her.
And now he’d lost her again.

“I can’t tell you why she said that, detective, because it’s not at all true. Actually, it’d only ramped up since she visited you. Prank calls, her stalker blasting music through the bluetooth devices in her own bedroom in the middle of the night-” The detective’s eyes widened,but still shrouded themselves in a thin lining of disbelief- “-and that was a day before she went missing. I stayed the night at the Amobi household last night. She never returned. Then, this morning, her parents and some of our friends conducted a search for any clues ourselves. That’s when I found her phone, shattered right there.”

He pointed, and any complaints Hawkins was about to make surrounding taking the law into his own hands promptly died on his tongue.

Something shifted behind the detective's eyes in that moment. Ravi couldn’t be certain what exactly that emotion was, but there was a very familiar sight, tucked at the back there: rage. The man’s mouth gaped for a second, creating and erasing sentences in his mind. Until, strangely, his expression hardened. 

“I will find out the truth behind this.”

It didn’t sound like a promise to Ravi, or even to Pip. It sounded like a promise to himself .

The finality, the gravity and weight of that didn’t go unnoticed by him. It was odd, the conflict of utter peace on one hand and wilding storm on the other that mingled together on Hawkins’s face. That compound of emotion was unreadable, and it put even the self-professed ‘people-person’ himself on edge. No unknown was a good unknown, even when it came to these people’s motivations.

Especially when it came to these people’s emotions. 

Had he been staring? The detective’s creased forehead and slightly down tilted head definitely suggested so. Ravi blinked (maybe a little too unnaturally) for one second, then corrected his posture a bit. Nothing like meeting the police officer who’ll be officially investigating your girlfriend’s kidnapping to humble you, ah?
Hawkins cleared his throat, flicking glances between his scribbled-on notepad and the pupils of Ravi’s eyes. He started, somewhat stiltedly, explaining all he could about the proceedings from there on out; giving excuses as to why he couldn’t be told exact dates, assuring him he’d stay in touch with any updates (except he couldn’t really, because only blood family was allowed direct contact), and generally exuding an indecipherable vibe which raised the hair on the back of his neck like lightning was about to crash, agonisingly, into him. 

“Thank you, detective.”

“No problem, Mr Singh. It’s my job to bring justice, after all. My duty. And I intend to fulfil that role, as ever.”

Ha.

‘As ever.’

—————————

He rushed home- to the Amobi’s, that was- as soon as the missing posters were all up. The photo of Pip they’d chosen was from her profile picture on Spotify and Twitter, where they’d first hosted AGGGTM: it was recent enough, plus eye-catching. (Well, every picture of Sarge was eye-catching, but that was just him.).
It was when they were printing them- at Cara’s house, because the cord of Pip’s printer was completely busted and mangled- that Ravi had an idea. The police would probably come knocking on her door soon, especially when the posters were on every postbox and shopfront and bus stop they could get permission for (and some they wouldn’t), and when that happened they’d come searching through Pip’s room, disturbing what might just be evidence through the right context. Hawkins and the forensics wouldn’t recognise clue from nonsense if it smiled and waved cheerfully at them in broad daylight; let alone in a room like hers. So, Ravi just had to do some investigating of his own.
And sure, ‘tampering with a possible crime scene’ was a felony, but so was kidnapping people, okay?

The printer was as good a place as any to start, he supposed. Ravi inspected every inch, rereading DT’s last note until all the letters bled together into a menacing grin. The cable was totally wrecked at one end, just like he’d seen earlier. It seemed like she’d been completely out of it and panicked when she’d disabled it the night Before. Her mic and recording software were casually strewn on the ground, easily discarded from their normal place in her black backpack. Her backpack? He scrambled around on the floor for a little while, before remembering. She had it on her when she left on that fateful run, full of stuff to bring to his. It was gone. Ravi Singh scrunched up his face until it hurt and he could see swirling watercolour in the backs of his eyelids. Fucking hell. Why’d it always have to be this town? Why couldn’t some other poor bastard mourn, and give him and Pip their lives back?
No, he whispered, barely out loud. Nobody can give us our lives back, because we still have them. You can’t give someone what they already have- and you especially can’t give life to someone like Pippa-freaking- Fitz-Amobi.

No. He stood again, shaking a little but just praying nobody heard him. Josh had that habit of somehow hearing everything nowadays, just as Pip had said. Ravi scoured the wardrobe, beneath the bed, right to the back of her bookcase in case she was hiding anything there. Nothing. Onto the desk: her laptop he’d deal with later, once he got the password, but he would focus on other parts for now. Papers- old revision, study papers, stalking reports and Jane Doe cases- formed an almost solid layer across her desk. Oookay, that he would leave to the detectives. He didn’t even know where he’d begin to unpack that mess; though if he couldn’t he’d take a picture and save it, just as a memory for her, when she was in Cambridge safely.
Instead, he opened the drawers. The first was more of the same- full of junk which he looked through with increasing incredulity. When had Sarge ever used a Rubik's Cube? Probably hundreds of little scraps of paper, covered in tiny squished writing that piqued his interest at first but soon proved to just be even more lecture notes. The second drawer down started the same, especially the college notes, he noticed. Most of these were from last year, noted as ‘Mr Ward’s class’. Ravi shuddered at the thought of his brother’s murder being that close to her, for twelve whole years, even if he hadn’t been a killer at the time. Just as he was about to move to the next drawer down and focus on the killer at hand- one at a time, now- his hand unexpectedly met something that felt a lot flimsier than fake ikea wood.

He leaned down, inquisitively widening his eyes. Tentatively, he lifted the fake bottom out and revealed a hidden compartment.

Six old phones, the last just a smidge unaligned from the others, a tiny chip in the screen. Ravi recoiled immediately. What the hell was Pip doing with this many burner phones? He pulled the whole thing out of its slot, resting the metal sliding contraption on his knees. Stuffed at the back were some tiny bags, dregs of power still lurking in the corners.
What the FUCK was Pip doing with drugs??

No, no no nonononono, that couldn’t be right. There had to be an explanation. Pip couldn’t be an addict. 

( Her voice was slurred, incomprehensible )

Who had she even been buying from anyway? Who was so spineless to sell whatever these were to an eighteen year old?

( She was so distant, it was like she was still half-asleep. But she couldn’t have been )

How much had she been struggling, hidden from him?

Why hadn’t he noticed?

In one fell swoop, with not a single second thought, Ravi pushed all that compartment’s contents into his black rucksack resting nearby, fake cardboard bottom and all. Then, totally calmly- ignoring his shaking hands, trembling jaw, stinging eyes, - he placed the second drawer down back into its rightful place. 

He stood. Just like the last night, he swayed, but this time nobody was there to catch him. The bed softened his fall, but did nothing to cover the overwhelming loneliness that suddenly rushed over him. It smothered him; suffocating. He didn’t even know everything about Pip herself, what made him think he could catch her killer? But, then again, her killer wasn’t as smart as Pip. He wasn’t as talented, or as funny, and he most certainly wasn’t as drop-dead gorgeous. ( Poor choice of words. )

He didn’t need to outsmart Pip, he just had to outsmart the man who was stupid enough to think he could take down team Ravi-and-Pip.

He had to be able to do this. For her.

Resolve hardened, He slung the backpack over one shoulder and made for the door. He needed to update his mum and dad desperately before the case proceeded; they deserved to know every detail here. 

Of course, that's when his phone began to ring at the bottom of his bag.

Dammit, Hawkins, let me have my moment.

The cold dread didn’t arise suddenly. In fact, it was there from the start, he suspected.

Because that wasn’t his ringtone, and he could feel the cold screen of his mobile pressing up against his leg in his right jean pocket. 

Regardless, he kept digging.

That burner phone, the one with the menacing chip in the corner of its illuminated screen.

His trembling fingers struggled to tap ACCEPT.

“Hello?”

His throat was dry and gravelly.

Somebody answered, a voice he couldn’t place.

“Pippa?”

Chapter Text

Shit shit shitshitshitshit shit.

“What the fuck do you know about Pip?”

Sudden beeping echoed from the phone. Ravi pulled it away from his ear, hand shaking so much he felt halfway to crushing the screen. Oh no you don’t-

He pressed to recent callers. There was no way in hell he was letting a possible lead get away from him like that. No. Way.

The phone hardly rang for a second before it was declined. It probably shouldn't have felt like as much of a slap in the face as it did, but Ravi was too overwhelmed to feel anything else. After a second that was far too long, he reigned his emotions back to normal- his new normal; volatile and terse but constant, at least. He had to make connections, be proactive, find different methods like Pip would. Who did he know in Little Kilton that dealt drugs? Internally he cringed that the number was greater than zero. Howie Bowers sprung to mind first, but no, he was still rotting in jail (spreading rumours that changed Pip’s life). No, not him, but there was somebody else lurking on the fringes of his memory, beckoning him over from afar in the shadows. Who? The man’s name was like an itch he couldn’t scratch. So close. Howie sharing secrets, Stanley Forbes’ death, Charlie Green and Pip in the farmhouse, Robin and his friends in the farmhouse before that, telling them to clear out because someone was coming soon, someone who dealt them drugs-

Luke Eaton.

R: Hey Nat- this is random but I need Luke Eaton’s number and I figured you’d still have it somewhere. That bastard and I need to have a ‘chat’

N: is this about pip? did he do something? you know i’ll fuck him up if he did.

A few minutes later, Ravi’s finger hovered cautiously above the call button on his own phone, a new number typed in below. If he was being honest, he had no clue how Pip just called these people. It was terrifying. No, he had to be brave or else Pip was never going to be found; and that was far more scary than making a phone call to someone. Even if it was a dangerous somebody like Luke. 

He pressed it.

“Uh. hello?”

“Hey, Luke. We need to have a conversation about whatever the fuck that just was.”

He could hear shuffling on the other side of the phone. “Don’t you dare hang up, I could have you arrested-”

“Oh fuck off, fine. Who the hell ever are you anyway?” 

“..Not important.”

There was paper shuffling in Luke’s other hand, he could hear it. “ Ravi Singh. ”

“How do you-”

“The same way I knew to try and call Pippa. The poster has your number all over it, kid. You’re gonna get phone calls by, like, the dozen now.”

“ How do you know Pip?”

“I’m not about to spill all my clients’ secrets now, am I?” He chuckled slowly and gratingly.

“So she was a client? She bought drugs from you?” 

“They were hardly my most intense offer. Just to help her sleep- I think it was a good deed.”

“No you don’t.”

“No, probably not. But it benefitted both of us, so what’s the harm?”

He honestly couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Sleeping pills? He expected to feel angry, but instead he just felt empty. It was like he had lost his footing and was desperately trying to grasp onto the unfamiliar all around him, struggling and failing to keep himself from falling down; down into hollow anguish and loss. 

“You know full well the harm, you bastard. ”

Was that a fucking yawn? “Listen, I really don’t have all day, kid. I tried to do a good deed just then, checking in on her, but clearly you’re gonna be on my ass for hours if I don’t stop you right here.”

“I’m not done-” 

“-yeah, you are. I’m not answering shit all more. And good luck going to the police, they’re gonna love all that evidence you have. Have the day you deserve, and don’t bother to call again. I ain’t picking up.”

Fucking beeping again.

—————————

WIREDRIP – TRUE CRIME PODCAST STAR MISSING

The ‘true crime’ podcast genre has exploded in recent years, and anyone who is anyone knows the queen of it is Pippa Fitz-Amobi, creator and owner of ‘ ‘ A good girls guide to murder ’. However, it seems like the stardom granted to 18 year old Fitz-Amobi has been short-lived, as she was reported missing officially at 1 PM on the 16th of September. Police statements place her disappearance at around 22 hours ago- a fact worrying to any true crime fan such as Amobi herself, given less than 20% of missing persons are found after the 24-hour mark. The missing poster is available here for more information. We are sending support to Pippa’s family and friends in such a difficult time.

 Be sure to subscribe to WIREDRIP for updates on this developing case!

[Comments ^^^]

- @Okay_Emoji : IDK man, kinda feel like this is on her. Shouldnt have gone poking   around in so many dangerous peoples businesses, then maybe shed be safe. What was she expecting?

—--- @DontMakeLemonade responding to @Okay_Emoji : Bleaching my eyes bc wtf is wrong with you? Men really have all the audacity nowadays huh

—---—--- @Okay_Emoji responding to @DontMakeLemonade : Im just saying she had it coming, dont be such a bitch about it

—---—---—--- @RavishingOnline responding to @Okay_Emoji : fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you FUCK YOU

—————————

Ravi Singh clicked off the tab with tears burning his eyes. 

He vaguely wondered if he could sue all the clickbait articles and victim-blamey comments for the crime of asshole-ery as he continued the trek through the news app’s refreshed homepage. One more article about Pip, then two, repetitive and sparse for details. Without anything more substantial than undisclosed evidence and a wide, breezy window of disappearance, there was nothing else that a columnist could provide than their standard missing persons flyers. Well, nothing except money. Ah, capitalism. The indignation of it all allowed him to cynically blink back the looming threat of tears for one or two seconds more. The only reason he’d even put himself through that borderline mental torture was to see if the police had confirmed any details yet, and he hadn’t even found that anywhere. Ravi sighed deeply, letting the feeling settle in his bones heavily. One last refresh…

– UNIDENTIFIED AMERSHAM ARSON

A fire at one warehouse belonging to the conglomerate Green Scene (ltd) in Knotty Green, near Amersham, is confirmed to be the work of an unidentified arsonist as… [read more] --

Green Scene. The company Billy Karras had worked for. The company Pip assumed the DT killer had as well. He clicked the article- burned to the ground the very same  night of Pip’s disappearance. Just ashes, He had people to ring up, that was for sure.

They were about to conduct their first investigation. 

 —————————

To: [email protected]

Cc:

From: [email protected] 

Subject: interview Request

____

Hello,

This email is in relation to recent events, and while I empathise with the strain your company must be put under right now, I hope that you will find time to respond to me. I am working on an independent research project nearby to the site of this unfortunate crime, and hope to garner more information from sources closer to the direct police statements. I'd also appreciate it if we could discuss other relevant ongoing cases.

In order to conduct all of this research, it would be most appropriate to have an interview over the phone, however if a meeting with one of your teams or a message conversation is preferable then I am willing to accommodate you however you see fit. 

I hope that we will be able to discuss recent events soon.

Yours sincerely,

Ravi Singh.

 —————————

With the whole gang piling out of Jamie’s car, it felt just like old times again. (Except, of course, one crucial component.)

The high fences surrounding the grounds enclosed the place like a prison, suffocating everything within them like a pillow over the face. It was like the scent of ash and smoke, which lingered meanderingly around the outskirts, doubled the moment the six of them stepped within the imposing boundaries. The lack of police was surprising but not unwelcome. Clearly no thorough investigation had even started, so it was all fresh for them.

They split into groups of two- Ravi and Cara, Jamie and Nat, Naomi and Connor- to search the place properly. If Ravi’d been asked whether or not he’d been googling ‘most effective manhunt search patterns’ fervently on the drive over, he’d have said no- but he’d be lying. It wasn’t him being embarrassed to be looking for her, obviously. It was just, if Pip was looking for him, she’d already know how to. 

(Someone named Cara Ward had, in fact, asked him that: and he’d received a scathing look and exasperated sigh upon the sheepish explanation.)

They had to try and avoid the building itself. That posed a major issue which had been ignored up until that point. Most of them already had prints on record, which would make things very messy if they got flagged during the arson investigation. Then again, Ravi himself had no prints. No criminal record, no physical involvement in any case so far that the cops could prove.. He shook his head. The search patterns. They were looking for blood, hair, anything to prove Pip had been here. Not a pile of rubble.

That’s all there was left of the warehouse, really. It was built like an old house- maybe it had been, before it was a storage unit; before it was ash- but the reinforced beams and pillars of metal were intact, if slightly warped. It was like the skeleton of a dragon. He and Cara were supposed to be heading over to the scorched hedgerow on the left side, but that debris was strangely hypnotic. It was like the more he resisted, the stronger the pull to explore was; the remaining smoke beckoning to him like a gnarled, wizened finger. Ravi could practically picture his parents’ frowns as he walked towards the active crime scene in order to contaminate it. For, he realised, the second time that day.
At least he’d got out a few minutes before the police arrived, then. If he found something now, he actually had to do shit about it. Like the phone. Unlike the drugs . 

“Uh, Ravi SIngh, where do you think you’re going?”

Cara was tapping her foot, arms folded tightly across her torso- for a second, despite being a good many months into his apprenticeship, he felt like he was back in school. But teachers’ faces were never as kind, or as underlined so deeply with well-contained sorrow as Cara Ward’s. “What?”

She laughed and furrowed her eyebrows incredulously. “Without me? What if there’s someone in there, waiting to spring out on you? I can’t be having that on my watch, Naomi would yell at me.”
She puffed slightly, jogging to catch up. “Plus, I’d miss you, or something like that.”

She smiled in just the way that he knew well: the way that looked light and carefree but said if you leave too I’ll kill us both. 

The search was over before they even had to wade much through the piles of rubbish. A tiny strip of grey duct tape survived, a couple strands of dark hair peeking out from where it lay tucked beneath some bricks. 

“Fuck.” His breath was escaping in sharp, halting jerks,

Cara gulped and nodded robotically. “This is the part where we don’t touch anything, right, Ravi?” She pulled out her phone, instantly texting a photo to the others, telling them to get their asses here right now. But Ravi wasn’t focused on that. He was fixed on a glint of something else, lying in the grass. That shine of metal which was just the wrong colour to the rest of the beams. 

He squinted to see it better but that only made it more confusing. It looked like it was   covered   in something. 

He stepped  closer. 

It was in the tall grass by the lone building’s foundations, lying  abandoned , carelessly. 

Like the man that did it wasn’t even  bothered   to clean Pip’s blood off of it.

The hammer was  invisible but for the late-day sun hitting the  exposed metal on the handle.

Exposed beneath the   blood ,   that was.

The whole world started to    spin    and     tilt   on its axis .

And Ravi’s mind went

          B

          L

          A

          N

          K

 —————————

It was still abandoned, just like she’d hoped. 

Home, sweet home.

 —————————

He couldn’t remember much coherently after that. For hours there were only flashes, snapshots into a whole other world. He couldn’t be in that world- or, at least, he couldn't have really been, then. If he was, he’d know about more than Cara’s breath hitching sharply, than that hand on his shoulder, than resisting the urge to vomit as soon as he leant forward to get a closer look. And he’d remember extra information, not just how Daniel Da Silva yelled when he found Nat there too; not just the forensics’ blank masked faces crowding around the only shred he had of her now; not just how that shadow lurked behind Hawkins’s glowing eyes and curled lip. Ravi couldn’t recall the order they took his fingerprints in, or what exactly Hawkins was yelling at the other officers as they turned the place upside down.

He did remember that they hadn’t needed to google search patterns

Minor DNA samples taken, he could feel consciousness returning slowly to him. The dream-like haze persisted, but receded to the corners of his vision. The air wasn't as thick as treacle now, more like at the top of a pool. He could still feel himself drowning, though.
The drive home was somehow even less fun than the drive there.

Just like Hawkins had apparently told them, Ravi was not dropped off at home.

 —————————

Ravi Singh Recorded Statement

Date: 16/09/19

Duration: 14 minutes

Location: Amersham police station, interview room A

Conducted by Detective Inspector (DI) Hawkins

Hawkins:  This is Detective Inspector Hawkins interviewing Ravi Singh, the time is 6:56 PM on Monday the 16th of September. The contents are a statement produced by Singh in regards to the missing persons inquiry into Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Ravi, I must remind you that, although you may stay silent or answer ‘no comment’, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. (*coughs; clears his throat.*)

RS: Oh, erm, okay. Got it.

Hawkins: Good. These are just formalities, of course, Ravi. However, I do intend to do things more properly than earlier this morning. I was planning on conducting this interview at some point tomorrow, but the recent evidence has prompted me to believe we may be time sensitive here.

RS: Aren’t all missing persons cases ‘time sensitive’?

Hawkins: (Clears throat) Well yes, obviously. I simply meant that, given new evidence, it’s ‘all hands on deck’, to use the expression. 

RS: I see.

Hawkins: Now then. Ravi, did you note seeing a change in Pippa’s behaviour at any point recently.

RS: Yes. Ever since Stanley’s death, she’s been changed a little. She got counselling after, which you know, but she hadn’t fully recovered. Then the stalking started, and that only worsened matters. 

Hawkins: And when would you say these incidents first started?

RS: Well, I can’t remember off the top of my head. It was on the internet at first- Twitter mainly- but that was par for the course, at the time. It was just after Jamie Reynolds’s reappearance, so she was facing a lot of hate and disbelief online and in person. 

Hawkins: Right. What exactly were these messages like online?

RS: It was always the same thing: ‘Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?’. Did Pip not tell you this when she reported her stalking not that long ago?

Hawkins: I’m afraid, given the circumstances of that statement, we don’t have a transcript available. It wasn’t really anything formal. Now, you say this-

RS: So you admit you didn’t believe her. 

Hawkins: Well, um. (clears throat) I wouldn't say that. It’s just that, given the evidence at the time, there wasn’t anything substantial- 

RS: So you threw out her proof because, personally, you didn’t think it was enough to be scared.

Hawkins: Now, young man, that’s too harsh. No need to get so hostile. Don’t do anything you regret.

RS: I’m not being hostile.It’s an observation. (Mumbles that may be ‘besides, you’ll have more to regret later’ however further examination is needed to determine exact words)

Hawkins: Ahem. As I was beginning-

RS: No, go ahead.

Hawkins: (sighs) This stalking escalated to offline. Give me an outline of that.

RS: Well, first there were the dead pigeons; two of them, the second one immediately being followed up with and email saying to ‘always kill two birds with one stone’ as soon as she found it.

Hawkins: So, you believe the perpetrator was watching for Miss Amobi’s response.

RS: Yes.

 —————————

RS: That’s a very threatening message for children to write on the street, right? It was the same chalk as the figures!

 —————————

RS: There were two phone calls, but we never got to use the call trapper. It is inconvenient, you’re right.

 —————————

RS: I am as calm as humanly possible, in this situation, actually.

 —————————

RS: (With raised voice) I’m not yelling!

 —————————

Hawkins: Is there anything else you’d like to disclose about your relationship with Pippa? Any identifying or irrational behaviours?

RS: (After pause) No. Nothing.

Hawkins: You have considered something?

RS: Nothing relevant. 

Hawkins: Anything at all can help me find Pip, Ravi. Anything. 

RS: There’s nothing else. (Pause) No, I can’t think of anything at all.

Hawkins: If you’re sure. One last thing- Can you please confirm your whereabouts from 1 to 7 PM on Sunday the 15th of September? 

RS: I already told you. I was at home, tidying my room a little for when Pip came over, then I started driving over to her house at about 6:50 when she didn’t arrive. 

Hawkins: I will have to contact your household and confirm this with my sources. Apologies for my scepticism, Ravi, but you must understand that in cases like these, especially when there is concrete evidence of violence, a partner must be the most scrutinised-

RS: Evidence of a violent crime? It was her DNA found at the Green Scene warehouse? For sure?

Hawkins: (After a long pause) I cannot disclose that information with you.

RS: I found it. I should know. I had to be her’s, you knew that!

Hawkins: (Gently) Young man, while Pip was an extraordinary lady in terms of intelligence, she was not the only person with brown hair and red blood. You cannot know any more than I, and by extension the service, discloses. We cannot continue down this conversation; for now it is confidential. 

RS: (Quietly) Did you just say ‘was’?

Statement concluded at 7:10 PM as the interviewee became uncooperative and belligerent. Statement ends.

 —————————

Ravi was fuming. He stormed out of the Interview room with his shaking fists clenched tight to his sides. The dull ache of his fingernails as they pierced the skin of his sweating palms was smothered by the overwhelming pump of adrenaline. To be honest, he was lucky that bastard Hawkins had kicked him out as soon as he did, because those same fists would have been meeting his lower left jaw before long. How dare he imply that Pip was gone? How dare he? Tears split down between his lips and he savoured the salty taste. At least it was a feeling . 

His shaking legs didn’t so much lower him down into the shabby waiting room chair as much as give way in the general direction. 

Leanne and Victor raised their eyebrows, placing a hand each on his shoulders and giving them an encouraging squeeze. He could sense them taking his the tremble in his limbs, the heaving breathing, the still half-screwed up red face. He caught Victor’s eye.

“Anything we need to know before our turn?” He asked, casually enough. It was funny, how much better he was at hiding the extent of his fear even as the tension in the tiny little musty room reached a boiling point.

Ravi could hear doors opening further down the hall. He didn;t have much time.

With a tiny sneaked glance out of the corner of his eye to the bulky security camera, he answered. “Just… try and stick to facts, no speculation. And be prepared.”

Their nods as they stood and left without another word confirmed their mutual agreement.

Not mentioning DT.

Really, it wasn’t that hard a choice. Clearly, Hawkins was stuck in love with the justice system- the very same one that wrongfully convicted a man who still sat, withering away, in jail as the real killer walked freely.There was no way he could convince the detective that a man who confessed wasn’t guilty. That may as well have been a straight condemnation to hell in his eyes. No, Ravi instead decided to put a disturbing amount of trust into that undercooked ready meal of a man. If he actually did some research for once, got into Pip’s laptop and found her extensive notes about the DT killer, more power to him: Ravi had plausible deniability on that front. The more dangerous thing to worry about was the drugs.

