PART ONE- A Quiet Kind of Terror
I couldn’t breathe.
Not the kind of breathlessness that comes from a sprint or a steep climb. This was deeper—coiled somewhere in my chest like an invisible serpent, tight and unrelenting. It had been hours since I found the second flash drive buried in that ceramic sugar jar, disguised among mundane things, as if paranoia had already started blooming inside me even back then.
I hadn’t told anyone about it. Not Jules, not even Faye.
Not that she has been picking up my calls lately.
But the moment I plugged the drive into my laptop, everything shifted.
There were no video files this time. No grainy footage. Just a single audio clip, only twenty-three seconds long.
A voice I didn’t recognize. Male. Low. Calm. Chilling.
“She’s starting to put it toget
