Unwanted Blood (Harper) novel Chapter 34

Chapter 34

288 (Vouchers

Chapter 34

Harper’s POV

The glow from my laptop was the only light in the apartment. My eyes burned, but I couldn’t stop scrolling.

I’d been digging through archived newspapers for hours-tiny local papers, the kind that barely anyone read, the kind that don’t have websites, just scanned PDFs from microfilm. Vancouver Maritime Gazette. Port Authority Weekly. The kind of publications where nobody bothers to digitize properly.

Then I found it. ̧

A half-page article buried on page six of the October 2006 issue of the Pacific Coastal Times. The headline was bland, bureaucratic:

“An engineer Missing Following Incident at Wilson-Westbrook Joint Port Facility.”

I leaned closer. The text was short.

An engineer had fallen from a cargo crane into the harbor during what the report called a “routine safety inspection.” Search teams combed the water for three days. No body was recovered. The case was ruled an accidental drowning.

The engineer’s name was redacted. But the article mentioned he was thirty-two years old, and that he “leaves behind a wife and young child.”

Twenty years ago. A Wilson-Westbrook joint project. A dead engineer. No body.

My fingers moved without thinking. I typed: “engineer drowned Wilson Westbrook port accident.”

The results were garbage-mostly the same article copied across different archive sites. Then, on page four, a link to an old forum thread on a maritime workers’ message board. The forum hadn’t been updated since 2012.

The thread had three posts.

The first one was anonymous, posted two weeks after the incident:

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“That wasn’t an accident. He was asking questions about the Westbrook contract. Someone made him shut up.”

No replies for two days. Then:

“My cousin worked security at that port. He said the crane harness was cut. Not worn-cut. Clean slice.”

And the third post, from a different anonymous user, dated two months later:

“Heard the widow ended up working for the Wilsons. As a maid. Can you imagine? Twenty years scrubbing floors for the people who killed her husband.”

I stopped breathing.

The Wilsons’ maid.

I thought of every maid who’d worked in that house. The ones who’d looked at me with disgust. The ones who’d gone out of their way to make my life harder when my brothers weren’t watching.

Then I remind Martha, who’d vanished right before I left. She always looked at me like I was something she’d scraped off her shoe.

What if Martha wasn’t just a maid? What if she was the engineer’s widow? Working for the Wilsons-for the people who, maybe, had something to do with her husband’s death?

For twenty years.

Living in the same house as the people she might have blamed. Cleaning their floors. Serving

their meals.

I sat back slowly, my hands cold on the keyboard.

I took a screenshot of the forum thread and the newspaper article. Then I opened my messages

and sent both to Colton.

“Martha, the maid who left before I did. Do you know anything about her family”?”

I waited. The cursor blinked. The apartment was dead quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator

Four minutes later:

“Martha? I barely remember her. Mom hired her before I was born, I think. She left abruptly about a year ago. No forwarding address.”

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“I don’t know anything about her family. But I’ll look into it. Starting now.”

–

288 Vouchers

I’d never turned in. At 7:03 a.m, the doorbell rang.

The sun had come up while I was still staring at the same forum thread, and now my eyes felt like sandpaper and my neck was stiff from hunching over the desk.

I shuffled to the door, pulled it open, and found Ryder on the other side.

He was wearing the same clothes from yesterday. His hair was messy, his jaw shadowed with stubble, dark circles carved under his eyes. He looked like he’d been awake as long as I had.

In his hand was a brown paper bag. Steam was rising from the top.

“You didn’t sleep,” he said. Not a question.

I didn’t answer.

He held out the bag. I stared at it for a second, then reached out and took it.

The paper was warm. I could smell cocoa through it, and something buttery.

I stepped back half a pace and turned my shoulder toward the hallway. “Come in.”

Ryder froze. His eyes widened slightly, like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right. Then he nodded, slowly, and stepped over the threshold.

His hands in his coat pockets, looking around. He was afraid to touch anything.

I carried the bag to the kitchen counter and opened it. Hot chocolate. A croissant-flaky, golden, still warm. And a small container of cut fruit.

I picked up the croissant and took a bite. The butter crumbled. It was perfect.

“It’s good,” I said, not looking at him. “Thank you.” I heard him exhale.

Just then, my phone buzzed on the counter.

A video message. From a number I didn’t recognize.

I tapped it.

The screen filled with grainy footage-dark, shaky, like it had been filmed with a phone in low light. The camera moved through what looked like a warehouse. Concrete floor. Metal shelving

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Chapter 34

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