Madison's unanswered text to Ethan lingered in the back of Maya's mind as morning broke, sirens slicing straight through the illusion of routine. The shrill sound wasn't the soft wake-up call of an alarm; it was urgent, raw, and wrong. Something terrible had happened. The whole campus felt it before anyone even said a word.
News traveled faster than the warning bell. A groundskeeper had stumbled on a body near the athletic fields, just past the tree line where the manicured grass surrendered to the wild woods. No one knew who it was. That didn't matter yet—the only thing that mattered was that it was someone. Police moved in like a storm, yellow tape fluttering, flashlights darting, barking orders that scattered the early runners and shut down half the athletic complex. Even the coaches looked lost, pacing the parking lot with tight jaws, avoiding their players' eyes.
