THE WILDER HUNT

CHAPTER THREE

Detective Ruiz had dealt with too many families who tore themselves apart long before a killer ever showed up. The Wilders were looking more and more like that kind of family. But Ruiz couldn’t shake one thing:

Jonah’s eyes.

The last time Ruiz saw him alive, Jonah had looked like someone who had just realized the ground under his feet wasn’t ground at all—it was ice, and it was cracking.

Now Jonah lay zipped in a black bag, on a stretcher being rolled past Ruiz down the hallway of the Windsor Hotel. Mara walked beside him, silent, jaw clenched.

Ruiz rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We’re missing something.”

“We’re missing everything,” Mara muttered.

Ruiz’s badge vibrated—text message. He checked it.

Unknown:

You should’ve stopped him when you had the chance.

He jerked upright. “Mara.”

She spun. “What?”

He held up the phone. “Someone’s texting me now. Same unknown sender?”

“No,” she said sharply. “A new number.”

The elevator chimed and opened. Both detectives stepped inside but didn’t hit a floor yet.

Mara leaned closer, voice low. “You think they were watching us the entire time?”

“Oh, f**k. They knew we were with Jonah,” Ruiz said. “They knew the exact window.”

“Could be the hotel.”

“Or someone who knew Jonah called us.”

Mara’s eyes narrowed. “Is it Leah?”

Before Ruiz could answer, his phone buzzed again.

He didn’t listen. You won’t either.

Mara didn’t like that one bit. Her shoulders tensed, her jaw locked. She hit the button for the lobby with more force than necessary.

“s**t, Albert. Let’s move,” she said. “We could go find Leah. Now.”

The elevator began its slow descent. Ruiz stared at the metal doors and felt something he rarely felt:

A tremor of dread.

Leah Wilder wasn’t sure when she’d started crying. It could’ve been the first time the doorknob twisted. Or maybe it was when the footsteps crossed her living room with the calm, hungry rhythm of a predator who already knew where the prey was hiding.

She curled behind the bed, phone pressed to her chest, trying to shrink into the shadows.

She didn’t dare look at the door.

She didn’t dare breathe too loudly.

The footsteps paused outside her room.

Wood creaked.

Someone leaned against the other side, listening.

Leah clamped a hand over her mouth. Her heart thrashed like it was fighting to claw out of her chest.

Then—

A single whisper, right against the c***k of the door:

“Leeeaaah…”

Not Elias.

Not close to Elias.

The voice was too soft. Too wrong. Too… eager.

Leah squeezed her eyes shut, shaking.

Her phone buzzed. A small, traitorous vibration that felt like a thunderclap in the silence.

The footsteps stopped.

The handle turned.

Slow. Deliberate.

Testing the lock again.

Leah forced herself to stare at the phone screen, hoping it wasn’t the unknown number again—

But it wasn’t.

It was one word:

COPS.

Then another, from a different number:

Coming. Stay down.

Her lungs finally drew a shaky breath.

Whoever had messaged her before—whoever warned her not to open the door— they weren’t this person now trying to get in.

But that didn’t make her feel safer.

A quiet click snapped her attention back to the door.

Someone had slipped something into the lock. A piece of metal. Thin. Professional.

A lockpick.

Leah bolted from behind the bed and dove into the closet, slamming the sliding door closed and pulling a pile of blankets over herself. It wasn’t smart, she knew that. But her body moved like instinct, not reason.

The bedroom door clicked open behind her.

Light slithered across the carpet.

A slow inhale filled the room—long, controlled, almost curious.

Leah pressed her hand over her mouth again and folded herself smaller.

A shoe scuffed lightly against the floor.

Closer.

And closer.

Then—

A knock.

Soft.

On her closet door.

“Leah?” the voice murmured. “I know you’re in there.”

A hand brushed the closet door.

Gently.

Almost tenderly.

Her vision blurred.

“Come on,” the voice whispered. “Don’t make this harder.”

The closet door slid open an inch.

Leah’s scream never made it out.

Because at that exact second—

A sharp burst of pounding rattled the front door of her apartment.

“POLICE!”

Ruiz’s voice thundered through the apartment.

“OPEN UP!”

The footsteps in the bedroom stopped.

Silence clamped over the apartment.

Then, a whisper—different from before. Low. Furious.

“Later.”

And the figure darted out of the room.

Leah held her breath as the apartment filled with the sound of rapid, fleeing footsteps.

Then—

A window shattering.

A heavy drop.

Running.

And then, finally—

Ruiz kicking the bedroom door open.

“Leah?”

The closet door slid fully open. Leah exhaled a sob she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Ruiz reached for her like she was made of glass, helping her out with steady, warm hands.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

She shook her head quickly, hair a mess, breath still choked.

Mara swept in behind him, scanning the room with her gun drawn. “Whoever it was just jumped the fire escape.”

“They used Elias’s voice,” Leah whispered, shaking. “They pretended to be him.

They tried to get me to open the door.”

She looked at Ruiz then—really looked. And for the first time, she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer she was about to ask for.

“Jonah…” Her voice wavered. “Is he—?”

Ruiz shook his head.

Leah collapsed against the wall as a sound tore out of her. Not a scream. Not a sob.

Something deeper. Something broken clean through.

Mara crouched beside her. “Leah, listen to me. Whoever was here—whoever the f**k killed Jonah—they’re not finished.”

Ruiz checked the window. The fire escape was still trembling.

“He didn’t darn take anything,” he muttered. “Didn’t look for anything. He came here for only one thing.”

“To kill me,” Leah said.

Ruiz turned back to her. “No.”

Leah blinked at him, confused.

Ruiz’s voice lowered, steadier than he felt. “If he wanted you dead, he would’ve kicked the door in and ended it in seconds. He had the chance.”

Leah’s breathing quickened. “Then what did he want?”

Mara answered before he could.

“To terrify you. To let you know he can get to you whenever he wants.”

The apartment went quiet.

Leah felt her entire body tremble with the realization.

This wasn’t random.

Wasn’t desperate.

Wasn’t sloppy.

This was calculated.

Ruiz pocketed his buzzing phone without checking it. “We’re getting you out of here. Tonight. Right now.”

Leah looked between the two detectives, eyes glassy.

“He killed Jonah,” she whispered. “And he’s coming for me next.”

Ruiz didn’t deny it... But what he thought—what he didn’t say out loud—lodged in his chest like a stone:

Jonah’s killer wasn’t coming for Leah next. He already had..