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Chapter Eighteen

"You're not in trouble," the agent said gently, folding his hands on the table between them. "But we need to know—did you have any idea who might've been working with Tasha?"

His voice was calm, but there was something piercing in his gaze, the way he studied Lexi's every micro-expression like her face might give away more than her words ever could.

Lexi exhaled sharply, crossing her arms in front of her like a shield. "No," she said quickly. "I swear, I didn't know she was planning anything like that. If I did, I would've stopped it."

Her voice was firm, but her eyes darted for a moment—uncertain, maybe scared. She wasn't just protecting herself. She was protecting something else. Someone.

The agent made a brief note in the folder on the table, but his expression didn't change. "There was someone else," he said. "Not Tasha. Not you. But someone who was always around. Do you remember anyone like that?"

Lexi hesitated. Her fingers dug into the sleeves of her hoodie. The silence stretched.

"There was... this girl," she said finally, her voice cautious, like she was pulling the words from a fog. "She wasn't exactly one of us, but she was always there. Quiet. Watching. Listening. Never said much."

The other agent in the room straightened in his chair.

"Name?" the first one asked.

Lexi chewed on her lip, her brow furrowed. "I'm not sure. I didn't talk to her much. Tasha did. But I think... I think her name was Chloe. Or Zoe. Something like that."

The agents exchanged a look.

Lexi's voice grew stronger now, as she let the memories surface. "She always wore the same stuff. A black beanie. And this thick gray scarf. Like, even inside. She was weird about it—like she didn't want anyone to see her."

The description matched.

The agents both knew it. One of them began typing rapidly on a laptop, pulling up security footage and access logs.

"And you said she spoke with Tasha often?"

Lexi nodded slowly. "I think so. They didn't hang out like, in public or anything. But Tasha trusted her. That was obvious."

One of the agents leaned back, eyes narrowing slightly. "She ever ask about Emily?"

Lexi hesitated again—this time longer.

"She... watched her," she said at last. "I remember once, after school, we were leaving and she said something like, 'She doesn't even know what's coming.' I thought she was just talking trash. But now..."

Her arms tightened around herself. "She was worse than Tasha," she added, her voice barely a whisper now. "That girl—Zoe, or whatever her real name is—she didn't get mad like Tasha. She didn't yell or fight. She just watched. Like she was planning something way darker."

There was a beat of silence before the agent said, "Do you know where she is now?"

Lexi looked at him, eyes wide. "No. I swear I don't. But..."

"But what?" the second agent asked.

Lexi's throat bobbed as she swallowed.

"She knew where Emily lived. I don't know how, but she did. She mentioned it once. Her street. The color of her house. Said she liked the angle from the fence near the school."

The agent stopped typing.

"We found a girl matching that description loitering near the school two days before the attack," he said. "Black beanie. Gray scarf. She spoke briefly with Emily."

Lexi's hands trembled.

"She's not done," she said softly. "Whatever she started with Tasha—she's still in it. And she's way more dangerous."

The moment Lexi said the words black beanie and gray scarf, my stomach dropped.

I was watching the interview from the hotel room, curled up in one of the armchairs while the agents projected the live feed onto the TV screen. Uncle David stood nearby, arms crossed, his face unreadable. I barely noticed Mom sit down beside me, her hand tightening around mine the second those words were spoken.

Because I'd seen her.

Talked to her.

She was the girl by the fence outside school. The one who stopped me a few days before the shooting, eyes full of fake concern, her voice soft and sympathetic as she asked if I was okay.

She wasn't there to help me.

She was studying me. Learning my routine. Getting close enough to memorize me.

And I hadn't even realized it.

The room snapped into motion. One of the FBI agents—Holt—began scrubbing through the school's exterior footage. Days blurred by on the screen, security timestamps ticking like a countdown. Uncle David moved closer, jaw tight, his fingers drumming against his arm with slow, deliberate beats.

Then—

"There!" Holt said, freezing the footage.

The image flickered and sharpened—just enough to see her.

There she was.

Standing still, just beyond the chain-link fence. A black beanie pulled low, a thick gray scarf wrapped around her neck. Even through the pixelation, I could see the way she scanned the crowd. Calm. Precise. Like she wasn't just watching.

She was waiting.

"That's her," I whispered. My voice cracked as I leaned forward, pointing at the screen with a trembling hand. "That's the girl who talked to me. A few days before the shooting."

Uncle David's eyes narrowed. "She made contact."

Agent Holt hit play again.

And then... there it was.

A recording from a different angle. No video this time—just audio, faint and muffled but unmistakable. Her voice, low and deliberate, threading through the static like a knife through silk:

"You don't know me, but I know Tasha."

The room went still.

That one sentence rang louder than a scream.

She hadn't just known Tasha. She was part of it. The web, the plan, the aftermath. She didn't stumble into this—she was woven into it from the beginning.