Hawkins may be blinkered, but he wasn’t stupid. He could glean that from the tactful questions, just the right combination of words to incriminate yourself if you didn’t think properly. Plus, he’d definitely worked on drug cases before, and if he recognised the symptoms of whatever drug that arsehole Luke was giving her, then it was over. The case would just be Pip ‘overdosing a little and hurting herself’. He couldn’t have that. He had to play detective halfway now, already; what would he do if Hawkins completely gave up on her? What if he had to find her alone and failed?

(Not alone.)

He contemplated his options as he sipped the lukewarm coffee that one of the office workers had placed in his hands several minutes ago. It tasted like mud water, but the caffeine was twice as strong as any he’d had before and he relished the slap-to-the-face effect it carried. He could use a few of those, given how much he overreacted in there. Maybe Hawkins had just misspoken. (If he had, there was no attempt to correct himself) or maybe it was protocol, like apparently every questionable choice the man had made during any investigations up to here. 

He digressed.

There was no future planning here. He could theorise, speculate, but without Pip to poke holes in any theory he crafted it felt shallow. He wasn’t the ideas man; he was the playtester that found the bugs and prompted the real developer to fix them. It was as unnatural as breathing underwater to make something substantial on his own. But, then again, he’d gotten pretty used to drowning.

He saw Leanne and Victor’s tear streaked faces. It was all he needed to spring to his feet and meet them halfway, not even protesting as they both wrapped their arms tightly around him. They breathed sharply and hoarsely by his ears as, for a few quiet moments, the three mourners sobbed.

He pulled back, regretting the warmth almost instantly. “What did he tell you?”

Victor shook his head.

Leanne gulped and let a shuddering breath release. “The blood on the hammer is Pip’s- all of it. It was her hair, too. Her fingerprints are all over both of them, plus a few other surfaces the fire couldn't reach. He- he said-” She covered her head with her hands, letting out a half-stifled sob. 

“He said, due to this evidence, there is a nonzero chance we are looking at a murder case. ‘Someone had to get her blood all over the hammer, afterall’.” Victor licked his lips, letting his eyelids flutter shut slowly as Ravi’s whole world shattered. 

Barely managing to pick up the pieces with a scowl, he gritted his teeth. “ Anything else? ”

“Yeah, he did . He said, given the obsession with decapitated stick figures,” no no no no nonononono no no no no “we could be looking for parts of a body, not the whole. He was set on that.”

The image of finding only half of Pip was enough to set his mind aflame.

The next thing he knew he was rushing down the corridors, knocking two more cups of coffee out of the worker’s hands, banging on the padlocked door of Interview room A with the strength of an army in each furious punch and kick. He remembered yelling, screaming to be let in, to let him have it, to tear that enabling monster sat by the tape recorder to shreds.
He knew that it was Leanne pulling him back by his arm but he still tried to resist, fighting until the man noticed him. His eyes, when they met Ravi's, were cold and deep and ominous. Yet, despite that, he still felt unsure of them. It was like he knew that the fury wasn’t entirely for him. 

Hawkins was confusing, but more importantly he was a-

—————————

“-Self important bitch-guitar.” Cara finished, helpfully. They were at the Wards’; all six of them lounging faux-relaxedly around the family’s sitting room. They were having a takeaway from a local Vietnamese restaurant between them, but it was mostly untouched; cold and stale where it stuck in the roofs of their mouths. Ravi’s story took priority. 

He chuckled dejectedly. “That's.. definitely a combination of words, Cara. I can’t say it’s wrong though.”

“I don’t know, I feel like guitar is too hard to play. He’s clearly getting led along by whoever this guy is super easily. What’s an easier instrument he could be the bitch of?” 

Always Connor with the insights.

Ravi zoned out a little as Con and Cara argued their corners. Normalcy was evading him, despite the opportunities dangled right in front of his face like a cat toy. It was taunting, really. The world carried on as usual when it should have stopped, still, quiet. If it was selfishness to wish that everything just ended the moment Pip left his sight for the last time, he was willing to take on the mantle as the most selfish man alive until the end of all that nothingness. The world still turned, even without his Pip and his Sal and Andie and Stanley and Charlie Green’s little sister (all in different places, though, because Pip wasn’t dead no matter what Hawkins said), and so he was forced to smile and laugh and be present despite the longing to hide away until she pulled the blankets from over his head and laughed at him for being a six year old in a twenty year old’s body.

“Ravi?”

He hummed sharply, jerking his head up. The tears blossoming rapidly clouded his vision, but he’d recognise Nat’s voice blind and deaf. “Sorry Nat, what was that?”

“I said, even though I agree with you, have you noticed Hawkins acting.. I dunno.. weirder lately?”

“You’ve seen that too?”

They all looked towards her as she nodded purposefully. “I haven’t just seen it- I was told it. Daniel, today, once he was done yelling at me. He was kinda staring at Hawkins as he was calling up the forensics and other guys for help. And then- he said, kinda half to himself- that Hawkins is never this involved.”

Jamie moved closer to the edge of his chair. “What, like, he doesn’t come out to scenes? Isn’t that his literal job?”

“I figured it meant: not this early. He came straight out to what might not have even been the second piece of evidence in Pip’s case; I mean, Ravi, you only reported her missing this morning, but it’s all he’s been doing all day. Dan was fucking pissed, because he’s been neglecting all the other cases. From the sounds of it, he’ll probably be there all night- make Daniel happy, he’s supposed to be on duty tonight. But, I don’t know, it’s weird. It’s like he’s obsessed .”

Ah, so maybe that’s what Ravi could see behind Hawkins eyes.

Obsession. 

But why?

—————————

They’d gone home, the others; or to bed. But not the two of them. They still lay there, sprawled on the L-shape sofa, Ravi stretched out on the long end and Cara curled up in the corner. The moon climbed high in the starless night sky, inky black and impenetrable. The darkness swallowed everything past the grey concrete of the patio where untrimmed grass sprung up between the cracks, engulfing half the dim moon even as it clambered for the halfway-mark. The moon was invisible to them- directly above their heads. He yawned.

“Cara- what Hawkins said-”

She snapped. “What about it?”

“Do you think- I mean, it’s mad, but-” He sighed, shaking his head.

She brushed her hair out of her eyes and looked him squarely in the eyes. “No. It’s not like her to go out like that. Not my Pip.”

“I agree.”

Like saying it with certainty could stop the doubt slowly taking root.

Chapter Text

She was drowning.

This didn’t surprise her very much. In the mornings after bad dreams, she’d berate her brain for spontaneously creating such warped logic, forcing it on her while she tried to rest peacefully. Nightmares where she couldn’t run, screaming with no voice, losing her own face suddenly. Maybe it wasn’t fair to attribute that to her mind, though.
They were her reality, for a time.

Psychology hadn’t really ever been Pip’s area of expertise. Even after starting to research serial killers and their motivations she only picked up little bits here and there, categorising them into usefulness for her current cases and storing the rest away to annoy her Ravi with whenever the opportunity presented itself. But she did recall something little about dreams, conflicting theories presented in a simple study online. Some people said dreams had meaning separate from what was really happening- that they were a stream conveying an underlying message. But you couldn’t see that when in the dream, no matter how hard you tried.

Which is why it didn’t surprise her she was drowning.

She swam in a totally pitch black void. Directionless. No matter which way she feebly clawed at, she never made any progress towards the surface. The only sound was the pumping of blood through her eardrums: her heartbeat, rapid and erratic like six shots from a gun. For what was evidently both seconds and years she grasped at the abyss, internally yelling at the top of her bursting lungs to whatever was out there to find her, to free her. 

And, finally, the void answered. 

There was another swimmer, but he was drowning too. That much was obvious. He swam in a different way to her; all wide strokes and thrashing kicks, as if he couldn’t stand being underwater for one second more. She felt the overwhelming urge to just help him, to do anything to help him get out, even if she drowned, he had to escape-

They locked eyes, and his jaw dropped. He emitted a gasp so quiet that it filled the whole of the silence. 

She couldn’t hear her heartbeat anymore.

Pippa woke with a start, shivering and sweating. Reaching shakily for her upper left chest, she held a grubby hand there, feeling for the fragile thump of a heart and collapsing into herself when it answered. I’m still here. It’s okay. I’m still here.

I’m so sorry, Ravi.

—————————

To: [email protected]

Cc/Bcc, From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: interview Request

____

Thank you for reaching out, Mr Singh.

Unfortunately, we are unable to fulfil your request for an interview from a member of our team.
While we here at Green Scene Ltd truly appreciate any attempts to uncover the truth and pursue good, we cannot condone any vigilante research, especially where it may lead to damage to brand reputation and employees. We suggest you leave that to the police. Any and all developments not held as confidential by the police have been released by a company spokesman at some point since the fire, so there is nothing to gain by interviewing somebody else.

Moreover, as you have likely seen, recent evidence has linked that same warehouse to the disappearance of Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Given this is all over the news, it is in our best interests to not stir up any unpleasant rumours or risk inciting others to tamper with the scene in an attempt to uncover anything that links us with her unfortunate disappearance. 

Even if we had any useful information for you, we would be unable to provide it in a timely manner. We are extremely understaffed at Green Scene Ltd at this point in time, especially given the boss- who generally handles business emails and PR- has been off on sick leave for a few days now, very unwell with an unidentified head injury. I am replying to your email during my lunch break, as per the head of department’s orders.

Despite this, we urge you to not be too disappointed. This case, and the Amobi case, will no doubt be solved quickly. We wish you the best regardless in your independent project. 

Best wishes,

Green Scene Ltd support team

 —————————

He was totally numb. The endless loop of checking and refreshing and checking and refreshing and checking emails was over, and it finished with a resounding failure. How had he got rejected? Pip never got rejected! He let his phone slip from his grip and clatter onto the floor as he clawed at his temples, dragging his hands down until they fell limply into his lap. First the nightmare, now this? Life really was cruel- but that was a proven point, before. A fair, just life wouldn’t have started any of this to begin with. A fair life wouldn’t have let him see her, just for a second, before the shock woke him up and left him floundering like a fish out of water for a solid minute. A fair life wouldn’t-

“Alright, drama queen?”

Cara eyed him up and down, a mug of tea in each hand. Both she and Ravi were still in their pyjamas, hair unbrushed and unstyled; both ignoring the orange tint just barely over the horizon in favour of calling it morning (out of stubbornness). He understood why she was Pip’s rock. 

He mumbled a response to her as she dropped herself down next to his curled up nest of blankets.

“ Cara Ward calling somebody a drama queen might just be the most hypocritical thing I’ve heard all week.”

She grinned tightly. “It’s only Tuesday, you never know.” She then, very deliberately, placed her mug down on the floor. “But you are avoiding the question.”

He groaned. “Green Scene responded. They aren’t giving me the interview.”

Ravi handed over the phone, letting Cara read it over a few times.

“So, what now?”

“What-” he spluttered, “- what do you mean, ‘what now ? ’ ”

She sighed heavily and dropped her shoulders in apparent exasperation. “I mean, what are you doing now? Your game plan?”

“I don’t have another game plan! That was it! My one lead!” 

Cara rolled her eyes to the back of her head. “Please, give me strength. You’re Ravi freaking Singh! You aren’t giving up because of one interview! You aren’t! Mostly because I know it’d kill you to lose her- but also because you’re better than that.”

You’re Pippa freaking Fitz-Amobi.

“I used to ask myself-” he paused abruptly, and took in a wispy breath, “-I used to ask myself, whenever difficult stuff happened, what Pip would do. Because her voice would always tell me what to do. And it would always be so simple. So encouraging. 

But I feel like, now- now, I can’t ask her. Because she’d never get in this situation to begin with. She wouldn’t get rejected for interviews; or break down at evidence; or have to look up fucking search patterns. She’d never make this much of a fucking mess of things. I have, I’ve fucked it all up so badly I don’t even know where to begin-”

Cara’s arm around him stifled the rest of the sentence. Each shaky breath he took clogged more and more with silent tears. “I don’t know what to do, Cara.”

She shifted so she was opposite him, holding his snivelling form upright on his knees. She locked eyes with him.

“Okay. It’s okay to not know, Ravi. We’re not Pip. We’re not, and that’s okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do.” He looked at her expectantly with wet eyes. “Instead of asking what Pip would do, ask what Ravi would do. Do not laugh at me, you bastard, I’m being sincere.” He mumbled his apologies; she nodded and continued: “You’re right; Pip doesn’t know what to do here. But Ravi SIngh does. Ravi Singh is in this situation. And so is Cara Ward. So instead of asking someone who wouldn’t know, ask someone who might.”

“Well… what would Cara Ward do in this situation?”

She nodded her head approvingly. “I ask myself that on a daily basis. But today, what Cara would do is try and figure out all the clues in that email. It’s not worthless just because you didn’t get what you wanted out of it.”

“You’re pretty wise for the dumbest motherfucker I’ve ever met.”

“Hey, I said no asking Pip what she would say-”

 —————————

By the time they’d finished with the document of possible email leads to the Persons Of Interest list, Ravi was feeling pretty stupid about his breakdown earlier. Despite Cara’s increasingly fed-up insistence that it was fine (better now than later), the embarrassment still clawed at him. He’d never been afraid to show his emotions, never bought into all that toxic masculinity bullshit- so why was he so annoyed at himself?

(It was the helplessness. He knew it was the helplessness. It was admitting defeat to the DT Killer, just like the original police officers, just like Hawkins would in a heartbeat. It was throwing his hands up at the end of all of it and going ‘oh well, I did what I could’. And maybe, if he had done that, it would be a reason for shame. 

But he hadn’t).

 —————————

Persons of Interest- Pip’s disappearance

• Max Hastings- he hates Pip; thinks he has power over her but also is definitely scared of her as he should be and might want her out of the way. Can drive to get away and is physically strong enough to overpower her. But why now? Still top of the list,, though.
• Daniel da Silva- Pip accused him of pretty much every crime committed in this town over the last months, and publicly shamed him on the podcast. Worked at Green Scene in the past, possibly in that same area. Also physically strong with a getaway method secured. Sorry Nat.
• Jason Bell- very publicly lambasted on the podcast, with all his past trauma about losing Andie there next to his affairs and abuse. Works at some position for Green Scene. Clearly dislikes Pip for costing him his marriage, plus strength and getaway method like the others.
• Charlie Green- Killed a man literally in Pip’s arms, but might also be in France somewhere
• Luke Eaton- tried to kill Jamie so definitely capable of violence. Did seem to care about Pip when he tried to call her, but that might have been to clear his conscience or prove his innocence. We don’t know how Pip felt about him.
• DI Hawkins- fuck him. 

 —————————

“Ouch.”

Cara glared at him with a single eyebrow raised. “I didn’t hit you with the cushion that hard, stop behind a baby.”

“No, it’s not that,” (Ravi rubbed his sore shoulder slightly with a hand nonetheless), “it’s more… Pip has more enemies than I remember. I wish we had her own POI list, in case we missed anyone out”

She opened her mouth to agree, then smacked him right across that same spot on his arm. “ She already had a list?! Ravi, you- where the fuck is it?” 

It was with many more exasperated groans from Cara that he begrudgingly explained that Pip only had copies on her laptop and phone, both of which were in police evidence lockers somewhere. Even when he tried to be just a little optimistic, reminding her that Hawkins and the other officers on the case now had her list of suspects ready to go, she shot him down. 

“One: why the fuck would they believe her? And two: if she mentioned DT. You. Are. Fucked. Because you told Hawkins she didn’t know who was behind her stalking, and if he thinks you’re lying you already know he’s gonna go after you, not a supposedly convicted serial murderer!”

She flopped backwards melodramatically. 

“Now who’s being a drama queen? It’s okay, Cara. It’s not like she mentioned me in her documents. I actually haven’t read all of them, anyway.”

Sitting back up, she squinted at Ravi oddly. “You don’t know her whole theory? She might know stuff you don’t?”

He nodded, noting vaguely how her eyes widened and mouth opened a millimetre. There it was again: that guilt, which whispered that he didn’t really know Pip all that well; that she had her secrets and her hidden desk drawers and her theories kept back from him for ‘his own protection’. The same way Andie had her older ‘boyfriend’ and her drug dealing and her second email account. 

He ached for Sal more than ever.

Her second email account.

“ Shit, Cara. I have an idea.”

He grabbed the laptop hastily and practically threw it onto his lap, ignoring her exclamations. Everything was sharp and defined like 20/20 vision, tunnelled onto the screen, blurring the rest out like a poorly compressed photograph; fingers flying off the keys as he typed the address just like Pip had told him, the keys cold and deafening under his rapid repeated presses. 

[email protected]

Please enter password:

“Well? What was it?”

Ravi took a breath, turning to face her. He felt like an olympic swimmer breaking for air during the race, just for a second, granting himself the respite. Pip never told him the password, but he knew it. He knew her, at least a bit; enough to know exactly what she would have reset the code to.

As he waited for the software to accept those 9 characters, he briefly recounted the contents of Andie’s unsent email to Cara. The more he said the lower her eyebrows furrowed, down to meet her rising shoulders and feel the deep shudder, the one that passed from Pip’s favourite girl and Pip’s favourite boy like static from a balloon. 

Her face, illuminated by the homepage, turned to his with barely-hidden amusement. “‘DTKiller6? She’s so morbid, Jesus. Hawkins would have an absolute field day with that.”

“He’d probably try to get it in court that she knew she was going to be killed-”

Both of their growing laughs shattered. Morbid .
They both realised, for a second, that they had accepted the possibility of Pip’s murder being the trial held. That, even if for the sake of a cheap joke, they’d let the notion have any weight in the investigation and their perception of Pippa; and accepting that was the final piece to admitting defeat, for shame. It was a kick in the teeth, the way it could creep in. The idea was insidious. Purposeful. In a way, Ravi mused, it was what Hawkins might want. A Pip he could mould in the same way he had Sal, warp and twist until unrecognisable and unsavable. There was the obsession there, though, that didn’t fit properly. With Pip’s case. Not with her. It might be the easy way out, to convince the whole world that Pip was another statistic and not the brilliant person she really was. But the whole theory fell apart if it was seen by someone who knew her, who knew her intelligence and strength and resilience separate from the probabilities which tried at every turn to silence her. But the seeds of doubt were sneaky little fuckers, and it was in that second that Cara and Ravi saw how they would work on somebody else. A bystander wouldn’t question it.

Hawkins, you ultimate bastard.

Without another word they both slowly turned back to the computer; to the drafts tab. His shaking breath and her frozen expression went uncommented on for minutes, until the email was read again and again and again.

“I- this is so fucked. This whole thing.”

He turned his gaze back to her. “Well, yeah. It’s a murdered girl’s email.”

“No, I mean-” Cara threw her shoulders down and grimaced half-heartedly. “-don’t be a smartass. I mean, how weirdly similar Andie and Pip’s situations are. Like, here we are, just using Andie’s email to try and tell us more about Pip’s when there’s barely any evidence to tell us they're even about the same person!”

Ravi frowned. “We know this was the DT Killer. All the evidence lines up.”

“Yes, this is all definitely DT Killer stuff. Pip definitely thought this was DT Killer stuff- I’m saying ‘was’ because she might not think that anymore, that’s all- but did you think about the POI list? Most people on there would have been either teenagers or halfway across the country when Andie wrote this email. Plus, for the three people on there that weren’t, we don’t have very strong motivation.”

“Max.”

She bit her lip. They were both very clearly and very barely covering up the loathing filling them. 

Ravi nodded, eyes staring blankly forwards. “You think it might be an imitation?”

“Unless DT had enough faith that nobody would ever take Pip seriously, it might be that.” She ran her fingers restlessly through her unbrushed hair, cringing visibly as several strands followed them out. “Obviously we still treat it as a real possibility.”

“Yeah, I mean Pip was kind enough to do that much for us.”

“Mhm, she’s always been gracious like that.”

Her unsettlingly wide grin, stretching up to but just missing her seething, wide eyes caught Ravi off-guard and he stifled a laugh. It was truly the face of a long-suffering friend to a chronic under-explainer like Pip. 

They sighed at the same time.

A very rough plan was drawn out. Every member of the POI list needed to be interviewed, obviously, and it would be better if Cara did that since she wasn’t so directly involved in the podcast. Ravi would cause suspicion, but she could fly under the radar, just as needed. She agreed to that in a heartbeat. They would both take time off school. That was the only part of the whole thing that didn’t bother either of them (given they weren’t Pip). The other bits were slowly poisoning them, the promise of an antidote only there if they kept drinking more and more of it, til the last moment. The last possible moment. They both knew that the most likely place to lose it all would be the last possible moment. Go off course, lose sight of the goal even once and that would be it: the bad ending. The pointless, meaningless possibility of losing her lead. Together, they pondered if Sal and Naomi had sat around like this, theorising who’d taken Andie away.

Alone, Ravi wondered if anyone before Pip had ever cared enough to theorise who’d taken Sal away. 

Ravi’s role was the same as before. Gather evidence. Avoid breakdowns. Look for her.

(We will look for you when you’re the one who disappears, Pip. We will never stop looking.)

—————————

He stared at the ceiling. It seemed to shift under his gaze like a kaleidoscope of beige painted plaster. No matter how many times he rubbed his stinging eyes, it wouldn’t stop being vague and blurry. The sun had risen now, probably seven or eight AM already, normal people times. But despite knowing the game plan for the day, Ravi could feel his body tempting him into sleep. Getting only four hours- after more than thirty being forcefully awake- was slowly demolishing his energy, and that was where it caught up to him. He knew Cara was finishing up on the questions for Max next to him. She’d probably been awake longer than him. But sleep clawed at him persistently, and, within minutes, the quiet clacking of keys lulled him into a state of restfulness. His eyes drooped firmly shut. Maybe he even dreamt.

—————————

He was drowning; and somehow, it didn’t surprise him.

Chapter Text

Rain slammed into the back of Ravi’s neck. It was that kind of rain that felt like a million shards of tiny glass, the kind that blew in as near-opaque waves to the accordance of the wind. The leaves rustled agitatedly as it tore through them, practically cutting into the mud below. As if to mock his very little remaining trust, the storm had blown in just as the five of them separated around the woods, eviscerating any chance of popping back to grab a coat. He rubbed the pooling water off the back of his neck absent-mindedly. Just find clues. Find anything.

Every time he felt himself getting even just a little envious of Cara, in the dry and warm, he reminded himself who exactly she was with. It was a brave sacrifice, spending even fifteen minutes with Max Hastings, especially given they hadn’t even managed to say his name when reiterating the plan without sufficient cursing throughout it. But, even so, Ravi knew it was a choice between two evils. Really, he couldn’t tell which was the lesser. Cara, face-to-face with one monster, or him and the others: searching for evidence of another. (Maybe one and the same.)

The woods around the Green Scene warehouse were not very thick, but even so they felt like a maze, forcing him away where the brush grew too dense and inviting him down deceptively steep slopes. If Pip had been there- possibly bleeding, possibly in the dark, possibly pursued by DT- it would be terrifying. Every step he took, he saw flashes of her. He saw her in the trees and the footsteps he left and the cloud-covered sky. But in all of these things, he saw also fear. It was overwhelming. Wandering the same places she could have been only two days earlier regurgitated the same surrealism from that first day of her disappearance. It was striking, pulling up to Leanne and Victor’s with all the grace of a spooked cat; shit, she might have even been here at that very time. Of course, the only timeframe they had was her last sighting by her parents at 3PM. But it was clear she had been taken from Cross Lane against her will, and the natural conclusion was the warehouse. It was perfect: isolated, empty, and unremarkable. She’d been attacked with the hammer but escaped (she escaped she escaped sheescaped sheescapedsheescapedsheescapedsheesc ) into the woods, probably with a lot of resistance from her captor. From there, none of them had any idea. It was the best theory they had, but there were holes and nobody could fill them with anything that held up to scrutiny. Pip would come up with a proper theory, he thought- then frowned and continued with purposeful effort. But she’s not here, so Ravi and Connor and Jamie and Nat and Cara Ward’s theory will have to do. 

He walked on.

The minutes ticked steadily forwards, a rhythm forming in Ravi’s heart. Step, step, step, check, step, step, step, check . Every time the monotonous landscape seemed to blend together he would stop, screw his eyes up tight and wait three seconds, matching the pulse of his footsteps and heartbeat, until he could look around again with fresh eyes. He had to use physical force against the derealisation or else he’d slip away. But Pip wouldn’t let anything obvious be left behind. He couldn’t risk letting a single thing slip through the cracks because- what? He was tired of walking? So was she, probably. She had no choice but to run, escape from the warehouse and DT into these treacherous woods. 

He slipped.

“What the-” He looked down, attempting to brush the mud off his jeans but just smearing it around. How had he not seen the slope? Ravi looked over his shoulder at it with an expression that probably could have curdled milk. This was not the time. He was supposed to be looking for clues to save Pip. The route he’d been taking seemed to look back unsettlingly the more he stared at it, the same way a pile of clothes on a chair can look like a person in the middle of the night; like there were eyes all through it. With a suppressed shudder, he turned back around. He was supposed to be looking for clues to save Pip.

