As he reflects on the chaot­ic night, Jerome’s words alter­nate between grim humor and gen­uine con­cern, his cop­ing mech­a­nism for deal­ing with the ter­ri­fy­ing help­less­ness of watch­ing some­one he cares about suf­fer. He reveals to Hol­ly that Vera’s drink­ing has spi­raled out of con­trol, rais­ing sus­pi­cions that she may also be abus­ing oth­er sub­stances. The thought trou­bles him, not just because of Vera’s well-being, but because of the rip­ple effect it could have on her son, Peter—a boy whose dis­ap­pear­ance has already sent waves of unease through their com­mu­ni­ty.

The con­ver­sa­tion shifts as Hol­ly lis­tens care­ful­ly, pro­cess­ing the details with her usu­al method­i­cal approach, though there is an unspo­ken heav­i­ness in the air. She has spent end­less hours por­ing over miss­ing per­sons cas­es, the weight of their unre­solved fates press­ing down on her with each pass­ing day. The unset­tling num­ber of dis­ap­pear­ances in their com­mu­ni­ty no longer feels like a coin­ci­dence, and as she speaks with Pete Hunt­ley, her inves­tiga­tive instincts sharp­en, though the call is over­shad­owed by Pete’s lin­ger­ing health strug­gles from his bat­tle with COVID-19.

The pan­dem­ic looms over every­thing, affect­ing not just their work but their per­son­al lives, forc­ing them to nav­i­gate an already frac­tured sys­tem while deal­ing with the lim­i­ta­tions imposed by ill­ness and grief. Hol­ly, hard­ened by years of inves­ti­ga­tion, is no stranger to tragedy, but the sheer scale of suffering—both from the miss­ing per­sons cas­es and the pan­dem­ic itself—leaves her feel­ing more exhaust­ed than ever. Yet, even as she acknowl­edges her fatigue, she knows she can­not afford to stop search­ing for answers, espe­cial­ly when the con­nec­tions between these dis­ap­pear­ances seem to grow more omi­nous by the day.

Lat­er, Hol­ly reach­es out to Lakeisha Stone, a woman whose fear and sad­ness over Bon­nie Rae Dahl’s dis­ap­pear­ance spill through the phone line like an open wound. Lakeisha speaks in a hushed, anx­ious voice, her words punc­tu­at­ed by the kind of wor­ry that nev­er fades, the kind that lingers in the back of your mind no mat­ter how much time pass­es. The pain in her voice is all too famil­iar to Hol­ly, echo­ing the count­less fam­i­lies she has encoun­tered over the years, each one trapped in an ago­niz­ing lim­bo, wait­ing for answers that may nev­er come.

The more Hol­ly lis­tens, the more con­vinced she becomes that these miss­ing per­sons cas­es are not iso­lat­ed inci­dents but pieces of a much larg­er, far more sin­is­ter puz­zle. There is a pat­tern hid­den beneath the sur­face, buried under lay­ers of tragedy and mis­for­tune, wait­ing to be uncov­ered. Hol­ly under­stands that time is not on her side—the longer these cas­es remain unsolved, the slim­mer the chances of find­ing the miss­ing alive, and she refus­es to let anoth­er per­son slip through the cracks with­out a fight.

As the evening drags on, Hol­ly finds her­self caught in a famil­iar cycle, her mind bounc­ing between per­son­al reflec­tion and pro­fes­sion­al duty. The pan­dem­ic has placed an unde­ni­able strain on every aspect of life, a grim reminder of how frag­ile human exis­tence tru­ly is. Yet, even as she acknowl­edges the uncer­tain­ty of the world around her, she clings to the one thing she has always relied on—her unwa­ver­ing deter­mi­na­tion to seek the truth, no mat­ter the obsta­cles in her way.

This chap­ter inter­twines themes of per­son­al strug­gle, soci­etal col­lapse, and the relent­less pur­suit of jus­tice, paint­ing a grip­ping por­trait of lives caught in cri­sis. Holly’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the miss­ing per­sons cas­es grows more urgent, her resolve hard­en­ing with every new detail she uncov­ers. As she pieces togeth­er frag­ments of con­ver­sa­tions, med­ical emer­gen­cies, and van­ish­ing indi­vid­u­als, she begins to sense the chill­ing reality—something far more sin­is­ter is lurk­ing beneath the sur­face of their already frac­tured com­mu­ni­ty, and she is run­ning out of time to expose it.