Jessie Wilson did not frighten easily. Fear was useful. She had learned that young. Fear sharpened the senses, accelerated thought and reminded you that whatever was happening mattered. Panic was the problem and panic made people stupid. Jessie had watched armed men panic. She had watched experienced criminals make catastrophic decisions because somebody unexpected knocked on a door. She had watched people confess to things they hadn’t done simply because silence frightened them more than consequences.
Fear was information, and right now, Jessie’s fear was telling her something was very wrong.
She sat at her kitchen table with the photograph beneath the brightest light in the apartment. The girl in the picture was unquestionably her. Nineteen years old. Shorter hair. Thinner face. Black leather jacket she’d bought secondhand and worn until one sleeve began separating at the shoulder.
She remembered that jacket. She remembered stealing it, actually. Not one of her finer moments. She’d been nineteen, broke and really angry at pretty much the entire world. A woman had left the jacket hanging over the back of a chair in a crowded bar. Jessie had walked out wearing it and felt guilty about it for almost fifteen minutes.
The photograph was real and that was what bothered her.
Jessie turned it over again. Nothing. No date. No writing. No developer’s mark. Just an old photograph someone had deliberately attached to a threat.
She looked at the man standing beside her. His face had been scratched away so violently that the paper had nearly torn. Jessie studied everything else instead. He was taller than she was, with broad shoulders and a dark shirt. His left arm rested behind Jessie, although she couldn’t tell whether his hand was touching her back.
She seemed comfortable beside him which bothered her more than the missing face. Since Jessie didn’t like people touching her which meant she’d trusted him.
The building behind them was brick, three storeys, with narrow windows and a green door. There was part of a sign visible over Jessie’s shoulder. Only three letters remained unobstructed.
RCH.
Jessie stared at them. Nothing. She closed her eyes. Still nothing.
She tried to remember where she’d been living at nineteen. That part was easy. A miserable basement apartment with orange carpeting and a landlord named Dennis who believed repairs were a government conspiracy. Jessie had been working evenings at a bar and stealing during the day.
Small things then like wallets, jewelry and electronics. Sometimes cars.
She hadn’t met Gabriel yet. At least, she didn’t think she had.
Jessie’s eyes opened.
Didn’t think.
That phrase bothered her. She stood, walked to the bedroom and pulled an old cardboard box from the top shelf of the closet. This wasn’t the locked case. This was worse.
Photographs. Receipts. Letters. The debris of a life. Jessie rarely looked through it because nostalgia made her uncomfortable. She carried the box into the kitchen and dumped everything onto the table. Twenty minutes later, she found an old driver’s licence. Jessie Wilson. Age nineteen. Same haircut. Same face. She placed it beside the photograph.
It was definitely her. Then she found something else – a calendar.
Jessie stared at it. She had always kept calendars. Not because she was organized, but because she had been paranoid. Where had she been? Who had she met? What shift had she worked? What excuse had she given someone? When you lied frequently, records prevented contradictions.
Jessie flipped through the pages. January, February, March. Notes everywhere. Work. Rent. Names. Phone numbers.
Then June. It was blank. So was July, August, September and November.
December contained only two words: Start over.
Jessie stared at them. She didn’t remember writing that. She sat very still.
Almost six months of her life were missing. Not metaphorically. She could remember being nineteen. She could remember the apartment. She could remember jobs, people and places. But when she tried to put those memories in chronological order, there was a hole.
Jessie had always assumed it was because that period of her life had been chaotic. But now, she wasn’t so sure. She reached for her phone.
Gabriel answered after two rings. “You again.”
“When did we meet?”
Silence. Jessie’s stomach tightened. “Gabriel?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“One with an answer.”
“You know when.”
“Tell me.”
“Jessie—”
“Tell me.”
Another pause.
“Twenty years ago.”
Jessie looked at the calendar. “I was twenty-three.”
“Approximately.”