…but maybe he had  just found one.

Before him was a clearing, fairly flat and grassless. It wasn’t that which intrigued him though, that made his heart rate accelerate until it was just a mechanical whirr; a background hum. The thick canopy of leaves above him sheltered out the worst of the rain. The distant patter faded away as he gazed, open mouthed, at the drawings in the mud.
He would be stupid not to recognise them. The mere sight made every muscle in his body scream to run and get away, get somewhere safe. The stick figures were arranged in a single row, evenly spaced so that their headless bodies only made contact at the end of each stick-arm. Despite the terrifying nature of the mural, it evoked a heavy, heaving emotion somewhere deep in his chest. Seeing the depictions- intended to be childlike and mocking- of the five murdered women standing together, in something maybe close to solidarity, to comforting, was moving. He almost felt like he was interrupting something private. Whoever DT was, he wasn’t hurting them anymore. Ravi intended to make sure he never hurt anyone again, and bring them and their families final closure. It was Pip’s goal. And now it was his. Maybe he needed reminding of that.
His eyes caught on something as they scanned the right of the drawings. But no, he was certain of it now. There was another figure. It was drawn off to the side, clearly separated from the others, but that was not the most striking difference. 

That figure had a head. 

Ravi’s sharp intake of breath caught on his throat. Take that, Hawkins. That had to mean something. He knew it did, knew it in his bones and heart and brain that there were no coincidences on this scale, no ‘child’s accident’ this purposeful, no clue more blatantly obvious. Pip wasn’t dead. 

That raised more questions than it could possibly answer, but for the blissful moment he drank it in. The confirmation that he could still see his Sarge, his favourite person, once he did this. Ravi hadn’t realised how hopeless he’d begun feeling until the breaths started coming easier and lighter, all of a sudden. Of course she would leave this here for him. She knew the stakes. It was a nice feeling- knowing that, despite everything possible between them, they might still be working together on this case.

The questions he’d been dodging hit all at once. When had she found the time to do this? In this weather? They were drawn in the mud, and it had barely rained over the past days she’d been gone. In quick, jerking movements Ravi swang his head around, eyes scanning every inch of ground and tree, begging the universe to let his thoughts materialise, wishing the onslaught of rain would cease for one second so that he could get a good look of the outside of the clearing. Nothing. No, there had to be something. He started scrambling back up the slope and darted his eyes in every direction, despite the pulsing pain the strain shocked his eyeballs with. If the message was here, then surely- he craned his neck upwards, scanning the trees- surely she was nearby. It made logical sense. She had to be-

The screech of a car startled him and he dropped his focus. He hadn't noticed how close he’d got to the road, but there it was, just beyond the hedgerow. The car must have been going, what, fifty or sixty miles per hour? On the tiny Kilton-only backroads as well. Something about that didn’t sit right, and despite the lack of evidence, he made a mental note to mention it to Cara and the others when they met up again. Shaking his head, he tried to regain focus- but it was no use. The car was long gone, and so were his hopes; it’d distracted him and he’d lost his place. If Pip was here after all, she’d be long gone in the seconds it took him to recoup. Her physical fitness was no joke. She could definitely run laps around him, even injured as she probably was. 

Pulling out his cracked phone, Ravi opened whatsapp (pausing for a few moments to wipe the mountain of raindrops from its surface) and sent a message.

R: [IMG-20190917-WA0002]

R: I’ll explain when we meet up

It was then that he noticed the slew of previous, unread messages. Two more images from Connor, plus messages with sheer panic exuding from each capital letter; then a message from Nat. Thunder crackled overhead, as if to illustrate the thought: shit. He didn't read them fully, couldn’t download the images with such little signal, choosing instead to send another text, confirming each person (except poor Cara) had seen it. 

R: Meet by the main gate ASAP

—————————

Ravi surveyed each of them strangely as they slowly regrouped. Nat looked quietly furious, each gulp difficult and purposeful like she was swallowing a storm. Jamie cracked his knuckles one by one with an arm fast around Nat’s. Naomi just stared with shallow breaths and an unfocused, detached expression. Connor, the most active, shook violently and refused to drift his gaze away from Ravi’s own eyes. If he’d looked in a puddle, he suspected his own quirks would be visible for all to see- but one thing was shared unequivocally between the five: obvious, bone-turning terror. Ravi didn’t believe in ghosts, but if he had, the expression he wore might well be the same as the one for that occasion. Stories of deep, dark forests never scared either of them more than reality. Those woods had spooked them all, though, and whatever they’d seen was far, far more scary than fiction.

Naomi was the first to speak up. They swiftly piled into her car, leaving just Ravi catching up.

Maybe he imagined it, but for a moment he could have sworn there was someone at the treeline opposite.

He squinted. That was definitely a figure there- no features at all, just a form- but a figure nonetheless. He took a step forwards, never taking his eyes off of it-

“Ravi! Hurry up!”

In the millisecond it took to turn and nod, the person was gone. Every part of him begged him to run after it, but his legs moved themselves of their own accord. All he could manage to feebly yell was her nickname. “Sarge? ”

And he could have been imagining it, but he swore he heard the tiniest movement from out of sight stop.

Nat was looking at him inquisitively as he slipped into the left passenger seat without another word. “Why did you shout for her? Did you see her?”

“I- maybe. Probably not.” 

Four pairs of eyes on him and he could feel sweat start to glisten. “I thought I saw someone in the treeline- but it might have been nothing.”

Jamie and Naomi searched for a few minutes while the others crowded the back seats in excruciating silence. 

They may have returned empty-handed, but their shaking heads felt like confirmation of so much more to Ravi. 

—————————

Cara was waiting in the sitting room when they barged in. That room, and consequently the Ward’s whole house, had become a base of operations of sorts in the investigation. Ravi had had no contact with Leanne and Victor since they drove him home after the disastrous police interview- and his contact with his own parents wasn’t much better. It made him wince to think about, but he’d been so preoccupied he hadn’t even thought to update them since just before going to the warehouse for the first time. He could try and excuse himself, but Ravi was well aware that being busy was no reason not to contact them. Shit, they were definitely very worried. Sorry, mum and dad. 

“So, Cara, how did it go?” She let out an exasperated sigh, flopping back onto the sofa. Ravi raised an eyebrow. “That well, huh?”

“He is such an exhausting dickhead. Honestly - I couldn’t wait to get as far away from him as possible.”

He nodded sympathetically. “So, who’s gonna go first? Bit of a morbid show and tell.”

Connor took a small step further into the circle, as they formed one similar to last night. All except him sitting. He then opened his mouth and began to speak, for the first time since before they’d split up. “I think what I found was really important. Like, seriously.

“I was somewhere near the boundary of the woods- y’know, right where the hedges meet the trees- but I didn't realise that until a bit later. I was just doing what we were supposed to- scanning the ground and whatever- but I- I found this. ”

He held out his phone open to the image. Ravi squinted his eyes to get a closer look, but the second it came into focus his blood ran cold. He’d just been plunged into ice-cold water, and the reason was that scrap of fabric. More importantly, it was the unmistakable blood on it. 

“That- that ‘s the right colour for her hoodie. And it was the right material. I didn’t take it, I didn’t think I should. There’s nothing else we can do with it, especially if we’re not taking it to the police.” He handed the phone to Ravi, but stayed in his trembling standing position.

Ravi glowered at the picture like it’d personally offended him. “Pip liked that hoodie. Bastard.”

“I don’t know how it could’ve got there, but when I looked back I realised there were little discoloured, shiny patches on the leaves of some of the shrubbery heading back a long way; that might’ve been blood as well. It was hard to see with the rain, though, so I didn’t take any pics.”

Jamie patted his back as Connor lowered himself shakily onto the carpet. “I can see why you freaked, Con. That’s awful.”

As Ravi handed the phone back, he fought hard to stay in the moment. Pip’s blood but a full stick figure; a blood trail but a drawing in the mud. He couldn’t let go of his fleeting sense of hope, however tenuous. 

He suddenly realised Nat was standing, and momentarily pushed the conflict from his brain.

“Yeah, what I saw was definitely less sinister than that. Or more, maybe. But basically, what it boils down to is: I saw a car go past the entrance to the warehouse at least three separate times. I didn’t realise it was the same one at first, but by the last time, I was waiting. I got this picture, but it's kinda hard to see since it was speeding real fast.”

He stared at it for a while, but none of them knew anyone with a car like that. It looked new-ish and very nice, but not so extravagant it stood out. 

“Wait- shit-”

Everyone snapped their head around to face him. “What? Ravi?”

He did recognise the car from somewhere. “I think I saw that car the night Pip disappeared.” The more he thought back to it, the more certain he was. “No, it was definitely the same car. It sped past me at like, seven PM or so. I know it was the same car.”

The room was quiet for a long few seconds while each one of them drank in the implications of that revelation. By that time- 7 PM- Pip must have been running long enough for DT to have given up. That changed the timeframe significantly. It gave them a basis to even make a proper timeline on. But even so, the prospect of being unwittingly circled by the man who made Pip disappear for over an hour while they searched the woods was an extremely unsettling notion. It burned to think about. If they’d just gotten a glance in the driver’s side window at that shark, it’d be over for good. 

Neither Naomi nor Jamie themselves had seen anything, so it fell on Ravi to round out the evidence so far. He breathed regularly as he explained his find, keeping any semblance of expression clear from his face. He recounted being startled by that same car, searching for PIp in vain around the woods. The others were silent for a long while as he finished his little speech. Unexpectedly, however, Cara spoke up about the image of the drawings.

“What’s that next to Pip?”

“What?”

“There’s something else next to Pip, but kind of off to the side as well I guess. It’s not a person, I don’t think, unless it’s a funky-looking child.”

Ravi eyed-up where she pointed. Maybe, if he squinted, there was something else there too. He couldn’t really make it out though, and he was surprised Cara had even noticed it at all. She just shrugged. “I thought there was something there, so I said it. Might be nothing, but it could be important.”

The image painted, altogether, was not pleasant. It saw Pip bleeding, escaping her captor on foot while he (eventually) took to the car; it saw her return to the scene days later while still pursued, even when she thought she was safe enough to help them. It made Ravi almost blind with rage to think about. Somebody was trying to take her from the world, from his arms, and it was nearly working. Didn’t they see how special she was, how important? He knew how long it had taken him to claw his way to a stable headspace after Sal died. He knew the ache of depression, greeted its chill in his bones like an old friend.  Months of lying awake at night, half sobbing, half begging- no, demanding- Sal be returned to them flashed before him every time he closed his eyes. His hope was systematically stamped out of him until all that was left to grant Sarge at the door was the husk of a man, whose alarm bells not ringing at the sight of her face was a shock. It was still a shock, when his thoughts got bad. But, really, had it ever been that surprising? Despite her demeanour, Pip’s face had always felt like home.

Cara’s laptop was open on the coffee table, and the six of them squeezed tightly together like at the cinema. 

“Okay, so we are now able to start watching: Cara Ward’s awful morning: the movie. Any questions? No? Alright, keep your hands and feet inside the kart at all times- except from pausing, of course- and let’s go.”

—————————

[transcript]

A door is knocked and, after a wait, is opened by a very chirpy looking Max Hastings.

Max: Hello?

Cara: Hello Max. I need to talk to you: about Pip. 

Max: (rolls his eyes, starts to turn away) For God’s sake- I don’t know anything, okay? Is that what you wanna hear?

Cara: If you’ve got nothing to hide you’d give me the interview.

Max: Ugh, Fine. Come in, but don’t tread mud into the floor. 

They both move inside. Max looks disgusted and exasperated the whole time, but says nothing.

Cara: So. you look awful cheery.

Max: Seriously? That’s you opener? I have plenty of reasons to be happy!

Cara: And not one of those is Pip being missing?

Max:  Listen, you’re gonna make this sound really bad. But, like: if your biggest pain-in-the-ass got themself killed and vanished- without you having to lift a finger!- you’d be kinda happy too. Still, like, that’s irrelevant-

Cara paused the video. Ravi felt his jaw hanging open, and that was mirrored on everyone else’s face too- except Cara, who just smiled morbidly with eyebrows raised to the roof. 

“Yeah, I couldn’t believe he said that either. Does he have any idea how incriminating that sounds? I was so tempted to admit that yes, I would throw a party if he disappeared. Anyway:”

Cara: … Jesus Christ. Hang on, did you just say ‘get themself killed’? How do you know she’s dead?

Max: Fucking hell, you’ll just twist anything I say, won’t you? I would say that’s pretty common knowledge!

Cara: Pip’s not dead! 

Max: Oh, what, she got abducted to a warehouse for shits and giggles? Grow the fuck up, kid. She’s dead.

Cara: IF she were dead- IF, big IF- wouldn’t the police have said something?

Max: Look at Andie! She was dead from the day she went missing, and they didn’t say anything for months! And there’s way more evidence of murder this time, because there actually is DNA there in the first place.

Cara: You seem to have kept up with the news very closely, Max.

Max: I read articles online! That must mean I’m guilty! Do you hear yourself right now? 

Cara: (sighs) So, Max, where were you on the night of the fifteenth?

Max: I was right here on this sofa, playing video games until like two AM. That what you wanna hear?

Cara: Any proof?

Max: I’m not sharing anything else without a lawyer present.

Cara: Max, it’s literally just me. What the fuck am I gonna do?

Max: Oh, be serious. Everyone knows you’re working with Singh. To be honest, he probably did it; it’s nearly always the boyfriend, y’know. Brother like brother, maybe-

Cara: Sal was innocent!

Max: (scoffs) Oh, and everything Pip said on that stupid podcast was always the truth, huh?

Cara: I think we both know it was.

There is a prolonged silence as both parties (presumably) stare at each other. Eventually, Max turns away and snarls.

Max: Get out of my house, Ward.

Cara: I’m not done asking and YOU are not done answering-

Max: (standing up and moving so he stands over her) Oh yeah? Says who?

Cara: (also stands up, presumably stares him down again) 

Max: I said, get out of my house- or I’ll call the cops.

Cara: You won’t get away with it, Max- any of it. You’ll see!

Max ushers her out of the house with a look of utter disdain.

Cara: She’s not dead, Max! You’ll pay- I’ll make sure you pay, if it’s the last fucking thing I do-

The door is slammed in her face.

Recording ends.

Cara continued the smile that didn’t reach her eyes at all. A heavy silence filled every corner of the room, suffocating even the sounds of breathing. Nat was the first to make a dent in it.

“Fucking… I could not have gone that long without absolutely decking him in the face. You are a trooper, Cara, I hope you know that.”

She smiled properly that time, nodding her head. “So… clearly, there’s quite a lot to be gained from that.”

Ravi finally piped up, having processed his rage enough to make coherent sentences. “Mainly that he looks super fucking guilty.” He gazed incredulously around at the others. “He looks super fucking guilty, right guys?” There was a mumble of assent from all sides.  Except-

“Um, Ravi? One issue,” Naomi was looking right at him with dropped shoulders. “If Cara was interviewing him there: who was in the car circling us? He can’t be in two places at once.”

He considered it for a moment. “Cara- what time did you finish the interview?”

“About eleven-twenty.”

“And Nat- what time did you first see the car?”

She looked up at the ceiling, then back at him, nodding her head from side to side. “I wasn’t keeping track, but it could definitely be a little past eleven-twenty. It might have gone past before then, though- I wasn’t keeping track at first.”

“So there’s still a chance.”

—————————

Persons of Interest- Pip’s disappearance

• Max Hastings- he hates Pip; thinks he has power over her but also is definitely scared of her as he should be and might want her out of the way. Can drive to get away and is physically strong enough to overpower her. But why now? Still top of the list,, though.
  EDIT #1: He was exceptionally suspicious in the interview. Seemed certain that Pip was dead and tried to blame the first person he thought of. Still top of the list 100%. Currently unaccounted for in the possible timeframe, including this morning.

—————————

“So, who’s next on the list?”

Cara and Ravi were sticking together, this time. Once the others had left, she admitted- a little sheepishly- to Ravi that she’d prefer to have company when interrogating the next people. Ravi didn’t blame her one bit: he was shaking for ages after just the phone interview with Luke Eaton, and he could only imagine how awful it was to be right there with the person you suspect of attempted murder. Once again, they shared the same sentiment: I don’t know how Pip just does it. 

“Says here… Daniel da Silva.”

They both grimaced a little. Nat had not been thrilled when she discovered her brother was the second highest suspect in this case. ( “Godammit Pip, I thought we had an agreement-” ) but they needed to ask him anyway. Nat was very insistent that it couldn’t have been him. She told them- a little annoyed, but still compliant- that he’d been at home drinking, and she knew this because he was already too pissed to drive when she phoned him for a lift to Jamie’s that day. Jamie and Connor did remember her saying that. And it wasn’t that Cara and Ravi didn’t believe her, they’d trust her with their lives, after all, but they had to double check. It was absolutely necessary to make sure everything was airtight, or else it would fall apart at the last possible moment. 

To say the interview went badly would be an understatement. 

He was friendly when he saw them, as he answered the door. But when he saw the phone out, already recording, he seemed to sense something was wrong. And the very moment Ravi started to inquire of his location on Sunday the fifteenth, he grew angry.
It was unsettling to be near a man that full of hatred and rage, and to have it entirely directed towards you. He felt like, at any moment, there might be something more potent than cruel words aimed at him. Daniel asked if it was a prank, if Nat put them up to this; and when they answered no he became even more outraged. In the end, they pulled from him that he was inebriated- not drunk, because then he would be written up at work, inebriated- and fell asleep on the sofa by seven PM. When questioned further, he just told them to ‘ask Nat, since she seems to like telling all my business’ and ordered them off his porch.
Somehow, it was less suspicious than Max’s.

—————————

• Daniel da Silva- Pip accused him of pretty much every crime committed in this town over the last months, and publicly shamed him on the podcast. Worked at Green Scene in the past, possibly in that same area. Also physically strong with a getaway method secured. Sorry Nat. EDIT #1: Yeah, sorry Nat. He was also fairly uncooperative, but did actually answer all the questions with enough rage masking embarrassment to sound plausible (unlike Max). Going to trust Nat with this one and tentatively cross him off the suspects list. We’ve still got an eye on him, though.

—————————

Jason wasn’t there. 

“This is definitely the right address, right?” Cara asked.

Ravi nodded and rang the doorbell a few more times, for good measure. But they’d been standing outside his door for the past five minutes, and there was no sound nor movement from in there. “We’ll have to come back tomorrow.” They shared a look, so unexpected but somehow not. It said, silently: what if tomorrow is too late? They both shook their heads, like trying to physically shake the thought out, but it stayed for both of them.

Both of them turned to walk away. They made it to the end of the driveway before Cara grabbed his arm, fingernails digging into his coat like an anchor.

“Ravi. His car isn’t here.”

—————————

• Jason Bell- very publicly lambasted on the podcast, with all his past trauma about losing Andie there next to his affairs and abuse. Works at some position for Green Scene. Clearly dislikes Pip for costing him his marriage, plus strength and getaway method like the others. EDIT #1: No interview conducted BUT his car was missing at the time, and neither of us remember what it looks like. He might have been the one circling us, and still looking for Pip. No. 2 suspect because we still don’t have a concrete alibi or motive. 

—————————

• Charlie Green- Killed a man literally in Pip’s arms, but might also be in France somewhere. EDIT #1: Still probably in France somewhere.

—————————

Luke’s address had been helpfully provided by Nat, so that was nice of her. Despite it being a fairly nice, suburban house, Ravi couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread overtake him. He shuddered, but it didn’t go away. 

Cara knocked first, having lost the rock-paper-scissors game just moments before. 

An eye appeared through the door’s peephole, visibly rolled, and was then followed by a raised man’s voice. 

“If I tell you both to fuck off, will you actually do it?”

Cara piped up faux-cheerily. “Not until you answer our questions!”

He very clearly sighed. “Listen, you have five minutes to piss right off before I call the police on you. Got it? I’m leaving.”

Ravi and Cara stared at each other as his footsteps slowly fell out of earshot. “I feel like we just got the metaphorical door slammed on us.”

—————————

• Luke Eaton- tried to kill Jamie so definitely capable of violence. Did seem to care about Pip when he tried to call her, but that might have been to clear his conscience or prove his innocence. We don’t know how Pip felt about him. EDIT #1: He was suspicious as hell, but not out of character for him (clearly). Doesn’t give us much to work with other than he’s just aggressive. He was the second person to threaten the police on us unless we left, though Daniel IS police so technically that’s three-for-three!

—————————

Ravi sighed as he turned away from the laptop. “I really don’t think that last bit was necessary, Cara.”

She shrugged, and he rubbed his temples. 

Overall, it was both extremely and not at all helpful interviewing the suspects. Obviously, Jason was still a subject of debate, and it was very important to catch him the next day, or as soon as possible. It was also likely that news of their antics would be back to Hawkins one way or another very soon, and so all of them needed to be prepared for any kind of interference with their methods. It was a very unfortunate side-effect of vigilante crime-solving that the police would always be on the wrong side of things- though that seems to apply to everything in general. 

“So… action plan?”

Cara thought for a moment. “I think we should do more research into Jason. Find out where he works, for one. You reckon it’s at Green Scene?”

“Or Clean Scene, yeah, one of those.” Ravi gazed out the French windows to the quickly darkening sky outside. “I think I’ll do some searching about that, too. Find out who runs the place, that kind of thing.”

“Good idea.”

Both typed individually on their devices. 

It was quiet in the moment before everything clicked.

With blank expressions, Cara Ward and Ravi Singh gratingly turned to face each other, meeting eyes without bothering to look at the device screens they held out to each other.

They knew they bore the same page.

Jason Bell: Green Scene Ltd CEO

Chapter Text

He wondered if he could live in that memory forever, swim in it without fear of losing his breath. The idea of anywhere but here slowly morphing into anywhere with her , breaking him apart into something like a flame; all passion and warmth and nostalgia. 

He vividly remembered every happy moment with her. They flashed through his mind one after the other, skipping to the bit where she would look at him or laugh or smile like everything would be alright forever. There was nothing in the whole world that Ravi wouldn’t give to hold her again. She was worth everything on that godforsaken planet and then some. It was love, purely and simply; but more than that because Pip was everything: a grin, a frown, security, danger, energy, exhaustion, a grudge- and love. Nothing had ever made him feel so ‘every’ as Pip. 

In his mind’s eye, he saw her, blushing so red as she grabbed his hand in front of the whole audience like it was the most natural thing in the world. Her fingers wrapped around his like moss to a stone. It felt natural. The way her eyes softened when they met his, or when she stared at him with a tiny smile when she thought he wasn’t paying attention- they felt as natural as breathing in fresh oxygen. Always, unconditional. He was hers, she was his, they were each others’. Team Pip and Ravi, until the end of time.

He felt the loss without her like the ache of a phantom limb. 

“Ravi. Ravi. ” Cara prodded his arm with the patience of someone who’d been doing that on repeat for a long time. He looked around to her, trying to crack a small ‘brave’ smile, but it came out more as a grimace. That worked too, he guessed. He couldn’t be mad at Cara, really; not unless he explained that he was just getting to the good bit of his mental rewind- the bit from the last time he’d seen Pip and for just one second the stress and fear had melted back, and she’d told him she loved him. 

He sighed exaggeratedly. “I’m getting out, Cara. Give me a sec,” he flung open the passenger side door and swung both legs onto the pavement with a thud, “see? Out!”

She rolled her eyes. ”Well done, you finally figured it out. Now c’mon.”

The sun was low in the sky, a little orange still tinting the horizon. The ceiling of clouds made even the walk up Jason Bell’s open driveway feel claustrophobic somehow. The sunrise lit them up like fire licking at an isolated warehouse somewhere, casting dramatic shadows that left the front door in near total darkness until they approached close enough for the automatic light to signal their arrival. They shared a quick glance, nodded, and pressed the record button on Cara’s phone. Ravi reached forwards to knock.

In the millisecond it took him to begin another knock, the door flew open. 

Before them stood a very tall figure. It’d never really clocked, viewing him from across the room or catching sight of him on the news, how large he was. Maybe it was just his demeanour, his stance, but something about Jason Bell triggered his fight or flight. It was the same unsettling shiver as when he was forced to be in the same proximity as Max Hastings- pure fear, writhing its way up his spine . This was different to the way he’d been around the other suspects, though. Ravi felt acutely aware of every small action and movement Jason took; the startled expression that flitted over his face for just a second before returning to neutral, the defensiveness in his raised shoulders, the effort he took to tilt his head very pointedly down to look at them. Something in the back of his brain screamed pay attention .

Surprisingly, when Cara requested a short few questions with him, Jason agreed with little argument. He looked annoyed- exasperated, definitely- but soon enough they were perched on the end of one white sofa, phone camera covertly pointed at where he sat opposite them. In the harsh, stark lighting of the Bell living room, Ravi couldn’t help but be reminded of interview room A. 

She was much better than him at getting right into the interrogation, so he let her start with the basics. Jason answered every question, some through gritted teeth but others smoothly and without complaint. Still, Ravi wondered about that. Were they too smooth? Were his answers too complete, too well thought out? Why did he remember ‘the last time’ he’d met Pip in such vivid detail, and why were her mannerisms just slightly off? After a few questions, Cara glanced at Ravi, urging him to do some asking for himself. Refusing to let himself flounder uselessly, he shot right out with something heavy that was circling his head since he got the email..