As I watched the screen, frozen on her figure turning away, scarf blowing slightly in the wind, a horrible realization settled over me.

She wasn't hiding anymore.

She wanted to be seen.

"Emily..." Mom's voice broke beside me. Her grip on my hand tightened. "She was getting way too close to you."

I nodded slowly, eyes glued to the screen.

Because that wasn't just some stranger in a beanie and scarf.

That was a hunter.

And I was her target.

The FBI agents worked with a tense, focused urgency. From the hotel room, we watched the feed on the mounted TV as they fed the grainy still of the girl—black beanie, gray scarf—into a facial recognition system. The screen flickered with endless windows: database scans, social media profiles, school records. Every second that ticked by stretched longer than the last. The room around me was silent except for the low hum of the laptop speakers and the quiet clicks of their keyboards.

I sat frozen in the armchair, a blanket wrapped around my legs, my fingers digging into the fabric. Mom stood just behind me. Lily and Sam sat huddled on the bed. Uncle David hadn't moved from his spot near the window, arms crossed, his eyes locked on the screen like he could will the truth to surface.

Then, finally—

A name appeared on screen, cold and clinical in its clarity.

Zoe Caldwell.

The words hit like a thunderclap.

I stared at them, my mind reeling. Caldwell.

My heart lurched.

"Wait..." I breathed. "Caldwell?"

The agent on the screen confirmed it a moment later, voice low and steady.

"She's Tasha's sister."

The room around me felt like it vanished—just gone, swallowed by the weight of that single connection.

Tasha's sister.

That was the missing piece.

Zoe Caldwell wasn't just a shadowy accomplice. She wasn't just another stranger who had circled the edges of my life. She was family to the girl who had nearly destroyed it.

I couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe.

Tasha hadn't acted alone.

And now it made perfect sense why Zoe had been there. At school. At the fence. At my house.

She wasn't just part of the plan.

She was the plan.

On screen, the agents fell silent, processing the link. I saw one of them begin searching Zoe's school records. Another pulled up archived texts, calls, photos.

Then came the chilling part.

"She's gone," one of them muttered.

He scrolled through page after page of digital records. "No school attendance. No active phone. Social media accounts deleted. Bank account frozen. No digital footprint since the day of the shooting."

It was like she'd disappeared into smoke.

"She knew we'd come for her," Uncle David said from behind me, his voice low, even. "She erased herself on purpose."

I wrapped my arms around my chest, trying to hold in the fear as it clawed its way up my throat.

"She was always one step ahead," the agent added grimly. "We've got teams looking, but she's gone completely dark."

"So what now?" I asked. My voice was barely a whisper.

The agent leaned toward the camera, his expression hard as steel. "Now we find her first."

The promise settled into the room like the final piece of a puzzle none of us wanted to see. The hotel suddenly felt smaller. The walls thinner. The air colder.

I couldn't stop staring at that name.

Zoe Caldwell.

She had watched me. Followed me. Talked to me. All while hiding this—hiding who she really was. And the terrifying part wasn't just that she was Tasha's sister.

It was that she was still out there.

And she knew exactly what she was doing.

That night, the world outside the hotel window had quieted into a deceptive stillness, but inside me, my thoughts spun like a storm refusing to die. I sat on the edge of the bed, the hotel comforter cool against my legs, my body too tired to move but my mind wide awake. Every detail of the day—Zoe's name, her voice on that recording, the fact that she had been watching me—played on a loop in my head.

She had been right there. Talking to me. Hiding in plain sight.

I hugged my knees to my chest, the dim light of the streetlamp outside filtering through the heavy curtains, casting narrow shadows across the room. Everyone else was finally asleep—Mom, Lily, Sam—even Uncle David, who had dozed off in the corner chair with his phone resting on his chest. The silence should have been comforting.

It wasn't.

BZZT.

The vibration of my phone shattered the quiet, jerking me upright. My heart punched against my ribs as I grabbed it, the screen lighting up with a new email from an unknown sender.

My hands shook as I unlocked it.

The subject line was blank.

The body of the message held just three words:

YOU'RE TOO LATE.

I froze.

The words were a gut-punch—sharp, final, cruel.

Not a threat.

A statement.

Someone was still out there. Someone who knew exactly what had happened tonight. Someone watching.

My breath came in shallow gasps. The chill of fear ran deeper now, beyond skin and bone. She knew we'd been close. She knew.

Before I could even think, Uncle David's phone rang—its sudden tone cutting through the air like a siren. He startled awake, catching it mid-ring.

"This is David," he said, his voice instantly focused.

There was a pause. His eyes narrowed.

Then: "They got her."

My head snapped up.

He stood quickly, already pulling on his jacket. "The FBI found her. Abandoned house outside the city—just off County Road 12. They moved in twenty minutes ago. She's in custody."

Mom stirred first, sitting up with a gasp. "Are you serious?" Her voice cracked from sleep and stress.