“Approximately?”
“I don’t remember the exact date.”
“You remember the exact date you bought your first Mercedes.”
“That was an important day.”
“Gabriel.”
He sighed. “You were twenty-two or twenty-three.”
“You’re lying.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“You inhale before you lie when you haven’t prepared the answer.”
“I do not.”
“You just did it again.”
“Maybe talking to you is giving me respiratory problems.”
Jessie ignored him. “Did you know me when I was nineteen?”
“No.”
Too fast. There it was. Jessie stood. “Gabriel.”
“I said no.”
“You answered before I finished processing the question.”
“Because the answer is no.”
Jessie looked at the photograph. “Then why are you lying?”
“I am not lying.”
“Come to my apartment.”
“No.” That surprised her.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“That’s never stopped you before.”
“Jessie, leave this alone.”
She laughed softly. “That sentence is becoming extremely popular.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Gabriel’s voice changed. “Listen to me. Whatever Nathan found, whatever somebody sent you, you need to give it to the police and walk away.”
“The police?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve spent twenty years telling me the police are the last people we involve.”
“Things change.”
“No. People get scared.”
Silence.
Jessie’s voice softened. “Gabriel, what happened when I was nineteen?”
He hung up. Jessie stared at the phone.
“Well,” she said to the empty apartment. “That’s not suspicious at all.”
She called back. Straight to voicemail. “Coward.”
Jessie returned to the photograph. RCH. She searched her memory rather than the internet. Restaurants. Warehouses. Hotels. Clubs.
Nothing. Then something surfaced. Not a memory exactly, but a word. Research.
Jessie froze. Research Centre? She stared at the photograph again. The building didn’t look like a research facility.
Maybe the letters were at the end of a word. Church. Jessie felt the room change.
RCH. Church.
A sensation passed through her so quickly she almost missed it. Cold tile beneath bare feet. Jessie grabbed the edge of the table and then it was gone.
“What the hell?” She closed her eyes. Nothing. She pictured the building. Green door. Brick. Narrow windows. Church. Another fragment.
Rain.
Someone shouting.
A man’s hand around her wrist.
Jessie’s eyes flew open. Her breathing had changed. She stood quickly and knocked the chair backward.
For several seconds, she simply stared at the photograph. Then she remembered something else.
It wasn’t an image, it was an sentence.
Don’t let them see you’re afraid.
Jessie knew those words.
Someone had said them to her.
A man.
The man in the photograph?
She couldn’t see his face. Couldn’t hear his voice clearly. But she remembered the feeling of standing beside him.
Safe.
That was worse.
Jessie picked up the old phone.
Victor answered immediately this time. “You shouldn’t be calling me.”
“You said the file was about me.”
“I said too much.”
“Who was I with when I was nineteen?”
Victor said nothing.
“I have a photograph.”
Still nothing.
“There’s a man standing beside me. His face has been scratched out.”
Victor breathed slowly. Jessie heard it.
“You know who he is.”
“Destroy the photograph.”
“No.”
“Jessie.”
“Who is he?”
“Destroy it.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever gave it to you wants you asking exactly these questions.”
“Excellent. It’s working.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“I wasn’t joking.” Victor swore quietly. Jessie waited.
Finally he said, “There are people from your past you don’t remember.”
“That’s becoming increasingly obvious.”
“You were young.”
“I was nineteen, not four.”
“You were in trouble.”
“What kind?”
“The kind you couldn’t steal your way out of.”
Jessie’s jaw tightened. “What happened?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“But you know.”
“I know pieces.”
“Give them to me.”
“No.”
Jessie laughed once. “You people really need new material.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“So is everyone, apparently, while a sixteen-year-old girl is missing because of something connected to me.”
Victor didn’t answer.
Jessie’s voice hardened. “If Emily dies because all of you were too frightened to tell me the truth, I will never forgive any of you.”
“You think that’s the worst thing that can happen?”