“So, Jason- how exactly did you injure your head so badly on Sunday?”

If he twitched just a little, did that mean anything?

Jason frowned, reaching up for a patch on the back of his head for the first time since they arrived. “Even though I feel that’s my business-” pulling his lips tight together for a second, he carried on, “-if you must know: I was moving my toolbox in the garage to grab some tools for a repair to my car- and a hammer fell off the shelf and hit me. I was disoriented all night, so I decided it was best to take a short break from work. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Yes. 

“No. 

“If you got hit in the head with a hammer, why is there no bruise?” Always Cara with the quick questions. 

Jason’s face soured faster than a speeding car. “Because you can’t see it? I still have hair on the back of my head, you know, you stupid girl.”

The hairs on the back of Ravi’s neck raised sharply. “Hey! She was just asking a question.”

He scoffed, but didn’t make any further comments. Instead, he gestured towards Ravi, inviting him to ask more. 

“So… if your car was so broken you needed to fix it with tools, how come it hasn’t been here the past couple days?” He was choosing not to mention the sightings of it throughout the week, half out of interest in what Jason would leave out, and half in fear that maybe he was all wrong about that. But something had rubbed him the wrong way about Jason’s car being missing yesterday, and he intended to find out the alleged reason behind it. 

“Well, that’s much easier to answer. I could hardly fix it myself with a head injury, could I?” he chucked to himself, staring upwards with a small smile that flashed his white teeth like razor blades. “No, I called a mechanic to get it. That’s why it’s not been here the past few days. In fact, I just got the keys back before you arrived on my doorstep.” He chucked a ring of car keys onto the coffee table that the two parties sandwiched. Instead of quashing his suspicions, though, they only relit them doubly as before. He kept his eyes trained on that little hunk of metal and plastic, even as Cara started asking something else, only one question circulating his mind again and again and again: why did Jason have his car keys on him when he answered the door?

His train of thought fizzled and popped out when he heard the slight raise in Jason’s voice. Ravi turned his line of sight towards Jason, only to meet his pupils. For a moment, their eyes linked perfectly. His breath hitched. 

“Listen, kids, while it is a very noble effort to try and figure out what happened to poor Pippa-” he almost spat her name, and Ravi wanted to slap him for it, “- I’d suggest you leave it to the professionals. Hawkins has already told me all about your little investigation at my warehouse, and he wasn’t too thrilled. He’s already very busy. So, a word of advice: stop trying to make enemies with the police force. Don’t antagonise dangerous men. You’ll find yourself in a lot less trouble then, hm?”

And there it was. That dark, dangerous Jason Bell that Pip complained about. The man who darkened doorways and yelled and knew just a little too much; the man who stared Cara in the eye with a glower as he threatened them indirectly. It was difficult to catch his breath. He just kept slipping back to those words: don’t antagonise dangerous men. 

“Thank you very much for your time, Jason.”

“ Don’t go getting yourselves in trouble now . See yourselves out.”

—————————

Two little beeps, one melodically after another. The sign that it was over, at least for now. Ravi watched as Cara finally placed her phone back in her pocket, recording finished and secured. In his mind's eye he saw a ziplock bag, an evidence locker with Pip’s laptop shoved inside awaiting inspection. Why have that, when there’s evidence enough on Cara’s little android mobile? Why bother? Then again, maybe there was more on there. Pip was fond of her secrets after all. 

“More or less suspicious than Max’s?”

Cara considered the answer for a moment, rolling the name around on her tongue before deciding. “Max. Maybe it’s bias, but I feel like he has more of a reason. Jason had all the intimidation and none of the motive, if you know what I mean?”

He hummed. “I’m not sure. Something felt so… off. I can’t explain it any more than that, it just did.” 

“You noticed the keys too, right?” she raised an eyebrow pleadingly. 

He nodded. “And he answered the door the moment I knocked. Almost as if he was already by the door, getting ready to go out in his car.”

Cara’s gaze met his for a second, and in that second he saw all of her doubt and terror, reflecting his own like a pool. She gulped. “Okay Sherlock Holmes… let’s get inside before making any assumptions. Once we’re sat down with the doc open, then we can make all the assumptions you like.”

—————————

• Max Hastings- he hates Pip; thinks he has power over her but also is definitely scared of her as he should be and might want her out of the way. Can drive to get away and is physically strong enough to overpower her. But why now? Still top of the list,, though.
  EDIT #1: He was exceptionally suspicious in the interview. Seemed certain that Pip was dead and tried to blame the first person he thought of. Still top of the list 100%. Currently unaccounted for in the possible timeframe, including this morning.

EDIT #2: Final suspect no. 1

• Jason Bell- very publicly lambasted on the podcast, with all his past trauma about losing Andie there next to his affairs and abuse. Works at some position for Green Scene. Clearly dislikes Pip for costing him his marriage, plus strength and getaway method like the others. EDIT #1: No interview conducted BUT his car was missing at the time, and neither of us remember what it looks like. He might have been the one circling us, and still looking for Pip. No. 2 suspect because we still don’t have a concrete alibi or motive. 

EDIT #2: Not all that suspicious for most of the interview but had some spooky moments every now and again. Was almost definitely about to go out and drive around again- Jamie confirmed the car is the same. Still no strong motive, so very close Final suspect no. 2

—————————

“That’s the thing, isn’t it?”

Ravi flicked his pupils off the screen for a moment. “Hm?”

Cara rolled her eyes. “No motive. It seems like Max has the reason, and Jason has the means… I don’t know who to be more suspicious of, and that hurts my brain a bit. Quite a lot, actually.”

He pushed himself up, straightening his back on the sofa as he copied Cara’s crossed-legged position. The laptop sat, discarded, between them, chugging along with its mechanical whirr fading into distant white noise.

“These are our final suspects. Neither of us will be able to interview them again without being in danger. Hawkins definitely knows what we’re doing. We need to figure out who it was, before it’s too late and either he screws it all up, or… or something worse happens.”

She nodded, looking upwards as if the answer to their problem was written on the ceiling somewhere next to ‘gullible’. With a sharp eyebrow raise, head tilt and firm nod, she seemed to find it. “I know. I’m going to argue that it was Max, and you disagree and say it was Jason.” Every new word she said, she looked more confident with the idea. “We both try to prove our point, and whoever wins is the kidnapper!”

“The next hit guessing game, just before Cluedo.”

“You know it.”

“Point: Pip embarrassed Jason pretty heavily on the podcast. It would make sense if he wanted revenge”

“Countered: she did the same to Max, and got him in a bunch of expensive legal trouble.”

Ravi already liked this game, in a morbid sort of way. It was like he could go through a list of evidence, crossing it off until they found the mismatched pair of accusations. 

“Um… well, Jason’s alibi for Sunday is very shaky, and he got very defensive when I asked about it. He wasn’t expecting to have to talk about it, and that flustered him.”

It also came with the added bonus of being able to see what their arguments would look like in court.

“At least Jason has an alibi at all! Max was ‘playing video games’; we can’t access his files to see if that was true, plus even if we could, he could have easily faked it.”

“Fair.” he nodded, biting his lip a little. “But how do you explain the lie? And he got so defensive when you asked him questions.”

She shook her head. “He got defensive when I tried to ask him deeper questions, period . He looked mildly offended that I was there in the first place. Max was just straight up aggressive!”

“Point rejected on these grounds: Max just sucks in general.”

—————————

Maybe it was cathartic to argue. It was always something Ravi avoided like the plague with Pip, mostly because he could never bring himself to put words to his rage around her. She’d be doing something self-destructive, say some words she didn’t mean, but even though the matching response formed involuntarily on his tongue he would take one look at her face and it would dissipate into the air. It hit him in waves; her love lapping into his thoughts like surf on the shore.

Arguing with Cara was different. She was like a sister to him- and god, did it feel amazing to have a sibling again- so their insults didn’t matter. They could bounce off each other for hours, words deflecting off like bullets always missing the mark. It felt good to finally just be angry. Not sad. Not conflicted. Just purely, simply furious. When his blood boiled to a point that it came erupting out of the surface, their volcanoes spouted at each other until the steam was evaporated. When Cara yelled at the top of her lungs that Max’s parents are away, he could have snuck out you naive dipshit, the words he has functional security cameras you absolute dumbass just fell out of his mouth. Like carrion birds to a carcass, they picked at the ideas until only the barest possible evidence still counted. Seeing each part picked clean, Ravi- panting slightly, and out of breath- called for timeout.

“Do we shake hands now or what?” Cara was almost bent double, only half joking about her level of exhaustion. 

He nodded and they both went in for the handshake- pulling away in different directions at the last moment like a mediocre dad joke. It lightened the mood a little, if not much. That counted for something. Baby steps.

He hummed. “So, Cara, what have we learned?”

“That you need to work on your debate skills?”

“The other thing.”

“Oh,” she huffed sharply, “then, I guess that we can’t agree. I mean, neither of us can decide.”

Ravi itched the back of his neck. “Not a very fun thing to decide.”

She shook her head, a plastic grin overtaking her face. He forgot that she was in customer service sometimes, and the snap to ‘public mode’ was incredibly unsettling and uncomfortable. He was nowhere near as good at hiding his emotions on his apprenticeship- though he made friends easily without his reputation , so that worked out in his favour a little. Life outside of Kilton was nice. Things like this were rarer, it seemed. He’d wanted to move out near Cambridge with Pip for as long as they’d been together, just the two of them in a little flat by the water as she does her work and he his apprenticeship; living a little clockwork life in harmony.

Not unless he solves this.

“Well, I think it was Jason. And if it wasn’t, then shit, we need to do something quick. But Jason works for Green Scene and Jason has no proof and Jason’s car was missing and Pip said Jason hated her. We should look for a motive for him, or proof, while keeping an eye out for stuff relating to Max. Please. I believe me. Do you?”

To be honest, he expected her to carry on their little game.
“Yes. Okay.”

So, Max was on the back burner, and Jason Bell was under the spotlight now. Ravi and Cara intended to find evidence, and it was a silent agreement to stop at nothing to save Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Nothing at all.

—————————

He couldn’t avoid the internet any longer. The number of emails in Ravi’s inbox were slowly ticking higher and higher; and quadruple digits was a bit much, even for him. But being bombarded the second he opened Twitter with thousands of posts about his girlfriend nearly made him quit on the spot. His eyes watered, tears spilling over into his dry mouth and blurring his vision, so that #FindPippa was no longer displayed clearly in front of him. #FindPippa. #FindPippa. Find Pippa. It was an outpouring of love. Mostly useless. It pained him to admit it, but a lot of these people were treating them like some kind of ARG or social experiment. It cut deeper than he’d’ve liked to say to have Sarge’s words on the podcast be twisted into some kind of double meaning, or ridiculous foreshadowing, or fanfiction of her life. She was real. She was more real than his own life, sometimes. At the receiving end of an oblivious true-crime addict was Ravi, and his friends and family and loved ones; as dear to him as the moon and stars. 

His family.

He’d been neglecting them and he knew it. Biting the inside of his cheek and tasting blood. He swilled the taste around in his mouth for a few moments, savouring it like it as the anchor that kept him tethered while his mind floated away. When was the last time he updated his parents? It might have been a day, or a few, since he last opened the family whatsapp and sent ten thousand paragraphs of non-police-approved life developments. Even seeing the little red ‘twenty’ next to the chat made him squirm and cringe uncomfortably on the sofa. Cara was at work, just to explain why she needed to take her holiday time early (they’d understand, but still) so it was just Ravi, and the phantoms of people he’d been ignoring. He could practically picture his mum’s hurt expression, eyes all shiny like a wounded puppy. He wanted to reach out and hug them both. Instead, he shot a message:

R: I’m so sorry I haven’t messaged you both. I should’ve, and I’m so, so sorry :( It would be good to meet tomorrow, possibly with Leanne and Victor (you have their numbers, right?) so that we can discuss things. It’s difficult to explain more. I will, though, if you let me tomorrow. x

Read within a minute, and responses thirty seconds after.

Dad: Is 11:30 okay? x

Mum: We’re missing you, darling x

—————————

“Sleep.”

It was the fourth day of spending the night on Cara's sofa. Day four since Pip was taken. How could he sleep? “I’m trying, Cara, there’s just something crazy that you haven’t heard of going through my mind right now; it’s called ‘Pip being missing’, have you heard of it?”

That earned him a pillow to the jaw, but it was worth it. 

She left him to his thoughts soon enough, so she could get ready to sleep. Neither of them really would, but at least their eye bags would deepen equally, perfectly matching little puffy crescent moons underneath totally different eyes. Cara’s were more sharp, calculating and playful- his were softer, brighter and shone like his energy beamed out of them. Or that’s what Pip told him.

Doubt raced through his head, leaving him less sure than he’d pretended to be to Cara. Max’s motive versus Jason’s proof. Which weighed more? Which was worth enough to save the centre of the universe? Sitting up and grabbing the laptop, he opened each interview video. Two tabs, playing two different videos at once, telling the whole story in different pieces. His own personal white noise. They merged and blended in and out, fading to the background or fighting to the front to yell at him. God, it was scary when they yelled. 

—————————

Max: Grow the fuck up, kid. She’s dead.

     Jason: A word of advice:

                                Max: brother like brother.

                Jason: stop trying to make enemies with the police force.

    Always remember to kill two birds with one stone.

        Max: That what you wanna hear?

                                              Jason: Is that what you wanted to hear?

                         Max: I said, get out of my house- or I’ll call the cops.

Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

                                                     Jason: Don’t antagonise dangerous men.

Chapter Text

Naomi saw the first ones. 

Her yell echoed off the high ceiling of the Ward’s sitting room, reverberating loud enough to wake both of them in an instant. Ravi sprung to his feet, his footsteps clattering in perfect time with the thud of Cara’s, as she sprung from her own room upstairs- blearily wiping the sleep from his eyes so he could focus on where Naomi was standing, staring out the wide french doors. His heart crashed into his ribcage and he could feel each beat clearly in his ears, coursing through. She didn’t move. She just stood there like a mannequin. 

“Naomi? What are you doing up this early?” Cara was down now, a hoodie thrown over her pyjamas. She stifled a yawn, but the concern in her eyes was real, deep, and only mildly mocking. Naomi had to have a thick skin to it by this point.

This seemed to jolt her out of it, though, so maybe she had a reason. “Firstly, it’s nearly ten thirty.” Cara started an objection, but she was silenced by a serious glare. “Secondly… I was trying to make you guys breakfast. You've been working so hard, I thought it would be a good surprise. But- just, look:”

The place Naomi gestured outside seemed inconspicuous at first. There was no spray paint, no chalk figures. Just the slightly muddy grass of the garden, a thin patio providing a buffer between the harsh cold outside and the glass door which sparkled a little with droplets of condensation. Ordinary. So ordinary, that it was only when he turned to look questioningly back at her that he saw them- all of a sudden clear as day.

Even sets of footprints, there and back.

The moment Cara spotted them a shudder shook her. Ravi’s own breath had hitched and Naomi’s was still shallow; like she didn’t dare take a full breath yet. “I almost didn’t see them. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong when I looked out the window. Scanned along near the back gate, and there they were. Waiting for us. ”

Fuck. No, this really wasn’t good. ( The art of the understatement.) “They nearly come all the way up to the door.” His voice sounded faint, far away.

“He wants us to see them. He’s not this careless. He did this to send us a message, I’m so sure of it.” Cara didn’t need to specify ‘ he ’. They knew- or didn’t. But the idea was conveyed all the same. Pip’s kidnapper, the DT Killer, either Jason or Max: they were purposeful, very aware of the effect they had on the environment around them. It was this knowing that made them so scary a concept, such a force of nature to encounter. It meant that every part of what they did, regardless of who they hurt, who they disregarded, was a conscious effort- just one they didn’t give a shit about. They simply didn’t care who they hurt or what they took or what they had to do to get there; and that was the terrifying bit, the bit that kept a portion of Ravi’s brain focused on them at all times like watching for the bogeyman in the corner of your vision. He could not be caught off guard, or that would be the end. 

If they had left any evidence here, it was for them to find. Almost an acknowledgement of their investigation, in a twisted way.

They all exchanged a look, asking in one glance if calling the police was worth it, and replying in another that it wasn't. It was never worth it. 

He sighed. “They would blame us.” He said it quietly, softly, like speaking it aloud would let the thought solidify and become certain. “They would say it was mine; that you put me up to it for some reason or other. Maybe Hawkins would look into it more- but I still don’t trust him enough to think he wouldn’t take the easiest way out.” Look what he did with Sal went unsaid. The undertone for everything playing in the back of his mind like a shaky cassette. So many years after, but still fresh as a gaping wound whenever he thought back to it- but so many years after, too many; enough for a jolt of electric panic whenever Ravi found his brother’s face slightly blurry, not quite right in some unspeakable way, and he had to pull up a picture of him so that it would reset itself to normality. He hated forgetting, and this was the worst. Ravi turned his phone over, staring distantly at the grainy pixels of Pip’s face in the arcade pictures. Would it be easier or harder to forget her? Reflexively he wanted to swear he never would, of course, but he said that about Sal. What if the dimensions of her face warped in his mind the same way Sal’s did? What would he do if, one day, they were both lost for him, floating in the void of childhood fantasies and imaginary friends? His mum said he never had any imaginary friends, though; he was always too interested in being around Sal to look inwards for company, and Sal never once said no to him.
His eyes traced the lines of photo-Pip’s face, trying to store each part of her in his memory.
He knew it was futile.

It was at that moment a ping sound emanated from Cara’s phone. He shook himself out of his rapid spiral and turned his eyes to glance over at her. Naomi's lips parted slightly, posture shifting, but before she could get a single word out, Cara’s eyebrows hit the roof. Her mouth fell open as she scrolled. 

“Uh… Cara?”

She grimaced, clearly biting the inside of her cheek where it hurt. After a few stunned seconds, she managed, “Look at this shit-” and passed the phone to Ravi. Naomi peered over his shoulder as he took in her twitter mentions. 

Tens of notifications, all from obvious burner accounts, tagging her with a single message again and again and again and again and again and again.

User834720192 || @user834720192 || 2m

____________________________________

@CaraTheWard02 DIE BITCH 

____________________________________

“That’s all they are. Every single one, since like, 3 this morning. Guess I should’ve checked my phone earlier this morning. But since I was rudely awakened, ” she glared daggers at her sister, “I didn’t get the chance. Maybe it’s better that I’m more awake for this, though, because that’s… wow.”

Ravi handed the phone back. “Either dedication or a bot. But… isn’t that your personal twitter?”

She nodded. “It’s not private or anything, but I didn’t think anyone would find it. Pip didn’t exactly advertise that I had a public Twitter or anything- she gave us fake first names on the podcast, right? I mean, it’s not that much of a stretch that some outraged weirdo might’ve looked for Elliot Ward’s kids, but this is a little extreme. They need to chill out.”

“You think this is about your dad?”

“No. But what I mean is, my handle might be out there anyway without it having to come from a source close to us.” she sighed, meeting his eyes. “I don’t think that’s really the case though. Too convenient.”

He was just starting to consider the possibilities as well- somebody who knew she had a Twitter, and knew enough about her to be able to find her profile. First and last name would probably do it. So, that narrowed it down to just about everyone in Kilton. He told her as much, but she shook her head.

“It’s one of the suspects. I’d say most likely Max, because Jason doesn’t seem the type for crazy outbursts.”

“But we did just interview Jason yesterday, and now you got threatening messages. Plus, Max is too young to be DT Killer.” Ravi felt like they were going right back to yesterday’s debate, and he was already sick of it. 

“I really have a hard time believing this was actually the DT Killer, I’m sorry. Why would he use all the same calling cards as before? That seems super reckless.”

“He wasn’t caught the first five times. Why would anyone suspect him now, when he’s supposedly in jail? If this it is who we think it is, he’s super close to the police. He wasn’t even considered the first time around.”

Cara took a breath to counter, but fell short. “Good point. Still, it sounds hard to believe, doesn't it? Pip, stalked and m- abducted by a famous serial killer.”

He chose not to comment on the slip-up. “Plus, he was probably in too much a rush to be subtle, given how close Pip was to discovering his identity.”

Naomi was standing off to the side, looking increasingly more worried at every word from their mouths. Her brow was deeply furrowed, neck craned like an angle measure. It dawned on them both simultaneously that they never actually told Naomi about the DT Killer, which might have been intended at the time but was very inconvenient now, as they hastily explained what her connection was. She was old enough to remember the original DT Killer case. The idea of Pippa Fitz-Amobi entangled in a stalking and abduction case with the infamous murderer from her childhood memory sent her into a visible state of total panic. 

“Why the fuck did you never tell me? Oh my god, I might puke-”

The impact was jarring. It wasn’t like Naomi to get all worked up like this. Then again, they were definitely desensitised; Cara and Ravi had been cracking jokes about Pip’s disappearance just last night that she probably would have paled at. But, at a little muted buzz from his phone ringing at his pocket, he nonchalantly slipped away from Cara trying to ramble consolations to her. 

An email. It was weird; he left notifications on for emails because he used them only for business and school- the other apps were completely silenced, too many trolls and dramatics- but there was a different vibe for emails. They felt more professional, thought out. An email could be sent almost as easily as a tweet, but there had to be intention. 

The shudder of expectant dread coursed through his bones. Trying to predict the contents was almost exhilarating, flooding him with that same kind of fear as being at the top of the hill on a rickety rollercoaster: scared for your life, with the genuine anxiety that you might die. What this time? The same as Cara? Or more individualised, with a little personal flair that could really get him like a kick in the teeth? A dart straight for bullseye.

It was none of those.

To: [email protected]

Cc/Bcc, From: [email protected]

Subject: Dead girl running!

____

Going,

_____

“That’s it?” he muttered the words under his breath, so that Cara and Naomi wouldn’t hear. For some reason, he felt like this was something better kept to himself. He felt a pang of nostalgia, reminding himself of Pip and her furious determination to keep the worst of everything from him during the Andie investigation. He would have supported her regardless. From the first time she knocked on his door. Ravi wasn’t entirely sure when he stepped into her shoes, took her place with the yarn and pins at the murder board, standing with stiff shoulders like a drill sergeant himself as he explained the points. And he still held that he much preferred it as the critic. Vividly, coming to him in flashes that cut like glass, he recalled a late night just before proving Sal’s alibi. That uncertain time, floating between innocent and guilty, crush and love. She was proposing theories so outlandish he had to hold back laughs- so poorly she groaned at the sight of his smirk from the corner of her eye- and he was there, just lounging on the floor of her room, ignoring messages from his mum and dad, poking fun at her. Like that could ever conceal his feelings for her. He pointed out a flaw in her train of thought, so she rolled her eyes and smiled in that way that made his heart beat stumble over itself, and half-jokingly called him a natural. He’d responded, but he couldn’t hear himself over the somersaults in his brain. If he had to pick a moment, just one, that would be the first time he knew he loved her; the first time that he wanted to grab her and hold her close, whilst whispering how much he loved her. Though he’d never been angry at Pip for keeping the threats from him- far from it- he felt he understood now the reasoning behind it. Despite how open Cara and Naomi were being about the struggles they were suddenly facing, he cared too much for them, and he was terrified that his own would be the cherry on top that said ‘give up.’ He couldn’t afford to do that. He had to see Sarge roll her eyes and blush at least one more time. 

It was mostly the subject line. ‘ Dead girl running!’ Pip couldn’t be a dead girl, couldn’t be who this anon was referring to. Even if all the evidence pointed to it. Even if the man himself said she was (because he knew it was DT in his bones). Surely it was an intimidation tactic; that was all it could be- because if it wasn’t, he would shatter, and nobody would be able to glue him back together, and that had to be reason enough for it to be false. Even if the sharp insidious shards were starting to dig into him like claws, his hope for her return had to be the thing that kept him believing in her.

(80% of missing persons are found within a day. It has been four.)

—————————

“Hey, Ravi.”

Cara flopped onto the sofa next to him, letting out a deep exhale. He responded with a little hum. He was preoccupied pasting all of the new evidence photos into the word document on Cara’s laptop, a truly gruelling task that consisted of clicking the same three buttons over and over again while cursing out Microsoft for their shitty formatting. He turned a glance to her, feeling the weight of her expectancy settle heavy over him.

She shuffled awkwardly. “I just feel like we should talk more about the DT thing. You got really distant after we mentioned it earlier and I want to check in and clarify myself a bit.” She was being stilted and formal in a way that meant she’d planned out exactly what she was going to say in her head several minutes prior. Why was she nervous?

He tilted his head a little. “What about it?”

“Well… I need you to know that when I said I didn’t think the DT Killer was really the one behind this, it wasn’t a dig at Pip or anything. I think I came off as undermining, and given she’s smarter than both of us combined it kinda came off a little wrong? I don’t know how to describe it, but I need to make myself clear.”

Since when was Cara Ward insecure about what others thought of her? This was really strange. It set his nerves on edge. “It’s fine Cara, honestly, I was just lost in thought, I do get your reasoning. But,” he tried to phrase it as delicately as possible, but blunt truth it was, “are you alright?”

Her face crumpled in an instant, facade shattered. “That obvious?” He nodded. “Shit.” She sank in on herself like she wanted to totally disappear. “It’s just… I… shit, I can’t… does it ever get too much?”