"It's her," he said. "It's really her."

Relief rippled through the room. Mom brought both hands to her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. Sam, now half-awake, blinked at us in confusion. Lily sat up silently, stunned.

But me?

I felt...nothing.

No joy. No relief. Just a cold weight in my chest.

Because I couldn't stop hearing those words:

YOU'RE TOO LATE.

Zoe hadn't just been hiding.

She had been waiting.

Her arrest didn't feel like an ending—it felt like a pause. A trap, maybe. She'd erased her footprint, vanished without a trace, and now she was caught... conveniently. Too easily. And still, she found a way to get a message through.

My gut told me this wasn't over.

Not really.

The next few days blurred into a surreal fog. FBI briefings. News reports. Snippets of Zoe's digital trail—or what was left of it—surfacing in headlines. They said she'd wiped everything before the school shooting. Deleted. Scrubbed. Disconnected.

But somehow... she'd known where we were.

The hotel became our temporary bunker. Reporters loitered outside. Agents came and went. And yet, despite everything—their confidence, their reports—I couldn't shake the feeling that the game wasn't over.

That she had planned for this.

That she wanted to be caught.

It all came to a head one quiet evening in the hotel dining area.

Dinner was quiet, the kind where silverware sounds too loud and no one really tastes what they're eating. I pushed peas around my plate until Mom finally broke the silence.

"Emily," she said softly. "She's behind bars. It's over now."

Her words floated across the table like a fragile balloon. Meant to comfort. Meant to heal.

But I couldn't grab hold of them.

"I want to believe that," I whispered, barely loud enough to hear myself. "I really do."

Uncle David set down his fork and looked at me—steady, calm, the way only he could be after everything.

"You don't have to forget," he said. "But you don't have to live in fear either. You're not alone in this."

And he was right.

Across from me sat the people who had protected me, believed me, fought for me. Jasmine and Mia's messages still pinged my phone, little reminders that I mattered. Lexi had helped turn the tide. And Uncle David—he had never stopped chasing the truth.

I took a slow, deep breath.

Maybe the worst had passed.

Or maybe the next part was just beginning.

But at least now, I wasn't facing it alone.

We came home four days after Zoe's arrest.

The FBI had done a full sweep of the property. They said everything was clear. "No threats remain," one of the agents had said, clipboard in hand, like that was supposed to erase the fear. Like words could disinfect memories.

The drive back felt longer than it should have. The streets were the same, but they looked different—like someone had tilted the whole world a few degrees while we were gone. The snow had started to melt, revealing patches of dead grass and brittle branches. Our neighborhood was quiet, too quiet, like it had been holding its breath in our absence.

The moment we pulled into the driveway, a cold, uneasy weight settled in my chest.

The front door stood exactly how we'd left it. The wreath was still hanging. The snow shovel leaned against the porch rail. Nothing had changed.

But everything had changed.

Inside, the house felt wrong.

It wasn't messy. Nothing was broken. But it was off—the kind of wrong you couldn't explain in words, only in the way your skin crawled and your heartbeat sped up for no reason.

Uncle David unlocked the door, pushing it open first. He stepped inside like he was clearing a crime scene, his eyes sweeping the living room.

We followed slowly.

The air was cold and stale. Like it hadn't been breathed in for weeks.

Mom hesitated in the doorway, clutching her keys like a weapon. Sam stayed behind her, unusually quiet. Lily stood just inside the threshold, arms wrapped around herself, her eyes scanning every corner.

I stepped in last.

And that's when I noticed it.

The throw pillow on the couch—turned the wrong way.

The kitchen chair—slightly pulled out.

My bedroom door—cracked open, even though I always left it shut.

Mom went to the kitchen, flicking on the lights.

Uncle David disappeared upstairs, calling out: "Just checking everything."

I stood in the hallway, staring at that thin sliver of darkness in my doorway.

That door hadn't been open when we left.

I knew it.

"Emily?" Mom's voice made me flinch. She was beside me now, gently touching my arm. "You okay?"

I nodded. But my feet moved on their own.

I pushed the door open.

My room was untouched—but not.

My stuffed fox had been moved from my pillow to my desk chair.

A photo frame was crooked.

And on my nightstand, tucked half-under a notebook, was a single black thread.

Thin. Coarse. Like it belonged to a beanie.

I stared at it until the walls felt like they were closing in.

She had been here.

Maybe not recently. Maybe not since they caught her.

But Zoe had been here.

I backed away from the room, heart pounding.

Uncle David was coming back down the stairs, his expression unreadable.

"House is clear," he said. "No sign of break-in."

But I saw the way his eyes lingered on my face.

He knew.

We all knew.

She might be gone. But the fear wasn't.

Not yet.

And even with Zoe and Tasha behind bars, the shadow they left behind still clung to the walls, stubborn and cold.

Home didn't feel like home.

Not yet.

But it was ours again.

And somehow, that had to be enough.