Jessie stopped. “What does that mean?”
Victor was quiet for several seconds before saying, “Ask Gabriel about St. Catherine’s.”
and then the line went dead. Jessie immediately searched the name. There were hundreds. Schools. Hospitals. Churches. Community centres. She added the city where she’d lived at nineteen. Seven results came back. One was a church.
St. Catherine’s Church. Closed seventeen years ago.
Jessie’s pulse quickened. She found an archived photograph. It was brick, three storeys attached to the rear with narrow windows and a green door.
Jessie slowly placed her phone beside the photograph. It was the same building.
She had been there but she had absolutely no memory of it.
The church had closed after a fire. Jessie read further. The fire had occurred twenty-four years earlier.
She would have been nineteen.
One person had died.
Jessie stopped scrolling.
The victim was a man named Daniel Mercer. Age twenty-eight. There was no photograph accompanied the article. Jessie searched his name but nothing useful appeared at first. Then she found another archived article and a short obituary.
Finally, an old newspaper photograph loaded. Jessie held her breath. Daniel Mercer stood outside St. Catherine’s Church wearing a dark shirt. He was tall with broad shoulders, and his face was clearly visible.
Jessie looked at the photograph on her table. The man beside her had no face anymore, but the body matched. The height, the shoulders, the clothing.
Jessie stared at Daniel’s newspaper photograph and suddenly something slammed into her memory.
A laugh. Warm. Male.
“You’re terrible at following instructions.”
Then another fragment. Daniel wrapping a bandage around Jessie’s hand.
“You can’t punch everything that scares you.”
Jessie’s chest tightened. Another memory came. It was of a kitchen. Daniel making coffee. Jessie sitting on a counter.
Then his voice. “If anything happens to me, you run.”
Jessie pushed away from the table. “No.”
The memories came faster.
Rain.
Blood.
The green door.
Daniel shouting her name.
Fire.
Jessie stumbled backward.
She remembered smoke.
She remembered someone dragging her.
She remembered screaming.
Then nothing.
Jessie found herself sitting on the kitchen floor although she didn’t remember sitting down.
Her hands were shaking.
Daniel Mercer.
She knew him. Not casually, not as an acquaintance. She had loved him. The realization didn’t arrive like a recovered memory, it arrived like grief.
Immediate, violent, impossible. Jessie covered her mouth.
For twenty-four years she had lived without knowing she’d once loved someone who died.
Her phone rang, but Jessie almost didn’t answer.
Gabriel. She stared at his name before accepting the call.
“What?”
His voice was urgent. “Jessie, get out of your apartment.”
She stood. “What?”
“Now.”
Her body reacted before her mind did. She moved toward the door, then stopped.
“No. Tell me why.”
“Because someone knows you found St. Catherine’s.”
Jessie went cold. “How do you know that?”
“Because they called me.”
“Who?”
“Jessie, move.”
She grabbed her coat. “What did they say?”
Gabriel hesitated. Jessie opened the apartment door. “What did they say?”
“They said you remembered Daniel.” Jessie froze.
Nobody knew that. Not Victor, not Gabriel. She hadn’t even spoken Daniel’s name aloud.
“How?”
“I don’t know.” Jessie stepped into the hallway. Then she saw it, her neighbour’s door was open.
The woman who had trusted Jessie with her plants lived there.
Mrs. Alvarez. She was seventy-one, widowed and made the worst banana bread and insisted it was excellent.
Jessie’s stomach dropped.
“Mrs. Alvarez?” There was no answer. Jessie crossed the hallway.
“Jessie, what are you doing?” Gabriel demanded.
“My neighbour’s door is open.”
“Don’t go inside.”
Jessie ignored him.
“Mrs. Alvarez?” She entered but the apartment was empty. There was no sign of a struggle, no blood and nothing broken. Jessie walked into the living room.