“You saw me when it got too much, Cara.”

“No, I mean- everything that’s happening. I lose her, we do, then it’s investigation after investigation, interview after interview, piling all on; Hawkins with his theories and Max and Jason and threats and evidence and everything. It’s all happening at once and I can’t take it. I just can’t. Not for much longer, anyway. But then I feel so guilty, like I can’t take myself seriously, and I joke, but then I feel even more guilty because wherever Pip is, she’s definitely not made any jokes in the last five days. And-” she sniffed. When did she start crying? He hadn’t noticed, too engrossed in her words, their relatability, “-I didn’t see her. Not for a few days before her d- disappearance. Not even so much as passing the coffee shop. And I hate myself so much because I thought she didn’t like me. I thought I did something, so a tiny part of me resented her- for going off and leaving me, mostly.”

“Cara-”

“No, Ravi. I know she didn’t- that’s not the worst. Even if I feel selfish for thinking about that first. The worst part is that, the more this goes on, the less sure I am about everything. I’ve questioned it all so much it’s getting muddled in my brain. I thought, in some tiny way, that maybe the death threats would ground me. But I just feel so empty. Do you feel empty?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes. But so full of stuff, at the same time. I get it Cara, seriously. ” He wished he could do more to help, but somehow his words had run out on him.

“And the more time goes on,” she was shivering, looking him dead in the pupil with face pale and eyes wide, “the less sure I am on what we’re getting close to.”

He felt the tears running down his cheeks before he knew he was crying. He savoured the taste; salty and sharp as the first day of the disappearance, before it all got so complex. The single thing that hadn’t changed was the presence of pain. It seemed constant, until the end of time. He nodded, barely.

It was 11:02 AM. He needed to leave to meet his parents. Really did, before he said something that would define reality. Not bothering to save the document as he passed the computer to the arm of the sofa, he stood, keeping his eyes on her. How long had they both been broken? Why hadn’t they noticed? The same question he asked himself about Pip’s drugs. That felt months away now, a different lifetime even. Just another irrelevant agony, there for laughs and to kick him while he was down. Dramatic irony. 

The murmurs to Cara, reminding her where he was going, the promise to be back soon, to text, felt like in a haze. Nothing was real. His body moved of its own accord but his thoughts lagged several paces behind, groggily stumbling over to him. 

“Cara?” He stopped in the doorway. She looked at him as vacantly as he felt. “Remember what I asked, Monday night, about what Hawkins said?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think now?”

She parted her teeth in awaitance of an answer, but none came. Instead, a fresh-baked wave of tears. He felt the ache as bitterly as his own. 

He answered her silence. “Yeah. Me too.”

—————————

Hindsight was 20/20. It always was. He could look back and blame himself (and he would), or lash out, but it remained the same. He should have known Elliot Ward wasn’t really tutoring, should have known Pip was being led along by the Greens, should have known not to drive. The past was only a constant flood of ‘could have’ and ‘should have’ with no sign of progress.
He should have known not to drive.

Adrenaline and cortisol, the hormones that should have been in the same category as alcohol and crack cocaine. They definitely had the same effect. His whole body tingled with numbness as he stepped into the car, a foot on the accelerator grounding him with a rush of steel and air encasing his whole body. Ravi’s ears rang from his last conversation with Cara. The echoes of it bounced around in his vision, obscuring it, fogging up the windshield with ideas and sheer unfiltered dread. Maybe that’s why he saw her.

The route to his own house was at least familiar enough that it worked to leave his brain on autopilot for a little while. That was one of the good parts about living in a place as confined as Little Kilton: stay there long enough and your hands will start to direct the steering wheel by themselves, without the need for conscious input. He certainly wasn’t feeling very conscious. So distracted. So out of it. So empty. Empty. Cara really had put it best, after all. They had each other, and their families, and they would learn to live without, when it came to that- but there would forever be a huge part of themselves missing. It felt unhealthy to call her that, but she was. He hoped she would miss him that badly if he were to go away. He hoped she had a little voice in her head that sounded like his, cracking jokes when it got tough; the way he had a little Pip that yelled at him and visited him in dreams for fleeting moments. He’d never dreamed as much as the past few days. Stress, Naomi called it, yet he still felt the incessant want to cling to those fractals of her as reality, savouring each glimpse at her. 

Driving down the last road by his house, car smoothly gliding over the surface just a little too fast. He swerved.

If the road hadn’t been empty, he would have died from shame on the spot. The noise was so loud. Instead, he reversed, peeling a crumpled headlight out from the clutches of a concrete bollard. The woman in grey on the other pavement gave him a pointed look. She wasn’t Pip. She wasn’t Pip, no matter how much he thought she might’ve been. 

He really did think he saw her. Just peeking out from around the corner of a building. The other woman passed by, he startled, and she was gone. Or never there to begin with. 

By the time he made it to his driveway, Ravi was a shaking mess. He almost crashed once more, luckily regaining control of the wheel before hitting an incoming car head-on. It wouldn’t have done to hit Jason Bell in his new car, still recovering from his head injury. He spat the words inside his mind like venom.
The door flung open before he even had the chance to get up from his seat- his mum flinging her arms around him and pulling him up in a throttling hug. His dad too, when she gave him the chance. It might have been minutes that they stood there in the open of the driveway; they sniffed and cried all wordlessly. There was never going to be a timeline where he would ask for anything else. The soft comfort of home.
The scent of sweet perfume was spritzed around the sitting room as it always was, rooting him firmly in the present as he took a seat in the left corner of the sofa- reclaiming his throne of pillows once again. He remembered a race to see who’d get there first, a groan and complaint when the stack of cushions was split in half to share. No. He had to stay in the present. 

Leanne and Victor joined him from another room down the hall. The kitchen. How long had they been here? He only mentioned in passing that they should come over, but it was good to see them anyway. Totally unexpectedly, another little curly head popped around the corner.

“Josh!” 

The boy’s face immediately lit up like a lantern. His feet were a blur as he sprang over to Ravi, leaping to take a place right next to him with his feet in their mismatched socks curled up beneath him. Josh smiled up at Ravi, but it faltered a little. There was a hollowness lurking behind there, just out of reach. He couldn’t understand the gravity of the situation, surely- not unless Leanne and Victor had been a lot more upfront about everything than they’d originally been when they first told him she was gone. He pushed that from his mind for a moment. He had to seem strong, optimistic, steadfast. They had to have faith in him. They had to believe him.

Since when had they all been in here? Ravi was too caught up in masking his true feelings; to the point that actually paying attention to his surroundings had slipped his mind completely. Were they looking at him expectantly?

He coughed. “Sorry, did you say something to me?”

His mum laughed, raising her eyebrows. “Oh yes, Ravi. Off in your own world, as always?” The only response she accepted was his sheepish blush before she repeated herself. “What news? What else have you found?”

The tenseness in her voice wasn’t lost on him, but he side-eyed Josh anyway. He returned an even stronger glare, whispering triumphantly that they said I can stay. Ravi cleared his throat again. “Well… Cara and I have two suspects. We did a bunch of interviews, and… two stuck out. But we can’t confirm anything, so I don’t want to start any rumours.”

“Who?”

Ravi couldn’t even start his sentence. “Max Hastings, for one.”

“How did you-”

Victor crossed his arms and glowered as he took a deep breath, like the memory of whatever he was about to share burned him to the bones. “His lawyer called Tuesday afternoon. Said someone had come around asking ‘impertinent’ questions and that I needed to tell Pippa she had to call off whatever stunt she was pulling.” He clenched and unclenched his fists. “I told him where he could stick it, and he left us be. But that did tip us off.”

He wanted to laugh. Pip told him Epps was a massive bastard, but now he almost wished he was there for that call, so he could watch as Victor very thoroughly ripped him a new one. The idea of it got his blood boiling. 

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

Leanne tilted his head slightly in a way reminiscent of the very first night. “Who’s the other person?”

No. He couldn’t do it. Not here, not now. He couldn’t say Jason Bell. That would shatter everything, including himself, and ruin it all, and if they knew then they would be watched, in danger just like Cara, and Naomi, and Pip, and himself. Just knowing was enough to endanger them- he was hypervigilant of it. The idea of Josh facing the same hell as him would break it all. And his parents? Jason and Dawn had become, if not exactly a shoulder to lean on then a common ground: shared pain and trauma had become familiar and intertwined between them. 

“I… I can’t say. I’m not certain, but I think this was who did it. But- if I tell you, you’re all in danger. Seriously. You, we, have no idea what he’s fully capable of, and we don’t want to find out. We need more evidence.” Always more evidence. He felt the bitter tug of a lie at his throat, but suppressed it- he was more in favour of half-truths than lies. 

The couples shared whispers and pointed glances between themselves. God, didn’t it feel lonely. At least he had Josh for company. Even if he wasn’t much conversation at this moment (had he ever been this quiet a child?). There were nods across the board. They were satisfied, but it felt so wrong to change the topic.

He informed them of the details surrounding the recordings, promising to send the transcriptions later. He’d send Jason’s. See if they could puzzle it out a fraction of the way he and Cara did. In turn, they explained fairly worriedly about their interactions with the one and only DI Hawkins- the man whose incompetence directly led to this exact situation.
It seemed like he’d kept in very frequent contact. They said it was a miracle he hadn’t called in the 3 hours they were all having lunch, given his tendency to call when every sane person would have been eating or sleeping. Each description fed into his working theory; the one that fascinated him the most. There would be a time and place to explore that soon, he hoped. 

He felt like the discussion had been moving on a bit too far without him, so he chimed in: “He still on his ‘theory’?”

They nodded gravely. Leanne leaned in and  answered him first. “Oh yes. He said Pip’s laptop was with their tech teams, so while we were waiting for updates we should have a browse through the foundations he sent us.” She paused for dramatic effect. “They were all for parents of murder victims.”

Could he voice what he really thought? Could he suggest that maybe, just maybe, he was starting to lose hope? 

(Not in front of Josh. He can never know.) 

His phone pinged. Shit. Ravi fumbled it out of his pocket, recognising the notification buzz with a dull throb of anticipation. Email. Checking that nobody was focused his way with a quick scan, he opened the message.

Cc/Bcc, From: [email protected]

Subject: Dead girl walking…

____

 going,

_____

What? The same as last time. Or different? He squinted at the tiny glowing screen as if he could intimidate the answer out of it. If only that was how it worked. But, no, he saw it now- the extra space, the regular letter instead of a capital. This was a sentence. Going, going,- he knew what came at the end; it settled in his stomach like a rock. He didn’t even notice Leanne’s phone ringing on the sofa cushion. He didn’t see Josh pick it up.

He did recognise the voice of DI Hawkins on the other end, no matter how distorted. He did hear Josh’s voice raise, yelling to just tell him. 

He did hear Hawkins’s reply clearly in the now silent sitting room. 

“Young man, the whereabouts of your sister are your parents' concern first and foremost. You need to hand it over now. ”

Without a single moment of hesitation, Leanne snatched it out of Josh’s hands. He simply stood there, stunned and shellshocked with full-moon brown eyes, hands still clasping where the phone had just been. 

She didn’t leave the room, but her clipped half-answers were totally unintelligible to him anyway. He was reeling, light-headed and dizzy. He needed to sit down more. 

Why  was  she  crying ? 

Pip’s mother turned in a way that had her staring at the blank wall, tears streaming uncontrollably down her cheeks and cascading into her folded palms. 

She tried to speak and choked, breath catching again and again and again, not stopping her sobs even when Victor held her tightly and she leaned into him with her eyes squeezed firmly shut. They stayed like that for minutes, and nobody spoke. Nobody dared. 

Finally, she sat upright again, gaze lowered to an inoffensive spot on the floor. 

“They’ve- found a body. We need- need to identify it. If It's her or not.”

It shattered. It broke. He was drowning, truly; drowning with no sight of the surface, kicking and clawing for air irrationally. All of this for nothing? No. Nonononononono nonono no. It couldn’t be. If. If was a very powerful word.

A powerful word that meant all of nothing in this scenario. 

“If.” said his dad, echoing his own thoughts. “We don’t know. We don’t know anything.”

That wasn’t true. Ravi knew everything. He was just useless at putting it together.

—————————

He sat very still in the backseat. The Amobi’s car was bigger than his, and today it felt even more distant than usual. Like just a few hours ago, he traced the outlines of Pip’s face in the pictures covering the back of his phone. What would they see? What would he be able to unsee? If. If if if if if if if if if if if if if if if. He rolled it around on his tongue until it ceased seeming real. Maybe it never was.

Another notification.

Cc/Bcc, From: [email protected]

Subject: Dead girl 

____

 gone!

_____

He stared out the window. 

For a moment before they sped off, he knew the car he was gazing into, and knew the name of the man he made eye contact with.

DT Killer.

Jason Bell.

Chapter Text

The room being so comfortable was the thing that broke him. In his mind, the building was cold, stark, angular and bare- fitting shape language for a place that generated nightmares more efficiently than a Saw trap. But it was comfortable. The chairs were smooth and ergonomic. The lighting was even, and tinted an amicable warm shade that gave off the aura of comfort. 

The hospital morgue was not comfort.

Actually, it was discomfort that seeped into his bones. It filled in all the little pores and holes until he was stiff and solid like an animatronic, all disused and rusted still over years. 

And still the room was comfortable; and it shattered any remaining illusion about what he was doing. In some, tiny but ferocious, part of his brain, he wanted the coldness, the starkness, the angular and robotic and stiff and dingy and dark. Because that was real comfort. Comfort in the familiarity: whispering faintly that he could still rely on police, on the justice system. They would identify the body and it would be one crying scene because the showrunners didn’t think it needed any more time, given it wasn’t the right person; and then that dead body, the Jane Doe with no mourners, could be left in last week’s script because this was the good part, this was the reveal, and the police would crack the case: leaving a happy ending- maybe even a fade to black, as the damsel in distress rode of into the sunset with her pained love interest. 

But it was comfortable instead, and he broke. 

Leanne and Victor were inconsolable. That was what he tried and failed to focus on, a morbid fascination in other people's suffering to put a stopper on his own. He focused on their tears, tracking them down their cheeks like the way he and Sal would race raindrops on the car windows when they were younger.
He never got to identify Sal’s body. His parents were gone, and then they came back crying. 

He wondered if Josh would react the same way he did. It was all a blur, his own experience, but he could manage to pick up fragments from the jungle of his memory- sitting down, two parents and a police officer seated between them as they tried to explain the inconceivable. Ravi remembered shouting, screaming, crying. He remembered sitting very still, letting the meaning soak in subtly over weeks of minutes. In his mind these things happened at once, so it was the one childish notion he stuck to even now: the total non-existence of time, when grief could easily replace it. That was why the numb second ticked by like hours at the same moment agonising hours ticked by like seconds. He wondered if Josh would scream first, or just be very, silently still. 

There was a cough behind him. Ravi turned, absently wiping gallons of tears from his eyes. A woman in a white coat and gloves smiled with mild kindness down at him, quickly returning her gaze to Pip’s parents. It was the type of facial expression that apologised while it stabbed you through the heart, and it put him on edge. The smile alone, not reaching her eyes, was a dull ache in itself. 

“Greetings, Mr and Mrs Fitz-Amobi,” (they didn’t correct her, and neither did he) “and Mr Singh. I understand that this is already a very difficult day, and regardless of the outcome here today- your struggle in continuing on these tough days is so commendable. You are incredibly strong, though you don’t have to be at this point. Especially today: I will understand entirely if you require a moment to compose yourself, before, during or after the viewing. It is not something easy to stomach. ” Her smile turned tight-lipped and grim in her finishing remarks. There was something so riveting and soft about the way she spoke- almost rhythmic, as though she were rocking him to sleep with a twisted children’s story, or some kind of medicine side-effects list. Vaguely he smelled a little perfume, probably freshly applied, rose scented. Like his mum’s, the day she broke the news-

-he didn’t want to finish that thought. He substituted it: do morgues give out a special branded perfume to block out the scent? But then he considered the implications of that, what it said about Sal, and he digressed painfully. Stay present. Stay present. Stay present. A mantra to himself. Incredibly unhelpful.

“Also,” could it get any worse? “there will be a police officer escorting you all to and from the body, as well as noting any observations any of you bring up if it happens to be Miss Fitz-Amobi- given the circumstances of an ongoing investigation. Normally we of course try to keep these viewings as personal as possible, but certain requirements must be made when there is evidence of foul play. I hope you understand.”

It could. 

‘when there is concrete evidence of violence’ to ‘when there is evidence of foul play’. Putting it far more gently than Hawkins all that time ago almost made it harder to bear. She was a case to be solved, a mystery, foul play replacing violence to make it more stomachable. It made him sick either way. Had she been dead from the start, like Andie? How right was Hakwins, after all? He said she was dead by the Tuesday at least, but how far back did he really suspect? What would this body prove? Sal and Andie, Ravi and Pip. Secrets and drugs and homicide. The key to a power couple, for a short period at least. 

You are incredibly strong, though you don’t have to be at this point.

Whatever he saw through that door, he had to be prepared. He had to prove her right. 

He had to be strong.

—————————

The officer was easier to blank out than he expected. They stood straight, head looking towards the door even after they’d entered. He looked like he was focusing very hard on the top of the doorframe, to the point where Ravi could pick up a little tremble in his hands and shoulders, maybe even in his pupils if he stared long enough into them, behind the deep blue irises. He didn’t really want to. The officer was a blank slate, empty, unknown . More like the untuned strings building tension in the soundtrack than the main overture, or the visuals and plot. But the man really didn’t look comfortable there, and that was overt enough. 

The doctor (or technician? He didn’t remember introductions. He lived in the past thirty minutes, just after they had been told to wait. He didn’t know specifics.) dropped her smile. The expression she now wore was concentrated, her eyebrows wrinkled inwards and lips pulled straight and taut. Her stiff shoulders squared, radiating confidence and extreme awareness. Obviously, she was sharp to the fact that her every move was being documented by not only an officer of the law- something that her body language said was uncommon- and the grieving family. But she must have done this a thousand times. The smoothness she pulled forwards the trolley, clean white cloth still draped carefully overtop of it told that clearly. Her. Not it. Her. 

The doctor was saying something again, repeating the same soothing speech about breaks or leaving or whatever else he’d blacked out for. Victor and Leanne were shaking their heads, though, so Ravi copied them instinctively. She nodded, drawing in breath. 

“There are chairs behind you if you wish to sit or take a break at any point.” She pointed to a row of the same unsettlingly comfortable chairs from the waiting room, pushed up against the cream wall. “This is not a pleasant experience.” Then she leaned over the trolley, and gently, oh-so gently, peeled back the sheet down to the neck. 

The officer still looked away.

It took three seconds to realise it wasn’t Pip. Two to look from the chairs, along the floor and up to her face. One to scan her features and find them another unknown.

He still moved forwards. He had to confirm, for certain.

Her eyes were mostly shut, staring unseeingly under lowered eyelashes that looked brittle and fragile. Her cracked lips just slightly parted looked like the start of a yell, collapsing under its own weight; her hair spread out like a halo catching the light. It feathered, mousy brown, about her so she was suspended on the monotone background as if in water, floating above the surface- not drowning, not anymore. There was a peace and a panic to her. The eye of a storm- her eyes, brown like mineshafts without warning signs. The kind that could trap you if you fell too deep. But they were abandoned. No life. No flame. No canary singing. No breath or struggle. Just gone. 

But not Pip.

A tattoo spotted, just behind her left ear- a crescent moon, barely outlined, old and fading a little, but the deep blue ink still reflecting the sky. Her makeup a little too heavy for Pip, collecting in her pores where the days had worn it down. Her cheekbones too prominent. Eyes the wrong brown, by a shade or two.

Not Pip.

It grasped him like a freight train. He vaguely realised he had stumbled back, grateful for the chairs that caught him and supported his violently trembling body. Not Pip. Not Pip. Not Pip. He’d prepared himself for this so long, and it wasn’t her. A bitter part of him resented her- the corpse- for being there, like a joke or a feint. Then all of a sudden the idea of his rage frightened him, and he swallowed it deep down inside of him. Ravi was scared of his anger. There was too much, and if he let it escape from him for one second he could never put it away again. That was why he was so controlled, and took such painstaking effort to keep himself subdued- but he could feel the mask peeling off, slowly but surely. He couldn’t see straight. Every time he closed his eyes he saw her; the Jane Doe, and her eyes looked at him with nothing at all behind them, and he knew she was cold, and afraid, and knew he was totally useless to her. Nothing he could have come up with explained it. The tingling sensations as his brain shut down felt like fireworks under his skin, and for once he cherished that static feeling because it meant he knew he was alive, not just the failure to all those he loved. He was alive and electric, but somehow, even as he tried to cherish it, Pip’s face merging onto the other woman’s felt vomit-inducing. He knew he should have protected her. Should have told her he loved her more often. Because if this wasn’t Pip, lying stiff and broken on a hospital trolley, then she was somewhere out there. A swoop of blood rushing to his ears overcame him, the thump thump thump a rhythmic chant, hypnotising. But at the same time it felt dirty, wrong, like he’d stolen it from her, like he was taunting her; but he couldn’t stop it, he just heard the thump and held to it like a lifeline. 

—————————

He saw Pip four times on the drive home. Twice in the random crowds of people walking about the town centre, once sitting out the front of a chain coffee shop, sipping a latte, and once more, swathed in a coat and scarf and supporting herself on the wall of a rundown bank. It was just as easy to lose her again. It only took a blink, and then she was somebody else.
It would have been easier to count the times he did not see Jason’s car. It circled them in traffic like a carrion bird. Suddenly on one side, then the other, then on the opposite side of the road, across barriers. Ravi stopped looking out the window eventually. The mirages hurt more than his thoughts.

What was he going to do? If he told them he was sure Jason was the one, he had no doubts Pip’s parents would break down his door and throttle him, court system be fucked. They would believe he was the DT Killer, with the right amount of proof. Distantly Ravi remembered Pip talking to the mother of Billy Karras, promising to get her son back. Did Pip know it might cost her parents their daughter?
Yes. Of course she did. That was the only part that probably held her back from jumping headfirst into full-on masked vigilantism. But she was such a damn good person that she couldn’t resist helping other people, even when she should have been focusing on helping herself. He knew Pip criticised herself, thought she was selfish. But Ravi didn’t see anything selfish in wanting to survive. In fact, surviving in Pip’s way- for other people- was the most selfless thing he could think of, from all his books and anecdotes combined. She wanted to live, and she felt the need to rid the world of evil bastards. If it came to a choice between the two, he knew she would choose the latter. She tried to compromise her whole project, her EPQ, just so that the people around her wouldn’t be hurt- not when the threats were on her, her life : only when they were on Barney (and, he added like an afterthought, when she thought it would hurt him ). She risked her future for her dog because she loved him. She loved everyone around her so much. She was a candle burning from both ends; her passion at one and hatred at another, colliding and merging. He loved how much she cared; she could rant for hours about topics Ravi had never even heard of, but he would listen because just hearing her so invested in a subject made him giddy with second-hand excitement. He felt his heart rate spike. All those hours talking were reduced to ashes, because, what- Jason was embarrassed? Resorting to… what he had done was the embarrassing bit. He had only made himself look more weak.

That was the thing: all these serial killers ever did was make themselves look pathetic. 

The DT Killer was no exception.

“Oh, darling. Come here.”

He knew his mum was talking to him; they were the only people left in the room. Leanne and Victor had said the ‘good’ news very matter-of-factly, but the thought still stung. They hadn’t stayed long after that. Josh wanted to go home and sit on the bottom stair; something he’d apparently taken to do ever since the second day or so. The boy hadn’t said much to Ravi on either the forwards or back journey, but the little he’d whispered was stomach churning . Josh had thought Ravi was hiding Pip somewhere at first. He had to have hope that she would burst down the door one day and scoop him up from where he was sitting, waiting on that step. As much as he wished that was the case, to be honest, he knew Josh was starting to comprehend what had happened- even if he didn’t say it. It could only be that that made such a dent in his animated personality, fracturing the childish liveliness into something rougher, sharper. He wondered how many more days it would be until he stopped sitting on the step. Not too many.
Jason couldn’t’ve hidden her that well.

He felt his mum’s arms around him before he had time to react. She pulled him close towards her, one hand supporting the back of his head and the other patting his back slowly like he was still a small child. He crumbled into her. Her small form held his weight well, and she shushed him gently, soothingly, and she held him up even when his legs gave way for almost ten seconds until they both collapsed downwards. His mum folded her knees neatly beneath her, and when she looked down at him her eyes were filled with tears, too. 

“I’m sorry-” he choked, “- for all of this- I’m so sorry- Mum, you don’t understand how-” he swallowed like he was pushing a boulder down his throat.

His mum tilted her head to the side slightly. “Ravi Singh. Listen to me, please.” She placed a hand on his shoulder, the softness matching her quiet, commanding voice. “You have nothing to apologise for.“ 

“I do! This is my fault! I could have told Hawkins more, or looked more into Jason, or something; I definitely should have told you more but I didn’t, and I’ve failed you all, and I’m so sorry-”

“ You have nothing to apologise for. Oh, Ravi,” she didn’t even flinch at his mention of Jason. She chose not to. “this isn’t your fault. Not at all. You did everything you could. Shush- you did . You would rather disappear yourself than not do everything in your power to find her. And, Ravi: we are all so proud of you.”

