Page 5 of For Silence

The police report loaded on screen, stark and official. Information about last night’s crime scene. Gina Bellwood, 29, defense attorney—her life reduced to sterile facts and figures. Morgan's gaze fixed on the photo attached to the file: blonde hair, petite frame, eyes that once held ambition now staring emptily back at her from a world beyond.

Derik's shadow fell across the kitchen tiles, elongating as he approached Morgan from behind. She didn't need to look up to know it was him; the gentle clink of a fork against a plate announced his presence just as much as the warmth radiating from his figure.

"Everything okay?" Derik's voice held a note of concern that Morgan felt piercing through the thick air of tension surrounding her. She was keeping a huge secret from him by not telling him about her meeting with Thomas, but she just couldn’t involve him anymore. Derik had already been swept into this before, and it had endangered him and his estranged son, who had to flee the country with his ex-wife to escape the men who’d framed Morgan. Derik was a weakness, and he’d be much safer left in the dark.

"Fine," she muttered, but the tightness in her voice betrayed her. She could feel his eyes on the laptop screen, on the official report and the face of Gina Bellwood staring back at them. "Just saw something last night...drove past an active crime scene.”

He leaned in closer, the smell of cooked bacon mingling with his aftershave. "A midnight drive? And you happened upon a crime scene?" There was a beat before he added, "Why didn't you wake me?"

Morgan shrugged, a defensive gesture she couldn't suppress. "Sometimes I just need to clear my head." It was true, yet not the whole truth, and she hated the necessity of these half-confessions.

"Okay." Derik let out a soft exhale, stepping away to place a plate brimming with bacon and eggs on the table before her. The mundane act seemed so disjointed from the gravity of last night's darkness.

"Thanks," Morgan said, though her appetite had evaporated. She forced herself to pick up the fork, to slice through the sunny-side-up egg and watch the yolk bleed over the plate—a vivid reminder of death under moonlight.

As she chewed mechanically, Morgan's mind wandered back to Gina Bellwood, laid out on the sidewalk, an image superimposed over countless case files she'd studied. There was a sense of déjà vu that she couldn't shake off, a link between this murder and a past case—or perhaps something more personal.

“So what’s the deal with this crime?” Derik asked, sitting beside her at the table with his own plate of food.

“Well, I couldn’t get much information at the scene,” Morgan explained. “It was fresh. Looks like someone strangled a woman with a rope, tied like a noose.”

Derik's fork paused halfway to his mouth, his eyes filled with questions. "Damn. That’s… intense.”

“I know.” Morgan sighed. “And here’s the report. Her name was Gina Bellwood, a defense attorney. There’s something familiar about it…”

Morgan trailed off. She pushed her food aside and opened her laptop. In the police reports, she looked up “defense attorney” and “homicide.”

Right below Gina’s report, there was another report from a little over a week ago.

With her heart in her throat, and Derik watching over her shoulder, Morgan opened it and read the details of the case. Elaine Harrows, thirty-five, another defense attorney. Only, she wasn’t strangled—the cause of death was ruled to be blunt-force trauma, and the investigation was open.

“Two female defense attorneys killed barely within a week,” Morgan muttered.

“But the MOs are different,” Derik pointed out.

“Yes, they are…”

Morgan dug deeper into the report the police had available for Elaine. She had recently acquitted a man named Harold Jones, who had been accused of murder—however, the evidence against him was circumstantial. Morgan read further on the crimes accused of Jones, and apparently, he had been accused of murdering someone by bashing a rock over the back of their head. Blunt-force trauma. The same way Elaine was killed.

Morgan blinked, her gaze shifting over to Derik. "It’s the same. Elaine's murder and the man she managed to get acquitted, it’s the same method—blunt-force trauma.”

Derik's eyebrows furrowed, confusion playing across his face. "So, are you saying Jones killed her? Or someone tried to frame him?"

"I’m not sure yet," Morgan admitted, still sifting through the information available. “Looks like the cops cleared Jones. He had a rock-solid alibi, so it wasn’t him.”

“Hm,” Derik said. “Well, it’s out of our hands, Morgan. These cases belong to the police.”

“I know, but something’s not sitting right.”

She keyed in Gina Bellwood's name and read through her latest cases. There was a controversial one: Gina had a defendant, Christopher Gilmore, accused of domestic abuse against a minor—his own child. Gina had gotten Gilmore out of it.

Morgan’s blood froze over.

Gilmore hadn’t just been accused of domestic abuse—he’d been accused of threatening to strangle his child with a noose.

The pieces clicked together in her mind, the same way one fits the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle with a satisfied sigh. Except there was no satisfaction here, only dread pooling in her gut like acid. The room seemed suddenly colder, the reality of it all descending upon her with an icy blow.

"Gilmore, Christopher," Morgan murmured under her breath. She turned the laptop screen towards Derik, showing him the case file she'd been reading. "Gina Bellwood's defendant. Accused of domestic violence and threatening his child with a noose."

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