The television was on. A cup of tea sat on the table, and steam still rose from it. Her neighbour had been there minutes ago. That was when Jessie saw the envelope. It rested on the couch and her name was written across the front.
JESSIE.
She didn’t touch it. “Gabriel.”
“What?”
“They took my neighbour.” Silence. Jessie’s voice changed and all warmth had disappeared.
“They took an innocent seventy-one-year-old woman because she lives across the hall from me.”
“Jessie—”
“They’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?” Jessie looked toward her own apartment.
The accountant, his wife & children, Emily and now Mrs. Alvarez. Once again, people outside the world paying for the people inside it. This was exactly what Jessie had been trying to escape – exactly why she’d left.
She stared at the envelope. “They’re using innocent people because they think that’s how you control someone like me.”
Gabriel’s voice became quiet. “Isn’t it?”
Jessie didn’t answer because it was. That was the horrible part. Twenty-two years of criminal work hadn’t taught Jessie compassion, it had taught her leverage. And now someone was using hers.
She put the phone on speaker and carefully opened the envelope without touching more than necessary.
Inside was another photograph. It was of Emily Carter – alive. She was sitting on a chair and beside her was Mrs. Alvarez, also alive and terrified.
Jessie’s jaw clenched. There was writing beneath the photograph.
COME HOME, JESSIE.
Underneath it was an address. Jessie stared at the words.
Gabriel asked, “What is it?”
Jessie didn’t answer immediately, because she recognized the address.
St. Catherine’s Church.
The building had supposedly been abandoned for seventeen years. Jessie looked at the photograph of Emily and Mrs. Alvarez.
Then at the address and then she understood. This had never been about frightening her away, The warning hadn’t actualy been a warning. The photograph hadn’t been a threat.
Nathan hadn’t accidentally discovered some forgotten piece of Jessie’s life. Someone had been laying a trail.
Emily, the photograph, Daniel, Mrs. Alvarez. Every step had been designed to make Jessie do exactly what she was doing now. Remember.
Gabriel was still speaking. “Jessie? Talk to me.”
She picked up the phone. “They don’t want me to stop looking.”
“What?”
Jessie stared at the words COME HOME.
“They never did.”
“Then what do they want?”
Jessie thought about Daniel Mercer. The man she’d loved. The man she’d forgotten. The man who had died in a fire at St. Catherine’s twenty-four years ago. Then she thought about the missing six months in her calendar.
Start over.
Someone had taken something from Jessie long before she became an expert at taking things from everyone else and whoever had done it was still alive.
“They want me to remember what happened at St. Catherine’s.” Gabriel went silent.
That silence told Jessie everything.
“You know.”
“Jessie—”
“You know what happened there.”
“I know what they told me.”
“Who?” Gabriel didn’t answer.
Jessie’s voice dropped. “Who told you?”
When Gabriel finally spoke, there was something in his voice Jessie had never heard before. Shame.
“You did.”
Jessie stopped. “What?”
“You told me what happened at St. Catherine’s.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I don’t remember you.”
“I know.” Jessie’s entire body went still.
Gabriel continued. “You were nineteen when we met.”
The room seemed to tilt. “You told me twenty-two.”
“Yeah, well, I lied.”
“Why?”
“Because you asked me to.” Jessie couldn’t speak. Gabriel’s next words came slowly.
“You didn’t forget Daniel by accident.” Jessie stared at the photograph of two innocent people being held because of her.
“What are you saying?”
“You made us promise never to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” Gabriel inhaled.
And this time Jessie knew he wasn’t preparing to lie. “You asked us to make sure you never remembered him.”
Jessie closed her eyes. “Why would I do that?”
Gabriel was silent for so long that Jessie thought the call had disconnected.
Then he answered. “Because Daniel Mercer didn’t die in that fire.”
Jessie’s eyes opened. Gabriel’s voice dropped almost to a whisper.
“You killed him.”
Come back tomorrow for the next chapter….
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