He sniffed. “Why?”

“Because, darling, you didn’t have to do all this. But the police would have no idea where to start if it weren’t for you.”

“Pip did it all the time!” he had to protest it, or else there would be more truths to accept.

His mum just laughed, a single, watery thing. “Aren’t you proud of her for that?”

Yes. “But I am sorry. I got so caught up I forgot about you and Dad. It was this whole whirlwind, and I couldn’t focus on anything but her. I’m so, so sorry for hurting you with that. If you won’t let me be sorry for the rest.”

She placed her other hand on the opposite shoulder. “We love you, Ravi. All of us. Josh adores you, Leanne and Victor are grateful beyond words. Your dad and I, we couldn’t’ve wished for a different Ravi. We understand. Honestly, darling. You did everything you could, and we just want you to be happy and healthy, throw all the other stuff out the window, we just want you. ”

He let himself be pulled into another hug, this time grasping her arms back as she wrapped around him, protecting him from the world. “Because we love you, Ravi. I don’t know much about Max Hastings or… Jason. But I know you would spit in their faces to get Pippa back. Even if there’s not anything left to be done, you did all of these other things and proved so much. Enough, maybe.”

No. He couldn’t accept failure; not when the DT Killer was still out there.

Ravi leaned back, wiping his cheeks harshly and painfully on the sleeves of his hoodie. “Don’t forgive me yet, Mum. There’s still something I can do.”

He pushed himself up on shaking feet, flatly ignoring her confused interjections. Whether it was sympathy or pity she was trying to give him, he didn’t want it yet. “There’s still one thing left to do.”

—————————

From the instant he entered the police station, he could feel something was wrong. There seemed to be more officers than usual, all of them clearly wearing an expression of exhaustion and looking incredibly harried when noticing his presence. They milled in and out like ants, carrying paperwork and plastic bags from room to room. For a while he just observed them, walking to and fro, letting his eyes slip into a similar rhythm, as if he was watching an endless tennis game. But it was when a very familiar man strutted out, holding a black phone hesitantly in his hand and seemingly searching frantically about for a quiet place to make his call, that Ravi finally made his move. With all the determination of a soldier making one last stand, he called out his name.
“Detective Hawkins!”
The man himself looked up, away from the numbers on the phone, searching around for Ravi like he wasn’t right in the centre of his vision. 

“Ah! Ravi Singh! I was just about to call you, we need to talk- perhaps now? Well, you’re here, of course you want to talk. Follow me.”

There was a feeling like a knife twisting quickly, quietly in his gut as he walked with him. Something was off about Hawkins. He immediately noticed the eyebags, dark circles like he’d been punched in the face. Something about looking like he just lost a fight ; his stomach curled into knots. His skin was sallow and definitely paler than when he saw him on Monday. Had he gone outside at all in that time? His pallor was more like spoiled milk than an actual human complexion, so Ravi guessed not. 

His movements were slightly jittery. The empty coffee cups that sat discarded across the desk in his office covered nearly half the workspace, and the other half was, in turn, completely paved over with documents and paperwork and various empty or exploded pens. Ravi could smell the caffeine on Hawkins breath from the moment the man came within a metre, but in the cramped room it was overwhelming, and he almost struggled to catch his breath. Definitely the same strength coffee as he’d been given after he interview. No wonder the older man didn’t look like he’d slept in days; it would probably be hard to when Death Wish coffee was practically injected into your veins on an hourly basis. 

Almost like an afterthought, Hawkins gestured for him to sit in a chair opposite to his, the desk acting as a barrier beneath the main hanging light. In case he’d forgotten that this was, technically, another statement. While he still struggled to find the holder for the phone, Ravi peered over at the documents. Just a peek. His eyes snagged on one particular sheet, a broken-up circle of dried coffee printed onto it. It was very clearly a printed copy of a text conversation, certain parts of the replies underlined with illegible annotations punched into the margins. All of his internal organs did a somersault though, when after a moment he realised whose messages they were. His. His replies to Pip, frantic spam after she never arrived. It was like something clicked in his brain the moment he knew, and suddenly it was easy to flip the blue-ink title the right way up: Ravi Singh- suspect PFA, evidence 8.5B(ii) 16/9/19

He was a suspect?
Well, he had been. It was right there, in the ink. But that paper was buried, apparently untouched enough for a mug to have rested on it for a long time. Was he still now? Was that what this was about; why Hawkins was about to call him?

“Ravi Singh.”

He flinched, a little, turning his eyes upwards and finding Hawkins’s wide stare pointed at his face. The man said his name slowly, like he was trying to remember it. Even though his eyes were, strangely, partially vacant, the majority of them held a similar blend of feelings to all the other times. There was the obsession, determination, the secret third thing, and… something else. It wasn’t rage, not any more. It was something else entirely. That was the most unsettling part. Ravi would have preferred the rage- at least it would have been simple, easy, honest. Looking too hard or reading too much into the detective’s facial expressions gave him a disconcerting headache, and he felt inclined to stop. 

He seemed like he wanted to say something else, but stopped short, opening and closing his mouth as his eyes darted about the room, searching for the right opener. “Before I start talking,” he cleared his throat, “what is it that you came in here to tell me?”

Ravi felt half his size. The surroundings compressed together, enclosing him on all sides. He shifted in his seat, wincing as his ring of keys pressed uncomfortably against his leg. But he had to do this, for Pip. “Me and… a friend, we’ve received some threats. Online, and in person. The timing, and the content, make us think it was the same person who did this to Pip. I thought, maybe, if you had the records, you might be able to trace them back? Find the IP address or something?”

He hated how stilted he was being, but just being there made him feel dirty. There was an unmistakable grime to the police system and even trying to aid them in this made him feel like it was rubbing off on him. It was the only way, though. They had resources he didn’t; technology too. It was the only way to be kept in the loop.

He was pulling his phone out of his pocket before Hawkins answered. He was stammering a little, gaping again. “Please show me. I will take this seriously, I assure you.”

The man scrolled silently through the screenshots and pictures. Cara would understand him sharing the hate spam (he hoped). His vision sharped, as if switching to a higher resolution, when he saw Hawkins suck in a sharp breath, tilting his head slightly forwards like he was trying to intimidate the phone. 

“It’s not much… it could be a coincidence.” Ravi was about to protest, but suddenly he sat up straighter than looked comfortable, sliding the phone back over crinkled sheets. “But send them to the department regardless. Maybe there really is something, like… maybe there is. We need to look into it. This cannot…” He took a shaking breath in, sipping coffee while the like last time and this cannot happen again hung in the air like open parenthesis. 

Ravi nodded. 

“When Pippa came in here last, to report her own incidents, there wasn’t enough to report. You understand, there is very little to do with anonymous harassment such as this.” Oh. He looked up with a start. Hawkins wasn’t really looking at him now- sure, it was in the direction of his face, but he wasn’t looking at him. He said nothing. Something was about to happen, he could feel it. 

“But… she was clearly right. I tried to remember all I could about her report, but I found it insufficient. And, when researching the stand-out events, the only matches I found in similar cases were, frankly, impossible. Should be impossible.” Holy shit, had Hawkins found the link to DT? It seemed impossible that he could have found something that vital himself. “So, I focused on other areas instead.” and not believed it. Of course. “I began to search through her own notes; it only took about fourteen hours until we had the password to her laptop and found she had her whole case laid out for us. It was a stroke of luck. But most of her notes were useless. We did see she suspected a colleague, Daniel da Silva, but a short investigation into his whereabouts during the window of disappearance cleared him.” It wasn’t Daniel. He didn’t know why, but knowing that was just a little weight off his shoulders. Even if it did mean Pip was wrong about her prime suspect the whole time. “See, Miss Pippa’s jottings down were neat- very structured and orderly, where they existed- but there seemed to be large chunks missing, or gaps in logic referencing theories she had clearly only known in her mind.” Ravi knew this. He knew this, and he wondered why Hawkins wasn’t asking him about it. “I looked into other people. You, primarily.” He looked at him like only just remembering he was still there. “But you had an alibi. I admit I have not been… quite myself, in this time. It is infuriating. Wherever we tread, she seems to have been three steps ahead. I have to rely on her suppositions, even if they directly break many protocols or well-established practices , because she always manages to… outsmart me. Effortlessly!” He slammed a fist on the last, causing several of the mugs to jolt with a rapid clink . “Always… if she made us look foolish in the case of Andrea Bell, well! She made us seem completely incompetent with Jamie Reynolds. On that damn podcast. But I am determined to solve it this time. I didn’t listen to her then, but…” He looked Ravi directly in the eyes, cold meeting warm. “I will find this body, if it’s the very last thing I do. She can’t do this again. I will find her. She will not make a fool out of me one more time.”

It all clicked.

Hawkins, beneath the grandeur of his title as Detective Inspector, was finally boiling over. The little dents and cracks Pip had chipped away at during all her investigations had finally crumbled down and left bitterness. Obsession. That’s what they knew it was, from the start, but he felt he understood it now. He was angry, because, to him, it was her final test, the punishment he didn’t think he deserved but a tiny part of him whispered he did. This whole time… he was trying to prove himself. Hawkins was furious and guilty. He had to know that Pip would have lived if he had taken her concerns seriously, but instead he learned nothing and stuck to the status quo, letting his hatred of her fester deep inside of his skin; and then she was gone and he knew the weight of his actions. That was why he went to the extremes, jumped to conclusions. He was trying to emulate Pip. Maybe it had worked, maybe it hadn’t. His envy of Pip mingled uncomfortably with resentment, all upheld by guilt- it peeled his eyes open for pointless all-nighters and endless research in the wrong things, just trying to solve this case (and she was only a case to him) so that, when she was found, he could feel superiority to her corpse. Feel like he had proved himself to her, even in death. The sheer hatred this man inspired in him nearly spilled out of Ravi’s lips, but he bit his tongue. Hawkins was still talking.

“Mr Epps called, said a young woman had been asking impertinent questions to Max Hastings. I know their animosity, I would be hard-pressed not to, so I turned to him. Oh, did he look promising!” he spat the words, and suddenly Ravi knew what was coming. He tried to shield himself, even as the words sunk in his stomach. “But, after a few days, we proved nothing! Mr Hastings’s alibi was confirmed, completely, and I was out of options.” Max was innocent. Max was innocent. Max fucking Hastings was innocent. 

It was Jason.

He felt his breaths gutter even as Hawkins looked to him. 

“That’s where you come in. The body you identified today was found on the road leading towards Kilton, in a ditch near that warehouse. Forensics said it was likely a hit and run, given the body trauma. But if it weren’t for your little… impromptu investigations, I would never have looked in that area. It could have been her. Do you see my roadblock. Ravi? All the progress I make had been futile, whereas you: you were closest to Pippa, no? You went to the warehouse. I need to know everything, Ravi. Tell me everything you know. I need it. I need to find her body, Ravi. ” 

There was so much he could tell him. So much. He could tell him about the drugs, the DT Killer, the theories into Jason, Andie’s secret email address, all their interviews and word documents and sleepless nights, the car that followed them. Maybe Hawkins would believe him, this time.
But then he looked at him again. The eagerness he had to solve Pip, like she was some kind of puzzle or exam, had him want to break things. He didn’t care that he might just want to help, because knowing who this man was only made anger twist deeply inside his stomach, curling up until he was resisting the urge to retch at the sight of his wide, turbulent eyes. 

He took a breath in. “Detective. Whatever you think you have done, it hasn’t been enough. You think you can solve this, but you’ve proven time and time and time again that, not only can you not , but you’re probably going to make an even bigger mess of it! What if Pip was alive at first and in the days it took you to actually take action, he killed her? What if it was by your negligence and- and assumption, that she’s probably buried somewhere you’ll never be able to find now? You say you were made a fool of before, but that’s what you have always been. You are incompetent, Hawkins, and I am past caring how much trouble this puts me in! You don’t learn! If you had listened to her when she told you she was in danger, maybe this would never have happened! This is your fault! I don’t trust you anymore, Detective Hawkins, and neither does anyone else who matters in this town; Pip’s blood, and Andie and Sal’s, is on your hands. I’m not helping a spineless weasel like you to arrest the wrong person. I hope you’re happy.”

Leaving Hawkins with his head in his hands, Ravi let himself out. He was well into the lobby by the time he heard the ceramic shattering of coffee cups hitting the wall, and an unmistakable, wretched yell. 

Ravi needed air, now . 

—————————

He seethed. The reality of what he had said, the consequences of what he’d done, paled in comparison to the fury inside of him. How dare Hawkins try to use Pip as his redemption? How dare he? He only saw Pip as a way out- some kind of ticket to prove how good of an officer he was, actually, and the idea was almost paralysing. Still, guilt trickled and curled up his spine. What if Hawkins was right? It hurt like a slash wound to the face to think that he could be hindering the discovery. But he had all he needed. The detective had clearly shown he wasn’t open to the idea of the DT Killer, so what was the point? None. He wouldn’t believe it was Jason; they were too close friends. As much as he made a point to say he’d changed, Ravi couldn’t accept that from the man who accused his innocent, dead brother of murder as a simple out. Andie and Pip, Sal and Ravi. All fitting nicely together in tragedy. He wouldn’t be surprised if something happened to him now, whether it was death or being accused of the murder. He would fight it to the bitter end, of course, but what use was that in the face of DI Hawkins’s blind rage? His shout, even the thought of it, sent shivers down his back.

He kicked a rock. The pavement he was walking down was empty, save a few bins set out for collection. The refuse collectors were a few streets back, he’d passed them on the way out of the station. The rock shot forwards a bit in front of him, not so much that he couldn’t quickly catch up and boot it again. This time it swerved off into the road. His rage was building up again; he could feel it churning behind his eyes. His shoulders raised and tensed, not releasing when he kicked another stick with a little grunt of annoyance, or when he missed it the second time and had to double back to try again. He missed again.

Ravi punched the heels of his palms into his eyes, immediately sensing heat and the sharp sting of tears but pressing harder until all he could see was the red of his eyelids pushing harshly downwards; clenching and flexing his fingers like there was something invisible he was trying to restrain himself from grabbing and tearing apart; gritting his teeth hard until he swore he heard a tiny crack. 

Ravi yelled. He’d never really done that before.

It came out more as a wail, but he didn’t matter, all it was was a screech at nobody and everybody that probably disturbed the surrounding houses but he didn’t care, all he knew was he was so full of anger, so full that it was spilling out and over him and it burned, his rage burned, he burned. Without thinking he lashed out, pummeling the wheelie bin next to him with the toe of his boot. It was too much. It was all too much. The crash it made as it toppled over, lid flying open and contents flying about was the last thing he needed. Ravi startled, turning and looking down at it. He felt the knot of guilt again. He wasn’t even sure what street he was on, and here he was, chucking over people’s property. The anger subsided, a miniscule amount. It was enough for him to look down, then kneel, and begin throwing item after item back in, cringing each time a thud echoed from hitting the back of the bin. 

He was almost done, just a few more things to throw in and he could go back to screaming at God. Just a few more…

He recognised it before he did. It was an odd thing to do, to wrap something you’re throwing away in duct tape. But the weight of it felt familiar. It sent his stomach plunging down, right to the ends of his feet, waiting there as he shakily undid all the layers and layers and layers and layers of grey duct tape; the Green Scene company issued duct tape- of course. He knew what it was. He had held them when Pip was done and her hands were full of stuff, and taken them off her head when she’d fallen asleep still listening to a podcast through them. He would recognise the A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder sticker crusted to the side anywhere, even though it was scraped up like someone was trying to take it off.
Pip’s headphones. 

The ones she’d had on her when she disappeared.

Ravi’s head shot up, and he realised whose house he was in front of at the same moment he made eye contact with the resident.

Had his feet taken him down to the Bell home on purpose, or was it force of habit? 

He leapt to his feet, dropping the headphones, barely starting as they cracked on the pavement. Jason was seated by the window, in the same sitting room as they had interviewed him in a day ago. No, he wasn’t seated, he was standing now. And even from down the driveway, Ravi felt his heart sink past his stomach, because there was no mistaking that expression on his face, or the rapid purposefulness with which he was stalking forwards, nearly at the door already. No. He knew what was going to happen if he came out. Jason saw him with the headphones. Jason knew what he knew. 

It being broad daylight wasn’t going to mean jack shit.

Ravi sprung forwards, racing up the driveway. It really was a race, him against the clock, the grim reaper, Pip’s murderer: Jason Bell versus Ravi Singh.

The automatic porch light served as warning for the murderer, but the sound of his approaching heavy footfalls were the same for Ravi- he had seconds, ten if he was lucky, to figure something out, he couldn’t let Jason unlock the door.

He grabbed his own keys in a flash, hearing his heartbeat like drums pounding throughout him, in his chest, and head, and hands: where he clutched his house key and thrust it harshly inside the lock. It crunched, not fitting but meeting another key halfway. Jason was pushing back, fighting to turn his own key but failing where his own blocked the way. The older man was also stronger, and every second he didn’t gain space he was losing it, fast. There was a sharp thud as Jason slammed himself up against the inside, again, he felt the frame shake, again,  all the while maintaining his position, again. He couldn’t hold out for long. Ravi pressed his full weight up against the door, not even noticing how the thin edges of his key pressed so hard into his side that they dug deeply inwards, no, he was pulling out his phone with his free hand. 

Jason’s roar from inside masked the sound of the ringtone.

“999, Amersham Police Station, what is your emergency?”

The lock rattled, but didn’t quite budge. Ravi inhaled. He was going to be strong. He had to.

“I know who killed Pippa Fitz-Amobi. And he’s about to kill me, too.”

Chapter Text

Jason Bell’s failures were not things he looked back on with any measure of fondness. No, far from it: he was more likely to glance back at them- few and far between as they were- with narrowed eyes, a glare and perhaps a tight lipped frown. He was very well aware that the majority of ‘his’ errors were not down to him at all. That both comforted and irked him.
The near miss with Tara Yates was one of those that had, at first, conflicted him on who to blame. Though it was, of course, logical to attribute the failure to the girl, there could not help but be a sneering part of him that found a reason to place it on himself. It had been her own fault. She was too loud, too pushy and bossy, and someone was going to have to remind her of her place. It was a shame, really though- if she had just stayed put like he ordered her to, she might have had a few extra hours. Might not have triggered his alarm system. His daughter had gone and got herself murdered that night, too, but he found no blood on his hands for that one. It was a shame, Jason supposed, but only what she should have expected; she had to learn the consequences of acting… like she did. The only regret there was that he had not been the one to teach her that lesson.
He had that luxury with Tara Yates. He allowed himself to feel, with his hands and soul, the life flowing from her into him like it stemmed from her directly; he allowed himself to smile as the rope tightened enough around her neck that her winy screams reduced to wispy gasps; he allowed himself to relax- after such a stressful evening with those tedious couples- by counting the seconds between each rise and fall of her chest. 2. 2. 1. 1. 1. 1. 3. 6. 8. 14. 17. 45.  None. He allowed himself to bathe in the stale air around her mouth and nose. Such a close call. The closest he’d ever had. 

Until now. 

The triumphant sensation, driving leisurely through the disused backroads, knowing his biggest pain was safely tied up and disarmed in his warehouse, was beyond any of the other times. His head was reeling, spinning around in loopy circles. He felt half-alive for the first time since disposing of the little brat’s dog, and before then of Tara Yates. He reminisced on the other five with a smile, but this time- oh, this time, he would be beaming at the news as it broke. It might take a few days, but he would be eagerly waiting for the announcement: Pippa Fitz-Amobi found brutally murdered just outside Little Kilton. ‘Brutally’ had always been one of the good ones. It appeared in the report for Phillipa Brockfield, his very first murder and still one of his personal favourites. The thrill he felt remembering how carefully he unfastened her silly little necklace was insurmountable by any- except, perhaps, Pippa Fitz-Amobi’s headphones, fetching them from out her ridiculous rucksack after shoving her limp body into the car boot in plain daylight. They were good as well. But ‘brutal’- well, that really summed it up. Had Jason Bell been stupid, he might have cut it out, framed it or kept it safe in the bottom of a drawer. Luckily for him, he wasn’t stupid. Not like some of those other serial killers. He had no idea how they gained such notoriety, not when they so blatantly linked themself or their personal agenda to the scene of the crime. Sure, he had left a calling card. But that was more for him. It made the whole experience even more enjoyable than it might’ve been, hearing them plead, or cry, or scream, all the while knowing that nothing they would say could ever sway him. They were dead from the moment he decided it was their time, and it was a very fun power to have. Exhilarating. Exhilarating and brutal. But the brutality fed the excitement, like oxygen to a flame, and he yearned for it as if the fire lived inside of him- seeing that one word only went and reignited it. Then, he had seen nothing, no breaking news of any missing girls or murders in the area- more than a week since he finished the job, and nothing. Jason’s hands were itching for the fine, coarse hairs of rope, and the smooth, tough hide of tape when the announcement finally hit newsstands. If he were stupid he might have jumped for joy. He did allow himself a chuckle, late at night, long after his wife had fallen asleep, at the strapping description. Mysterious. At large. Brutal. Murderer. He wore them like a crown. After the next one they had a name: The DT Killer. He preferred that one to Slough Strangler ; it had more presence. A strangler? That’s a lowly murderer, someone who lurks in alleys or hides behind bushes to pathetically ambush his victims. 

No: all the fools always came to him.

But, if the high from capturing Pippa Fitz-Amobi was greater than any drug, the crash from finding the room empty was harsher too. The few shelves and containers not already smashed soon were, once Jason Bell returned from the fringe of the woods, sweaty, furious and empty-handed. She was gone.

For the first time in some years, he felt the unfamiliar stab of fear shoot through him. It pierced the very back pit of his skull, striking through the crevices and wrinkles of his brain so all he could feel was overwhelming fear. Fear was so alien. He prided himself on fast reaction times, smooth silver tongue, his control. He’d worked on it tirelessly for years, and this was the reward he got? From an ungrateful, outspoken bitch who wouldn’t just sit quietly and do as her betters instructed her, and instead indulged that fantasy that said she could chose exactly what she wanted and do as she pleased without consequences; here she was, threatening to upset the perfect balance he had worked to hard to provide himself. It was selfish. How dare she?

If he had been in her position, he might have thought to slash the tyres on his car before cornering himself by a road. Naturally he never would be an idiot enough to get himself into that kind of situation, but even a complete fool could see that stranding himself on an island sitting in shark infested waters was not the brightest move- though, perhaps that was giving her too much credit. If she had been smarter, she would have shut up. 

It was getting late. 

The clock had passed seven PM, and still there was no sight of her. It made the hairs on his arms stick up in the most infuriating way imaginable. Jason gritted his teeth, jerking the steering wheel around in one of his less fluid feats of driving, pulling a U-turn in the centre of the road and immediately speeding off home. She might have found an exit, some kind of escape he hadn’t accounted for, and taken his negligence as an out to run back and call the cops.

Not that they would believe her.

But still… he wondered. Jason weighed up the odds of Hawkins or Daniel rationally believing a word out of her mouth, but even the best case scenario left a lot to be desired. Rumours would spread. If a single one of those brainless officers decided to check whatever fingerprint sample she could provide them against their system, it was life in prison to rot. There would be no talking himself out of it, not this time.
By the time he was speeding past the girl’s house, he was certain she must nearly be at the station. All he had to do was catch her beforehand. Grab her. Probably throttle her where she stood, a few slams of her head into the dark concrete to knock the screams out of her first and make it quick. Quicker than she deserved, unfortunately. But maybe the change of scenery and the chase would add extra intrigue; leaving her there would certainly send a message, and without his obvious calling card too; this could work even better than expected, actually, all he had to do was stop her-

She wasn’t there. Not for all three hours that he sat, parked, fingers drumming on the bumpy ridges of the wheel, outside of the Amersham Police Station.

It was just a little past midnight when he lit the match and tossed it before him, a little grimace. Such a pity; that would knock the company down a good few pennies. But everything had to go. Jason sat in his car as, in the black of night, a warehouse burned .

He let himself hope Pippa had returned to it- but, no, Jason heard nothing for long hours, except the crackling of flames and the soft, animalistic purr of the engine. 

WIREDRIP – TRUE CRIME PODCAST STAR MISSING

The ‘true crime’ podcast genre has exploded in recent years, and anyone who is anyone knows the queen of it is Pippa Fitz-Amobi… [read more]

Dammit. He had forgotten the phone, kicked quickly under a pile of leaves . He had been meaning to go back for it, of course, but it must have slipped his mind for just long enough for somebody to find it and report her missing. He couldn’t think of any other reason an investigation had to be opened so instantaneously. Knowing Hawkins, he would have dragged his heels until the last possible moment to officially file a case for Pippa Fitz-Amobi; God, had he complained about her at their tennis matches, droning on and on and on. It would drag the mood down considerably if it all wasn’t so damn amusing. He lamented her chattering about some strange pictures and birds- called it nonsense- and all Jason had to do was nod sympathetically, hoping he’d washed the chalk off his fingers thoroughly enough before they shook hands. 

