Page 1 of Quiet

Prologue: Sofia

WhenIgotmyfirst gig as a reporter, I thought I'd be unearthing scandals, writing thinkpieces, calling out corruption. Instead, I'm known for one thing only: coming up with a corny name for a deadly killer.

I thought I would catch him. Instead, I made him famous.

And it turns out that catchy names don’t win journalists awards.

I called him the Orchid Strangler before anyone else did. It wasn’t in an article, not at first; it was in a conversation with my brother.

He asked me what I was working on after we’d drank a bottle of wine together, Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins talking quietly on his TV screen. I filled him in on the puff pieces I had been assigned before I told him about the passion project I had managed to convince my editor to let me pursue.

She wasn’t buying it, at first, but she said there might be a story there. And she let me take it on, as long as I kept up with the rest of my workload. If she really thought this was worthwhile, she would’ve given it to one of the more seasoned reporters, but I wasn’t going to talk her out of it. I accepted the fact that she seemed to take pity on me with gladness.

I would prove her wrong. I was absolutely sure of it.

”So you think there’s a serial killer around?” Sam asked skeptically, the dim yellow light of his living room catching in his jet black hair.

”I’m not saying that.”

”Well, what are you saying, then?”

”People are going missing, Sam,” I said, waving my wine glass around and spilling drops of it on his ikea coffee table. ”Someone is killing them, and the police aren’t doing anything about it. No offense.”

”People are always going missing, Sof,” he replied, putting his empty glass down next to a coaster. ”There are not enough cops and too many cases of people disappearing. Trust me.”

”I do trust you,” I replied. ”It’s your superiors I don’t trust. Bureaucracy is always stupid. Mix bureaucracy and policing and you have a recipe for disaster.”

Sam laughed quietly, leaning back on the sofa, his gaze settling on the spinning ceiling overhead. ”I want to tell you you’re wrong.”

”I know you do,” I said, slumping down as I drank the last of my wine. The bottle was turned away from me and I couldn’t read the label. My arms felt too heavy to reach out and turn it around, so I looked at my brother instead. ”What is this? Zinfandel?”

”Yes,” he said. ”Should we open another one?”

”In a minute. My head is spinning.”

He sighed, running his hand through his hair. ”I wish you’d be more careful. Maybe ask your editor to assign you to the organized crime stories or something? I can give you the scoop on the Mercy Drive Blades,” he said. ”All the scoop. Where they hang out, what they’re doing. I mean, technically, I’m not allowed to talk about it, but…”

”Tempting,” I replied. ”But after something like this happens, even the Blades aren’t big enough. I mean, what’s the story there?Gang moved drugs? Shocker.”

”Yes,” he said. ”Gang moved drugs! Gang bad for community!”

I laughed. ”Okay, I take your point, but I don’t think Alayna is going to let me work on anything other than what I’ve already pitched her and I don’t want to piss her off more than I already have,” I said. ”Plus, what if thereissomething here? What if it’s something huge?”

He mulled over that for a few seconds, his brow furrowed in concern. ”Okay, Sof,” he said. ”Let’s say that this is a serial killer. How do you know they wouldn’t target you if you tried to expose them?”

I laughed. ”I’m counting on it. Bring it on. You’ll protect me, right?”

”I’m not even a detective yet. I don’t know how much I could protect you.”

I shook my head, suddenly getting serious. Sam was two years younger than me, but he had already done plenty to protect me after we lost our parents. He’d only been nineteen years old at the time. I felt the weight of the grief and responsibility for him crushing me, but he was steadfast and supportive, until I managed to claw myself out of the grips of the worst depressive period of my entire life.

He’d been there through it all. I would’ve done anything for him before that; he was family, after all. But after that year, he also became my closest friend.

”You don’t actually have to do anything, Sammy. I was joking,” I said. ”You don’t have to protect me from the Orchid Strangler.”

I thought he would laugh, but he paled instead. ”The Orchid Strangler?”

”Do you like it? I just came up with it.”

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