But she hadn’t returned home, though. That was interesting. What could she possibly be doing, wandering around the forest for so long, without being spotted? He grit his teeth back and forth. Was she trying to play up the situation, get him a higher sentence even if they didn’t find the match from the other five? Or was she bleeding to death somewhere in the brush? He had no idea why she’d been bleeding so profusely he’d had a damn trail to follow for a good while, he hadn’t seen any in the room of the warehouse and it wasn’t exactly like a well-groomed wood in Little Kilton of all places had particularly dangerous terrain. Jason Bell did not like not knowing. 

He pressed the send button on his work email, something about my apologies, head injury, time off work, and he was free. He slammed the lid of his laptop with a definite thud and chucked it onto the sofa. Standing, he cracked his knuckles, then grabbed the car keys from off the cabinet, then unlocked the door and stepped quickly- but not too quickly- into the car. Jason waited until he could see nobody on either side of the street, and slammed the pedal down. 

He didn’t care about the sound he made, racing down the street at nine AM on a Monday, but he did curse when he missed the speed camera. It flashed down disapprovingly at him, practically taunting that his whereabouts for that particular time were now on record. It just had to happen, of course .

He thought the same thing when he hit that girl.

Why anybody in their right mind would be walking alone down a back road at nine-thirty AM he didn’t know; it seemed a foolish thing to do. She was practically begging to get abducted. Or, more accurately, hit. His lips curled upwards into a snarl as he hopped out of the door, leaving it open just in case he had to make a break for it. He had passed nobody so far, but it was better to be smart than sorry. She was a young, average-looking thing. Perhaps she wouldn’t look so strange if her legs weren’t contorted like that under the front left wheel, all backwards and wrong. He hadn’t caught a look at her face before, but it struck him now: eyes half shut, mouth ajar like the scream that never came was building up back there; no movement at all. She was dead.

Jason let out a strained exhale, and let his face fall back to neutral. It was an inconvenience, but not the worst that could have happened. He kneeled next to her, placing an ear just above her mouth. He heard and felt no breath, no matter how shallow. So, she was certainly dead. 

There was a ditch beside him, half-full of the reddish leaves already starting to fall. It wouldn’t be hard at all to shove her in there. Not ideal, still manageable. With the tip of his boot he began to roll her, at a leisurely kind of pace, towards it, making sure to push her by the middle where she took the brunt of the initial force. No fingerprints- not that he had any on record, he preened. But if they noticed the abnormal bruising, the blemishing just below her left ribs, they would chock it up to the peak of impact from the car. He knew Hawkins. He would take the easiest exit, like he always had. 

Jason felt a smile creep across his face as he toed the woman’s side, looking into her eyes for a moment before she finally rolled into the ditch. He was proud of the nothingness they evoked in him. This was the kind of thing he could take pride in. He was smart. Whereas other people might crack, or crumble under pressure, or flinch to see their corpse’s eyes, he felt nothing stir within him. He didn't take chances. The only reason anything had gone wrong was because of that bitch, and how she dared to wrest control over her death; the death he had specifically picked out for her. She dared to try and ruin him. She did.

The girl tumbled in, he tutted, he calmly sat back into the drivers side and kept circling around, and around, and around, and around.

He didn’t find Pippa Fitz-Amobi the next day, either, but he did see her little band of friends; that must be who reported her. Of course.

Returning at around five PM, Jason sighed. Tuesday already, and no sighting of that bitch. He’d checked the news, too, and found several new articles- focusing on evidence found at the warehouse. Clearly it hadn’t all been burned. The thought of being so sloppy with his attempt at covering the area up turned his stomach, just a little. They weren’t announcing what had been found just yet. He didn’t like to think about what that might mean, if anything at all- they hadn’t announced all that much about Phillipa, either; not until she was nearly a month dead, two weeks after the news broke of her murder. It could mean nothing. Or, it could mean everything. 

A message, from one Daniel da Silva: Hey Jason, feel like catching up over a few beers tonight? Had a rough day at work

Interesting. He shot back a single, calculated reply. Of course, Dan, my place as usual. I won’t be drinking, though- nasty headache leftover from sunday 

He ignored the rest of Daniel’s concerned messages. They weren’t worth reading, he knew he’d agreed. Daniel da Silva; his in to the police for years and years. That wasn’t likely to change any time soon. In fact, it might be that the boy was Jason’s main barrier of protection against further scrutiny. It would certainly be useful to have his alibi confirmed by a member of the very force that would be investigating him, had he not been smart enough to distance himself. 

He heard his car pull up outside, and, shoving the black headphones into the drawer of a side table beside one of the sofas, took a breath. He chose his mask carefully: a caring, injured man. He was good at playing this one. It was so easy to pretend to feel sorry for other people, much easier than forcing it to be real. And Daniel, at least, hadn’t noticed once.

Although maybe he was just stupid.

Lying to Daniel was like riding a bicycle. No matter how long it had been since he had really had to do it, it was fluid and natural and easy; he could weave in and out of truths like traffic, swerving to a stop whenever he felt the wrong words close to slipping out of him. Not that that happened often, of course. Regardless, he doubted he would remember much in the morning: despite Jason’s refusal to lose control like that in such a crucial moment, Daniel had brought a whole box of beer, and was downing them with the same proficiency he had taught him at sixteen in this very house. He hadn’t even considered it would come in handy like this at the time, but Jason seemed to be very good at planning ahead. Six cans down, with general chat dropping into a lull, Daniel spoke the magic words.

“ And the detective is forcing me to investigate the Green Scene part of shit in the Amobi case.”

He felt his heart leap, but made no visible change to his demeanour. If his facial expressions looked more scripted than before, who could spot them? “Oh?”

Daniel hiccoughed. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but-” he swallowed, “-I know you wouldn’t tell a soul, Jason. You didn’t hear this from me, right?”

“I know nothing, Daniel.” He grinned.

“Yeah, course. I trust you. The thing is,” he sat up as straight as he could, a little lopsided, both elbows resting on the arms of the chair which rocked a bit with his wide gestures. “the detective knows I used to work for Green Scene, right? So, he forces me to lead the team searching all of the warehouse and its grounds, the one that burned down. There was some pretty conclusive evidence there, sure, but now he’s convinced there’ll be a body somewhere out there- up a tree or some shit-”

Oh, that was new. “A body? The Amobi girl was just missing, I thought. Unless there’s been… a new development?”

He scoffed. “Well, the DNA there proves some sort of violence, right? I forget what’s publicly available but, I mean, a hammer coated in blood? That’s some disturbing shit. I saw as forensics took it in, you could barely tell metal from wood.” He chuckled darkly. “Aren’t you envious, stuck in an office job when you could be analysing a missing girl’s blood?”

Daniel joked when he was nervous. He laughed, and that was Jason’s perfect moment to stop circling and sweep in for the kill. “Can’t say I am. What else was there, at the warehouse? Surely a hammer could be a work accident, no? Why did Hawkins jump straight to murder?”

“Well,” he took another sip, “that’s the thing. There were some hairs too, stuck in duct tape and lying about. Matched hers pretty well from the looks of it. Why ‘murder’? I honestly don’t know. Apparently the Singh boy mentioned some stalking incidents with a lot of references to decapitation, so he’s fixated on that.”

That certainly changed things. They weren’t even looking for a living Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Hawkins, the fool, had let his wish fulfilment get the better of him and preemptively decided she was a lost cause- not that he was complaining. All she had to do was trip and die in a ditch, and they would have their answer. And all he had to do was make sure that was exactly what they found. Jason let his gaze drift, a miniscule amount, to the cabinet on Daniel’s right. It sent shivers curling down his spine, knowing that, in the drawer just inches away from his hand, a pair of black headphones with a bright logo sticker sat discarded. The thought calmed him. It was proof that everything was under his control, after all. A major piece of evidence, left so close to one of the leading officers on the case, out of his reach  because of how Jason had decided the situation. A thrill, no; catharsis.

“Well, now I feel justified in choosing an office job instead.”

They laughed a while longer, and he felt more in control again. It had been slipping for a moment there, he had to admit. He had gotten too direct; that couldn’t happen again. 

“Jason, you want to know the most annoying part?”

“Do tell.”

“The moment I get back home, there’s a knock on the door and who’s there? Just has to be the Singh kid- Ravi, I think?- and one of those Ward girls, shoving a camera in my face and fuckin- making me answer questions about where I was on Sunday!” He made sweeping hand gestures, to emphasise his point, but all he could hear was a dull rush of blood in his ears. They wouldn’t get close, of course. But… the girl had known of the DT Killer. Why wouldn’t they ? “I mean, who did they think was the police officer?”

Jason scoffed, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was lost in thought. 

Grabbing his keys, Jason stepped towards the door, jingling them absent-mindedly as he reached for his coat. But no sooner had his fingers brushed against the fabric of it, a single knock rang through the door. He stuffed the keys to the deepest crevice of his pocket and flung it open.

He let himself wonder why he had considered the possibility of police as he let in the two young people. Ravi Singh and the younger Ward girl, just like Daniel had said. His turn, he supposed.

Luckily for him, he had spent the rest of the hours once Daniel had left planning for this moment. Each excuse was scripted, his timeline perfectly plotted out, alibi ironclad and airtight. Perfect.
The girl whined on for far too long, using a very annoying ability to ask different questions that meant the same thing and only existed to trip him up, force him to contradict himself. She would pay for this, when Pippa Fitz-Amobi was safely tucked into a blanket of dirt. She would regret having the audacity to try and order things from him. And how close they got to working was what really irked him. Those questions really did keep him on his toes, and he found himself infuriated by the effort of keeping his story straight; so that when she prompted Ravi Singh to speak it was a breath of fresh air in his lungs. 

“So, Jason- how exactly did you injure your head so badly on Sunday?”

Except, of course, in all his labour fending off the girl he’d forgotten to act injured. Another thing he’d get her for, when the right time came. He twitched, a little. They didn’t notice, he was sure. This at least was planned, and so was his other answer to the car questions. He chuckled when he threw the ring of keys onto the table, staring at Ravi Singh gazing dumbfounded at it for far longer than was necessary, clearly trying to connect the dots in his mind. Or he wasn’t very bright- a trait he shared with the girl. He gave them a friendly warning on the way out, nothing short of neighbourly frankly, with a short glance at the boy and a glare for the girl. What was it with Kilton and stubborn, outspoken bitches ? They asked too many questions; they made him almost regret parts of his cover story with how they picked it apart; they didn’t act normal. There were far too many in the population to be a coincidence. But, at least they were getting picked off one by one. 

Still, the thought of so many so close set him on edge more than was good for him, and he stared at the headphones in his hands for many hours, just contemplating. So many options. So little available. 

There was something wrong with Hawkins. This was very, very evident. This was not the man he had played tennis with just half a week before, no; he had changed an unhealthy amount. The dark circles under his eyes looked heavy, and the pupils behind them held that same locked-out expression as the corpse’s. Why couldn’t he read them? Hawkins was an open book, for the most part, and, sure, he could smell the rage in him from a mile off, but where was everything else? Why couldn’t he grasp his thoughts and motivations easily in his fist? 

“Detective Hawkins,” he said, lending him that little bit of respect he insisted he earned from that badge, “are you alright?”

Hawkins looked up again from his chair, where his eyes had been drawn to the table. It was covered in papers and coffee mugs; Jason made sure to keep his eyes off of it. The less interested he looked in the case, the better. 

“Well, to be frank, I’ve been better. As you can probably tell,” he chuckled and Jason allowed him one back, “this case has been getting the better of me. The Amobi one, of course.”

Well, straight in there. This was very helpful, very useful; a little unexpected but Jason was glad to ditch the smalltalk and get right to the point (not that Hawkins knew that was the point). Clearly the man didn’t have anything else on his mind. Who could? A little brat goes missing, and it’s your responsibility to find her and return her to a snivelling family in a timely manner. Well, it was Jason’s responsibility to ensure that remained a fantasy. 

He smirked, raising an eyebrow. “I can imagine. Not an easy thing to solve, from what I’ve heard.”

“What have you heard?”

Not quite what he wanted, but he could work with it. “Oh, nothing much. There hasn’t been anything released publicly, in what- three days? Normally some kind of statement is out by this point. That’s how it went with Andie, at the very least.” Deflect. Remind him what a great loss he’d supposedly had. Andie was more useful in death than she’d ever been alive. 

“Hm. Four days, by the way. And, well, I would say it’s difficult…” Jason gazed into Hawkins eyes, and realised they didn’t look back. “... but I have it perfectly under control. There is more that is not authorised for release. I assure you of that.” They looked back now, and he hated how that shiver felt running through him; how powerless he was to suppress it. This wasn’t going as planned. 

Jason hummed. “Such as?”

“Are you just here to question me about the Amobi case?”

He laughed heartily. “Of course not! I’m checking in on you, Detective, given I haven’t heard from you in days.”

For the first time ever, despite Hawkins’s nod, he knew he didn’t believe him. 

That was where he should have aborted, left with a friendly goodbye and let the other man’s imagination fill in the reasonable context. But he was jittery for news of the girl’s whereabouts. So he pushed his luck a little further. 

Hawkins coughed and gave a half-hearted reply. “As I said- I’ve had better days. I’m doing everything I can on this case.”

Before Jason could squeeze out another question, the phone rang. Hawkins excused himself, stepping into the little soundproof cupboard in the corner of the room. He frowned to himself as soon as he was out of sight. What was wrong with him? The detective was acting abnormally, and that was where the majority of the trouble was coming from. But the minority of it seemed to be his fault, and he wasn’t sure what to do with that. Sure, it was a very small minority, but had he pushed a little too far with those questions? Had Hawkins looked into his and Pippa Fitz-Amobi’s past disagreements; if they seized her computer (which they must have) then was he there, on a list of suspects? Was that why the man was questioning his presence so much? Hawkins had never doubted him before, like the fool he was. So why was he now? The questions whirled around his head, making him thoroughly dizzy and enraged each time he reached to answer one and just barely missed. This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of it. People should be listening to him, people should be trusting him- what was going wrong?

There was too much glee in the detective’s face for a man that had just been told there was a dead body matching Pippa Fitz-Amobi’s appearance. Despite his own outward mask of indifference, there was a tentative exhilaration in his throat too. Hawkins was back out, beaming and rambling in a completely flipped tone from before, actually telling Jason what a great development this was.

He stalled him with a little chat just for fun, before the detective called the parents. He needed to delay that call; he had another email to send before that. He was hoping he might find out something like this from the moment he sent that first email, and luckily he was fate’s favourite . 

That’s all he thought it was: chat. So, when he asked where the body was found, he kept a smile on his face.

Hawkins's smile fixed perfectly still for a moment, and then dropped slowly, barely visibly, no longer reaching his eyes. “Why do you ask, Jason?”

Shit. Surely there was no way he had misread the tone. He didn’t think that was possible, he didn’t make mistakes like that, he never had. He was the people person. Jason Bell got subtext and hints and subtle cues and body language. 

But he hadn’t this time. The ice in Hawkins’s face told him that, clear as day. That simple question was a misstep.

He could salvage this, surely. Surely. But for the first time in as long as he could remember, Jason stumbled over his words, he let them fall too quickly and not fully formed. And this, of course, only made Hawkins’s right eyebrow raise by a fraction of an inch. Which was worse. He didn’t know if what he said made sense, all he could feel was the cold dread spreading paralysingly through his blood, and he needed to leave the room before he broke something. He loathed the uncontrollable tunnel vision, he wanted it gone; he was vaguely aware of his need for subtlety but his body seemed to be rejecting it. Something had gone wrong that night with Pippa Fitz-Amobi, and now he was a train, slowly derailing with each interaction. Steady with Daniel; shaky with Ravi Singh and the girl; breaking with Hawkins. She had made a dent in his perfectly fine pillar of influence, and it was starting to sway. If it fell, she would pay- if it was the last thing he ever did.

When he stared down a dejected looking Ravi Singh through his sitting room window, it was out of partial curiosity. About what kind of man could ever put up with a girl like the missing one- yet, then again, his older brother had fallen head over heels for Andie, so questionable taste definitely ran in the family. 

At first, he didn’t realise what he had in his hands or why he was kneeling over the bin like that. When he looked up, when they made eye contact, he knew .

They were thrown out in a frenzy the moment he returned home, sticker scratched up until almost unrecognisable, wrapped in the only tape he had to mask the weight, the shape; only waiting a few hours until the bin lorry made its sorry way down his street and took it for good: the headphones. Unfortunately, it looked like one ridiculous young man, barely more than a teen, had made his way there first.

And he knew.

Oh, Jason was sure he knew. He knew all of it. He knew what he had done on Sunday and he knew what he had done all the other times, and now he had physical proof against him. After what had just happened with DI Hawkins? Not ridding himself of this problem would be a life sentence, etched right in stone. 

He grabbed his keys, prowling towards the exit. The door didn’t open, the boy was pushing up against it, trying to force his key out. 

He slammed against the door, blocking the sound of whatever friend he was calling for backup; probably the Ward bitch. 

He finally pushed his key all the way in, not noticing the sudden lack of resistance or the blaring noise steadily growing outside through the adrenaline in his veins.

Like he was stupid.

Jason Bell pushed open the door, and he saw five separate police cars blocking every possible exit. 

—————————

Ravi had stepped back when he saw the first car pull up and screech to a halt, sprinting behind the first officer who emerged, like the bomb he had been diffusing was going to explode any minute. The noise from sirens was soon deafening, loud enough to probably be audible from the next street over, in a separate town. He had been so sure there would be a hand around his throat by the time he reached the end of the driveway, but every fresh breath in his lungs reminded him of the victory he had just won. He did it. He beat the DT Killer, he unmasked him! Ravi had evidence of Jason trying to dispose of Pip’s things, that was a win!

Except it wasn’t. 

He wanted to find out who did this to his Sarge, obviously, but that hadn’t been the point. Not to start with, anyway. He wanted to find out where she was, find evidence of her survival, her current location, and bring her home, where, if nothing else, he could look at her and tell her how much he adored her. He wanted to see her struggle to take the compliment, the ruby flush to her cheeks warming his soul. He wanted to feel their hands wrapped around each other’s like a puzzle neither of them knew needed solving until it happened. Him and Pip together wasn’t an extra, it was the whole. 

But he would never have any of these things again, because Pip was dead. Pippa Fitz-Amobi was hidden somewhere, her body tense and frozen like the Jane Doe’s, eyes haunted and full and flat like hers too. Because she was murdered by Jason Bell.

No, finding conformation wasn’t a victory. It was a curse.

Now he knew who did it, he’d have to live the rest of his life knowing. He’d have to spend all of eternity remembering the time the DT Killer had looked into his eyes and told him not to antagonise dangerous men , and wonder if he was telling him, then, exactly what Pip had done. Was that really all the crime she had committed?
Ravi swallowed. It was taking everything in him not to beat the man to death where he stood, open-mouthed in his doorframe; and only then for the sake of his own criminal record. Nothing the man had done to deserve a single breath more of life. He deserved to drown like Ravi was. 

When Hawkins arrived- in the second police car, not the first- he knew something massive was about to go down. There was a look like a storm behind his eyes, and it eclipsed all the other emotions. They were swept up in the hurricane. All that was left now was rage. Despite their earlier conversation, there was no lingering malice in his eyes when he asked Ravi to show him the proof. Hawkins was silent when Ravi handed him the slightly cracked headphones, just nodding when he pointed at the AGGGTM sticker, only barely hitching his breath when he picked up a piece of the tape that had been cocooning it and reminding him of how the same tape held strands of Pip’s hair at the warehouse. 

Had she been murdered there, or not yet?

All the while Jason Bell shouted. He yelled like his lungs would never run out of air, protesting his innocence and how dare they treat him like this and all the signs of a very clearly guilty man. Still, he allowed an officer to take an arm each, not quite in handcuffs yet. Even if it was at taser-point. That counted.
Ravi couldn’t quite get over the cinema of it. Maybe it was because of how out-of-body everything felt, but everything had this tint to it, like it was colour-graded and edited nicely for a film audience. If he viewed it that way, it didn’t feel so terrifying. Jason was marched forwards, until he was in line with the start of the pavement. Hawkins and Ravi stood with the headphones in hand- only for a moment, before it was grabbed effortlessly and placed inside a clear plastic evidence bag- with their backs to the blockade of cars. All they could see was him, and the officers gripping him with all their might despite his lack of struggle. 

He felt another figure take a place beside him. He glanced sideways and immediately recognised Daniel da Silva. He was shaking; whether with anger or fear he couldn’t tell. What he could tell was that he wasn’t supposed to be here: all the other officers were setting up police tape and communicating with the people in neighbouring houses not to leave, not just standing and staring. But nobody said a word. They all knew what it meant to him. 

Jason flashed an expression at Ravi that looked rabid and animalistic. Like he was seconds away from ripping him to shreds. And then he switched, breathing heavily with deep emotion, as if he were about to cry, as if he felt anything but fury towards the lot of them. He wanted to laugh in his face. 

“What’s the meaning of all this, Detective Hawkins?” Trying to butter him up after he caught him with evidence of Pip’s death? Really?

Hawkins coughed, but it sounded forced. “I believe the officers should have informed you of your charges. You are under arrest for suspicion of kidnapping and murdering Pippa Fitz-Amobi.”

“Come now,” he laughed, he laughed- “why would I do that? There’s no reason to ruin my perfectly good life here, is there?”

For the heartbeat that passed empty, Ravi knew what would happen. Hawkins would pick the easy option, let Jason go, and that night nobody would respond when he turned up dead. 

“I don’t know, but whatever the reason, we have sufficient evidence for your arrest. You have the right to remain silent, but…” Ravi tuned out the rest of it, because he was processing what the actual fuck just happened. Hawkins just stood up against Jason Bell, the man who must have been walking all over him since he first moved in, and put him in his place. There was no mistaking the grimace on the murderer’s face: he had been caught in a shitty manipulation tactic, and it was all crumbling down. 

Daniel was talking now too, so quietly none of them could properly make out what he was saying. That was more unnerving, almost, than if he had been yelling. They all stopped for a second and looked at him, whispering things under his breath that seemed to sap all the life from him. The look in Daniel da Silva’s eyes was broken. Everyone in Little Kilton knew the bond between them; this must be shattering to him. 

There was silence, and then: “I should have known, I always should have known that you were...”

“That I’m what, Detective?”

Hawkins shook his head. “You know, I might never be able to say it, Jason.”

The longer they stared each other down, the more raw, unfiltered rage grew beneath Ravi’s skin. “ I’m able to. You are a murderer, Jason Bell, and Pip’s not the only one that you’ve stolen.”

Why did he look vaguely amused? 

“Well, I’m not so sure-”

And that was precisely when time stopped.

Not for most of them, it flowed for them for a good few seconds more; but for Jason Bell he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. He turned to face it, still halfway through a sentence. Recognised it. And he then kicked the legs right out from one of the officers holding him, using the momentum to wrench his arm out of both her and the other officer’s grasp, and took off at lightning speed to the left where a little gap in the police cars left a face visible behind it, just peeking out. It was familiar as it rose, the body joining it as it- no, she- stood, ready to bolt.

She turned on her heel and started to sprint, but Jason was faster, now. 

So, before any of them even had time to think , Jason Bell had grabbed Pip by the neck and slammed her into the concrete. 

Ravi was aware he was yelling but he didn’t care, he was running now too, he had to, he had to-

She was yelling too, but the man was twice her size and his hands wrapped around her throat before she even had time to form a single word, tight and choking before her head even hit the pavement with that sickening   crack. It rang out like a gunshot. 

Jason didn’t react when Pip started  gasping  instead of trying to shout, not even as Ravi tried to yank his arms off of her. This was a nightmare incarnate; this was the last possible moment. He didn’t even know what was happening but he  hated  it and despite everything he couldn’t pull his hands off of her throat, not for anything. He was too strong and Ravi was too  weak. 

He wasn’t going to watch idly as Jason killed her. He aimed a fist at his chin but the man simply dodged it, never letting his eyes leave Pippa even when they started streaming with tears. Hawkins was yelling somewhere in the background but nobody was doing anything, why wasn’t anyone doing anything, what was going on, his next punch missed too, and the next, and Pip had stopped crying whywasn’tshecrying and the next three. No. No. No. He locked eyes with her. All he could see were those eyes, those beautiful eyes. This wasn’t real, this was a fever dream, he was going to wake up and he wasn’t going to be seeing the love of his fucking life get murdered in front of him, he couldn’t, it wasn’t fair, why wasn’t it ever fair-

“ How could you? ”

A person flew past him, making contact with Jason’s body with a crunch as he tackled him to the ground in an instant. Daniel da Silva. The subject of Pip’s initial scrutiny, time and time and time again, even his own, after everything, was now knelt over Jason Bell’s writhing form as he fastened the handcuffs. There was a steadiness and evenness to his movement, like the whole world was moving through something thicker than air, something painful and cramped. There was a universe, a story that warranted its own book, in Daniel’s face. But it was over. All of it.

Ravi Singh looked down and where Pippa Fitz-Amobi still lay, unmoving. 

He knelt down, carefully as if not to disturb her. He didn’t dare touch her. She felt too fragile, too new, too precious. Then, slowly, he pressed a hand to her cheek, turning her face towards him.

      Was                   she                                   breathing              ?

Her eyes were shut. 

He couldn’t think anything. A fog was in his brain, blocking any narration or emotion except agonising, blinding fear. 

N    o

                 B

                          R

                                                E

                                                                      A

                                                                                         T 

                                                                                                                     H

NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONNONONONONONO

And then Pippa Fitz-Amobi exhaled, slowly.

She opened her eyes, and they met Ravi Singh’s. 

Before she even had time to push herself up he scooped her upwards and inwards, into his arms, shielding her from the monster being dragged away behind her. She would never have to see him again. Never again. 

Her voice sounded like she’d been gargling gravel, but he’d never been so happy to hear it. “You’re contaminating the evidence-”

Ravi finally laughed, and felt tears stream down in cheeks, warm and happy and grateful. “Shush.”

He could feel her smile, even though she buried it in his chest. “Alright.”

And maybe it finally would be.

Chapter Text

WIREDRIP – TRUE CRIME PODCAST STAR RETURNED AT LAST

Pippa Fitz-Amobi, the 18-year-old dubbed the internet’s ‘queen of true crime’ is officially confirmed to have reappeared on the afternoon of Thursday, 19th of September. Not many details are public yet, so the exact nature of how Pippa came to resurface right in the middle of the very town she went missing from- Little Kilton, just outside of Amersham in Buckinghamshire- are still foggy, however a man has been arrested under suspicion of kidnapping. Jason Bell, father of the very Andie Bell who was murdered in 2012, was reportedly arrested on the scene after he attempted to take Pippa’s life; he was thankfully stopped by officers on the scene. He is currently in custody, awaiting further action.
A spokesperson for the Amersham police department has so far released this statement:

‘We are incredibly grateful for the continual support this case has received, in particular from members of the local community, who have been pivotal in breakthroughs which led to Miss Fitz-Amobi’s return. In regards to criticism over the police action in this investigation, while we are assured that adequate steps were taken throughout the course of the past few days, an internal investigation will be conducted-

Ravi looked up from his phone, his mouth curling into a half-incredulous, half-ecstatic ‘o’ shape as he looked between Pip and the article open in his browser. “‘-an internal investigation will be conducted into the mishandling of the case by the leading Detective Inspector, especially over the widely debated choice to move into a murder investigation after only one day. Please be certain there will be a measured response according to the severity of these results’. So, they might be going to do something about Hawkins!”

Pip propped herself up on her elbows, sitting up a little more in her hospital bed. A little smile crept over her lips. “Police actually doing their jobs? Now that’s something new.”

He shot a sideways glance towards the police officer in the corner of the room, who gave an uncomfortable cough. Ravi found he really didn’t care very much. 

The past day had been a complete whirlwind of emotions, expectations and information. It was now Friday the twentieth of September- only five days after Pip went missing. Five days. How had so much happened in such little time? It felt like five months. He had barely said a word to her before she was whisked away by the police officers and paramedics that swarmed the scene like insects under a rotting log. They tore her straight from his arms. It took everything in him not to fight back, even as the officers around him insisted she wouldn’t be gone long, only for necessary procedures, only to check her over, only to help the case. That point left him low. Something about ripping her from his grasp forged a hole like a bullet wound in him; it tore flesh and muscles without remorse, straight down to the sinew and bone. 

He messaged his parents, and he waited.

He waited, as long as it took. 

And when he saw Pip emerge from the police station, one hour, thirty-four minutes and twelve seconds later, he felt more relief than when he had first saw her- because shock had muffled every other emotion before, and anyway he had barely seen her for a second before she was slammed down, his hands tightening around her throat, when she almost stopped br

She was okay.

She would be better, he hoped.

There was a distant look in her eyes, like he could look down into them and never see the bottom; they fixed on one spot directly in front of her as if she were clinging onto it to ground her, it acting as her anchor when she wobbled without anyone to lean on. There was someone behind her- a paramedic, he’d guessed- with a mildly worried look on his face. They turned the corner towards the ambulance which stood open behind Ravi, engine humming to itself. 

The moment when Pip’s eyes caught on him was the moment he stopped caring about the paramedic or the ambulance.

She tried to run towards him, and he matched her pace and caught her when she winced and stumbled, and he held her up when their tears started to stream equally, and he nodded when she asked if she could kiss him.

They were in the middle of the road, but they were home.

The hospital had been a precaution, mostly. She had no life-threatening injuries, but there were a few that the doctors wanted to keep an eye on for a day or two, not to mention organising therapy as quickly as humanly possible. Now that he’d had a moment with her, Ravi wanted infinity, finally making good on all his promises over the course of the past days. He would spend every waking second with her, even train himself to stay awake so he could accompany her when the nightmares got bad- he knew Cara would never agree to take shifts and neither would he, so it would be the three of them every night. 

Cara knew. He messaged her the moment he got his senses back, of course she knew- it was seven AM, and she’d already been to the hospital three times to see if she was allowed to visit Pip yet. Once Pip’s parents had finished their tearful visit, Ravi alone was let in. The officer in the corner introduced himself, stating he was only there to ensure Miss Fitz-Amobi’s safety , and was promptly ignored for the whole time in the euphoria and beaming smiles fighting back more tears. 

“Though, I guess we’ll have to see how that goes. You never know how those kind of things are gonna end up.” She continued, after a moment’s pause. 

Ravi grinned. “New podcast idea?”

Pip laughed shakily, like she’d forgotten how to, lifting her chin up as she firmly shook her head from side to side. “Absolutely not. ”

“C’mon, are you trying to tell me that wouldn’t be a hit? ‘The Downfall of Detective Hawkins: the series-” he carried on, despite her mouthing no, no, no, “- not clickbait, gone wrong, gone- ”

“How would that even go wrong?!”

“I don’t know, you tell me!”

She laughed even harder, which was good because he felt like he might have been pushing his luck there. But Ravi felt the life coming back into him every time she laughed, like it stemmed right from her- and, if he knew her, she might be in need of some humour right now too. The ugly ring of bruises around her neck were hard to miss, no matter how much his heart kept trying to drag his eyes to her face. 

“I wasn’t even making a podcast this time!”

“But are you going to?”

She paused for just one second too long before answering. He raised an eyebrow.

“...maybe. Once it goes to trial. People will be interested, Ravi. They need to know about his other crimes, too-”

He cut it possibly a little too quickly. “ What ‘other crimes’?” He gave her a look that was questioning at a glance, but she had to know.

Sarge’s posture straightened, barely noticeably. “Well, the way he tried to kill me, it felt very… practised. People rarely go straight to kidnapping and murder as a first crime, anyway. There’s usually a buildup.”

Kidnapping and murder sent bullets into his spine, but he rolled with it. At least she understood there was to be no mention of the DT Killer to the police yet; that was a good conversation to get out of the way before she slipped. The ‘why’ would come later. 

“Wow. Do the police know that? Was that what you told them when they interrogated you?”

She sighed. “They didn’t ‘interrogate’ me, they just asked me a few questions, got me to confirm it was actually Jason who tried to kill me, that stuff.”

“Yeah, he literally tried to commit murder a second time right in front of them, I hope that was pretty obvious.” And, before she even had a chance to open her mouth again, “Also that was an interrogation. You know that was an interrogation, right? Not Hawkins having a friendly little chit-chat?”

“Like Hawkins would ever want to have a casual conversation with me.”

“So when you went in there, there was no ‘hiya, Pip, how are you? You’re looking a bit rough, want a cuppa?’, it was straight to the questioning?”

“Changing what you call it doesn’t make you right.”

Ravi huffed in mock offence. “I’m always right!”

Pip rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, ignoring his melodramatics. “Sure… besides, the interrogation’s actually on Monday.”

After a minute of his spluttering disbelief (and her growing smile), he finally managed to cobble together an intelligible response. 

“So what, after all that, you get two days to heal? You couldn’t even get a full week?”

“Ravi, they can’t risk any longer. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but I can’t say anything.”

“Sarge, that’s so unfair.”

“I know.”

He looked into her eyes for a second. “Do you want to talk about it to me, first?”

Not yet, was what her mouth said, but her eyes and momentary glance really told him not here.

It was Saturday, the twenty-first of September, when they both deleted Twitter off their phones. They said it was ‘for good’, even if they both knew they’d be logging in on the browser every so often, just to get a look around. Pip had been discharged that morning, once the doctors had decided her scrapes and bruises weren’t infected or in danger of becoming so, and once counselling had been arranged for the foreseeable future. He’d opened his phone to go on social media, and Cara had slapped it out of his hand so fast it hit the carpet of her sitting room with a thud . He only half-heartedly complained to her about it; the other half of his brain was fixed on Pip: noticing how the sound made her flinch, and then five more times again, long after the sound had stopped. 

“Don’t even. It’s a warzone on there, I’m not about to let you both get caught in the crossfire.”

He’d nodded, grabbing Pip’s hand and looking down at her. Her eyes were a little unfocused, but they snapped back to reality the moment she registered his fingers interlocking carefully with hers, brushing his thumb over the back of her hand. The dark brown of her irises shone a little in the light, bouncing off the growing red blush of her cheeks. He wanted to stare at her, hand in hand, forever, counting her pores and freckles like stars.

Cara coughed loudly. When they turned their faces towards her, she shrugged, putting her hands up in front of her with her fingers splayed out wide. “Oh no, don’t let me ruin the moment, I’ll just stand here-”

“She’s been missing for five days, Cara!”

“Well, you’re not the only one allowed to miss her; when’s it my turn to stare longingly at her in awkward silence for two full minutes?”

“Where’s Steph?”

Cara blushed deeper than both of them, murmuring something about at work as she led them towards the middle of the room. 

She then announced, to a slightly bemused looking Pip, that this was the very room in which they’d figured out who had kidnapped her. 

A smile twitched over her lips for a moment. “Cara, I’ve been in your sitting room a thousand times.”

“Ah, but not while it was the hub of Operation Find Pippa. That:” she pointed to one end of the L-shaped sofa, “was where Ravi slept during this whole thing. And that:” she gestured to the other end, “was where we did all the writing and theorising and analysing of stuff.”

“You slept on the sofa for the whole week?” Pip asked, her brows furrowed.

He nodded. “I know, probably not the best for my flourishing back health. But Cara and I worked together on this, we couldn’t just go our separate ways every night. Plus, it came in useful once the stalking began.”

“The stalking?”

The taller girl cut in, “All will be explained in due time... Coffee?”

That was how the others found them, fifteen minutes later, sipping on rapidly cooling coffee in a quarter-circle curving around the sofa. Naomi, Connor, Jamie, Nat; they each took their place one by one until the circle was complete. There were no gaps. Muscle memory. 

Pip didn’t seem to like being the centre of attention. She was more relaxed than she had been in the hospital, but there was a tired slump to her shoulders, and even when she talked and looked up from staring into her mug, Ravi knew the difference between her casual voice and the faux-positivity of the podcast voice. He’d bet she wasn’t even aware she was doing it- the changes in tone and attitude were much less obvious than Cara’s customer service voice- but he knew. He couldn’t begin to imagine how overwhelming it all must be. Five days spent in terrified silence, on the run- then back to a normalcy that she suddenly couldn’t cope with. If he had a way of turning his brain to autopilot in a situation like that, he knew he would too. 

“-and then we found out Connor had been following a blood trail, so that wasn’t very fun.”

Connor laughed weakly, wiping a hand across his forehead. “Nope, definitely not.”

Pip looked up at that. “You actually found the blood? I would have thought the rain would have washed it all off.”

“Well, I guess it had only just started raining then. Then-” 

Pip cut Jamie off. “Wait. Was this on Tuesday?”

“Uhh…” he thought for a moment. “Yeah. About half past eleven. Why?”

She suddenly looked very aware. “I was there. I was in the forest around that time, I’d just finished leaving out a message in the mud and thought I heard Jason’s car, so I booked it." After a moment, she glared back into the bottom of her empty mug like it had personally offended her. “It was so much harder to run that time, though. I don’t think he ever spotted me, but he was close.”

They all spent a moment, letting that horrifying thought soak in. All except for Cara, who immediately grabbed her phone and scrolled furiously in her photos, finally holding up the right image to Pip’s face. “Right, so, this was your message?”

Sarge paused, gazing from one headless stick figure to the next, lingering on the final one, waiting in the wings. “Yeah. I wanted to show you that I was still alive.”

“Well, that worked perfectly, didn’t it Cara?” Ravi said, leaning over to get a look himself. Cara grinned back, nodding enthusiastically. 

“Did you notice the stick-Barney?”

“The what?”

She zoomed in to the patch of mud next to where her full stick figure was, pointing at the squiggle beside her. She gave him a look like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I drew a stick figure of Barney with me, it’s right there!”

He opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, as each new thought cancelled the other out over and over again. “...Why? Also, no offence Sarge, but I’m not sure if art is your forte here- I didn’t even notice it to be honest.”

“I did! I knew it!”

“Thanks, Cara.” He raised an eyebrow as she punched the air excitedly.

Pip wasn’t anywhere near as energetic. It seemed like the question had sapped all that momentary life out of her. “I drew Barney because… I had to honour him along with all the other DT Killer victims. It didn’t feel right to leave him out, after what I learned on Sunday. I know it’s silly, but… Jason killed him when Becca was just trying to send him home. It felt like not forgetting every evil action that bastard ever did, regardless of how small it might be in the grand scheme.”

He felt that sharp intake of breath deep hit the back of his throat in the moment he realised what happened. It dropped heavy, like a stone, into the bottom of his lungs, falling at a rate that matched the pace his heart dropped, in perfect sync. Now he heard her shuddering breaths; felt the way her hand clenched his like nothing else was keeping her in place; saw the glazed-over look to her eyes- and he couldn’t let this continue.

Abruptly he stood up, dragging Pippa with him as he went. Giving a quick nod to the rest of the circle, with the mouthed promise we’ll be back , they started walking.

The sticks and just-turned leaves crackled beneath their feet as Ravi and Pip stumbled into the familiar clearing. They’d been here in Lodge Woods a couple times before; it was open, but out of the way of prying eyes and ears, something they were very keen to avoid during the more dubiously legal parts of the EPQ investigation, but especially now.

“Did you really have to pull me along all the way here?”

“Would you prefer I carried you around instead?”

She stopped her grumbling for a minute, instead wearing a face that showed she was clearly considering it. She shrugged. In an instant, Ravi reached his hands around her back and legs, scooping her up in a bridal carry; he spun them around in a staggering circle, feeling the heat rise in his cheeks but never taking his eyes off hers for one second. A fact he almost regretted when he stepped wrong on his ankle and fell flat to the floor. Almost.

Her laughter only grew as she landed heavily on top of his chest, lying flat on her back with her arms dangling listlessly at her sides. He allowed them this one second. 

In this one second, nothing bad had ever happened to either of them.

He felt her body go rigid where she lay, suddenly tense and stiff like a corpse. He shot up, and for a heartbeat the face beside him wasn’t Pip’s but Jane Doe’s, and his breathing hitched on grief at the back of his throat. It was just Pip. Her eyes were glassy, but not in the way he’d come to see every minute he closed his eyes: they were more dissociated, momentarily gone instead of permanently.  She lay there, still, as the smile slowly died and melted off her face. He half expected to see it pooled on the floor beside them, a wide grin and crinkled nose floating about on the few sharp blades of grass. 

“Pip. You are allowed to be happy.”

“I know- but how can I do that when every five seconds, or something, my brain feels the need to remind me of something awful that happened?” she sighed, muscles relaxing into a dejected slump. “It's like whenever I finally start having a good time, my mind tells me I need to be sad. I don’t want to, but I have to obey my brain because what else am I going to think about? I’ve got to be around it forever anyway.” 

He poked her in the side of the head, smiling at her look . It could probably be classified as a lethal weapon, but he didn’t mind evoking it every once in a while if it got her attention. “We need to distract you. I never thought I’d be saying this- but you think too much.”

“I have no idea what you’re on about, you say that all the time . And I did just say that distracting me doesn’t work, Ravi.”

He shook his head, stirring up a puff of dirt from where it had been resting. “I know that doing things- physically- doesn’t work, but what about mentally? I know for a fact there are about ten thousand things you could start rambling about on the spot, and I want you to start, right now, so your brain doesn’t have time to catch up to what you’re saying.” Ravi smirked as he watched her expressions change from disbelief to actually weighing it up, to acceptance. As she nodded he reached out to grab her hand, and they met halfway between where the two of them lay flat out on the musty earth of the forest floor.

“Ravi, I- I’m going to tell you what happened in those five days. If I start to make absolutely zero sense, stop me.”

He tried to gently convince her to distract herself with something other than what she was trying to distract herself from in the first place, but there was nothing that could stop a Pippa Fitz-Amobi with her mind made well and truly up. He gave her hand a quick squeeze, she stared blankly upwards, and then abruptly she started talking.

“He took me straight off Cross Lane. Distracted me with a phone call in broad daylight, then next thing I knew I had a hand over my mouth and my phone was out of my hand and I was passing out. I don’t think I was far from passing out anyway, left-over effects from the- uh,” she turned to face him, eyes very wide. He stared directly into the pupils, eyebrows raising as he gave one, firm nod. She flushed and continued. “Yeah. Those. It could only have been a few seconds, I think, but the next thing I knew I was waking up in his boot, my hands and legs bound in tape.” She shuddered, and it took more than a second to carry on again. He didn’t nudge her. He didn’t respond at all, even when she left pauses where words failed her and her last sentence hung hauntingly in the air. He wanted to crack a joke, anything to break the silence, but it just wasn’t coming; he wasn’t nervous- it would be easy if he were nervous, the jokes would flow to him ready-made and perfectly cooked- no, all he felt was a bone-aching, throat-crushing sadness. She described, in perfect, detached detail, the intricacies of the shelving unit she was tied to; the grating texture of the concrete floor; the waves of relief and terror that crashed over her once she stood in the middle of that room, completely lost on what to do.

“I broke a window with a hammer and climbed out. But once I was out there, I just had this realisation: there was never going to be anybody who’d believe me. Anybody.”

He was crying. How long had he been crying? “I would have.”

Pip wasn’t crying. She’d barely moved at all, not even a facial expression throughout it all. “But you’re not anybody, Ravi.”

“If you escaped,” he paused, carefully considering how to word it, “then why did you go away?”

She flinched, fully, like the words had sliced her. “ Because nobody would believe me. I knew if I came home I would be putting all of you in danger, because Hawkins wouldn’t do anything and Jason would just try again to kill me, and anyone who tried to help me, and I couldn’t risk hurting you. Any of you. So I… ran. I cut my elbow on the hammer to leave blood behind, and I took off into the woods.” Pip’s eyelids fluttered shut as she turned her arm over, revealing an angry, red scab. There were deep fingernail-shaped bruises all around it, where the thin coating looked too new to be nearly a week old. “I thought it was the best idea at the time. If I’d been thinking straight, maybe there were other, better options. But all I could feel was fear and he was right there, Ravi.” Her breaths started shuttering and breaking up like old TV static, as the tears started sluggishly dripping down, “He was right there. ”

Ravi rolled on to his side, reaching his free arm over to gently cup one of her cheeks, wiping a tear with his thumb. He could feel all the minute scratches, patches of rough new skin just barely healed over her cheekbones, which were still just slightly too prominent.  All this pain, starting to fade only physically. “You must have been so scared.. I don’t blame you, Pip, and I never will. Never. We’re team Pip and Ravi; we always stick together.”

“Always.”

“You don’t have to carry on, if you don’t want to. You don’t need to relive all of it.” She shook her head, swallowing as he took his hand away and lay back out flat.

“I have to. Besides, if I’m not saying it, I’m thinking it. Every second of every day.” He gave her hand a squeeze, hoping it communicated the exact tone of okay, I love you, he meant. “I ran up a tree when he chased me; I guess I had enough of a lead he didn’t spot me. He gave up after a while and started driving. That leant me enough time to figure out my next move, and once I did, all I had to do was wait for him to think I’d escaped. Once he left, I got down and ran as fast as my legs would let me to the Ward’s old house.”

He gaped. “Pip, that’s ages away- did you seriously run all that way? Seriously? That’s impressive honestly.”

A half-smile crept onto her face. “It’s not as far from the warehouse; and anyway there was nowhere else I could go that would have shelter, not without people. Plus, there was a ton of canned food there. It worked pretty well for a few days.”

She tried to leave them clues. Got scared off by Jason and his SUV of Nightmares. Every day she ventured further out from the safety zone of the house, and every time the stakes would rise higher and higher for if she got caught, with no limit in sight.

“By the Thursday, I was starting to panic. The adrenaline was as low as it had been since before getting kidnapped, so I could see pretty clearly and realise that these things can take weeks, months even- I couldn’t go that long without seeing you, my family, my friends. I tried to picture months without ever hugging my dad, or without drinking coffee with Cara, and I just couldn’t. I had to see how far in the investigation you were- so I went to get a look at Jason’s house. I have no idea what would’ve happened if I had seen it all covered in crime tape and abandoned; I couldn’t exactly waltz on into the police station perfectly fine. But… I saw you.” Every muscle, every tendon in his body froze all at once. He wasn’t even sure if his heart was still beating. 

“You were there?”

She nodded. “I hid around his neighbour’s fence, so I didn’t see anything. It nearly gave me a heart attack when the first police car came racing around the corner, honestly.” She exhaled like the laugh she wanted died in her throat. “I moved out a bit, so I could hear what you were all saying better. When you said what you did: that Jason had murdered me- I was so shocked that I… forgot to duck down again.”

I forgot to duck down again. Through everything, nothing sent chills cascading down his spine quite like those six words. They held not only a tense, looming threat, but also the knowledge of exactly what happened after. The words themselves were a threat. Sinister.

“But I guess, all things considered, that was the best option for resurfacing.”

Ravi really did laugh this time. “I can’t even begin to explain how almost getting murdered is not better than being a little awkward-”

“You know what I mean!”

“Mhm. Sure. ”

For a few minutes, they did nothing at all. He lay on his back beside her, hand in numb hand, and they listened to the wind whistle through the half-bare branches, singing its own melancholic tune. He turned his eyes to her, as she gazed upwards. Ravi focused on each breath, the tiny sound it made with the rise and fall of her chest proving something he’d thought, for a day, impossible: she was alive. It was the tune his heart beat to. Living. She was living right next to him, living in the blood pumping from her heart to the warm hand that grasped his, suddenly firm like a lifeline. 

“This helped. It did.” She said it with such finality he couldn’t help but believe her.

“It’s not all better, Sarge. I can tell.”

She sighed, meeting his gaze. “No, it’s really not. But it’s better .”

Without another word, they stood, and started walking.

It was a proper reunion when they turned back up at Cara’s- Pip was so much more lucid, much more herself; it felt like maybe things had a chance to go back to normal, after all. There was more hugging than Ravi ever thought any of them capable of, more laughter too, and more life. Their life was coursing through the air like bubbles of electricity breaking up the oxygen. They ordered food, drank just a little, chatting about nothing in particular. It hit Ravi that this must be the longest he’d smiled in a week. Longer, probably. Almost all the people he cared about were right in front of him.

All good things couldn’t last forever. Nat and Jamie needed to head out, having pushed their luck at work for long enough as it was. But, just as Nat pulled on her coat, Pip stopped her.

“Hey, Nat? Can you just- tell Daniel I said thank you? He saved my life, and I didn’t even say a word to him.”

She laughed a little. “I’ll tell him. He’ll probably be glad to hear it, given Ravi accused him of kidnapping you to start off with.”

“Hey!” Ravi butted in, “We took him off the list!”

Nat chuckled again, nodding her head. “Yeah, I get it- he’s not the easiest person to like. Just try and avoid each other from here on out, probably.”

Pip smiled gratefully. “Got it.”

It was Monday.

Despite all the adoration and support from both of their families, nothing in the world could prepare either of them for this moment.
Pip especially. He looked at her now- her skin was pale and grey, her eyes were wide full-moons, and the only thing keeping her somewhat stable on her feet was Ravi’s hand clasped around hers. He felt each full body shiver as they stood, feet still like they were glued to the path towards the police station.

Regardless of the minutes passing, sliding closer and closer to the allotted time, neither of their bodies could be willed to move any closer. The idea was paralysing.

“I don’t want to relive it again.” Her voice was feeble, barely more than an ambiguous murmur on the wind.

He swallowed. “I know. But at least once it’s over, you never have to think about it again.”

She shook her head. “I will. I’ll have to go through it again every day, every second he’s on trial, it’ll be happening again.”

“Is saying I’ll never leave your side a help? I’d do it even without saying, but that feels a little creepy.”

A fraction of a smile fell onto her face for a slice of a second. Slowly, she nodded. 

“Good, because I’m going to be here the whole time. I’ll be just outside the interview room this time, okay? Things start getting bad and I’ll burst down the door and threaten the interviewer with heinous violence you wouldn’t ever believe me capable of, alright?”

She gave him one, short, exhale of a laugh. Then her expression froze, caught suddenly still- it stuck for a moment, until the quiet breeze seemed to push it from her face. In a quiet, neutral voice that somehow hurt more than sobs, she whispered, “What if they don’t believe me? What if it’s all for nothing?”

He leaned down a little and kissed her, once. 

“Then I’ll make them believe you.”

He tried to think of something clever, but nothing more came out. Ravi wondered if Sal and Andie could’ve been like this, if everything was different. He was going to break the cycle now. No more parallels, just them two, together again.

No more metaphors.