Dead Men and Paper Trails

The rain had come in slow during the night, fine and misting, just enough to cling to the streets and dampen the heat. Jessica sat in the office, a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray beside her, untouched but burning down all the same. The small television in the corner flickered, muted, the crawl of the news casting ghostly shapes across the walls.

She wasn’t watching the news. Not really. She was watching the spaces between things, the quiet hollows of memory, the missing gaps in her own past.

Jason Carter had lived a life before he disappeared. He had been a kid in South Carolina, a college athlete, a person with a history that stretched back further than she could reach. She had always thought that was hers, too. That she had stepped from one life into another, same soul, new body.

But Jason Carter was dead.

Had been dead for a long time. A decade, at least. A body in the ground while she walked the earth, wearing his face like borrowed skin.

Jessica ran a hand over her jaw, staring at the cigarette burning to nothing. What the hell did that make her?

Leanna was pacing. She had been pacing for the last twenty minutes, chewing on a pen cap, irritation rolling off her in waves. Jessica could hear it in the sharp click of her heels against the wood floor, the restless shift of movement, the way she hadn’t said a word since the news broke.

The first report had been about Langford’s arrest. They’d pulled him in for Jason’s murder, dug up some half-century-old DNA match, wrapped the whole thing up in a tidy little scandal.

Jessica had stared at the screen, not speaking, while Olivia swore under her breath and Leanna sat stone-faced, unreadable.

Then, three nights later, another headline. Dr. Elliot Langford found dead in his cell. Apparent suicide.

Same method. Same timeline. Like a ghost story told in repetition. The Epstein way out.

Leanna stopped pacing long enough to snap, "This is bullshit."

Jessica exhaled. "Tell me something I don’t know."

Leanna turned, crossing her arms tight against her chest. "You’re quiet. Too quiet. That’s not a good sign."

Jessica leaned back in her chair, rubbing at her temple. "I’m thinking."

"That’s what I’m worried about."

Jessica let out a sharp breath of laughter, empty and humorless. "What do you want me to say, Leanna? We both knew Langford didn’t kill Jason. We both knew they’d never let him talk."

Leanna’s jaw tensed. "We don’t know anything, Jess. That’s the problem. We don’t know where this ends. We don’t even know where it starts."

Jessica looked at her then, really looked at her. Leanna was frayed at the edges, held together by sheer will. She’d been unraveling for days, but she was too proud to say it, too stubborn to admit what was already written in the lines of her face.

"You don’t want to talk about it, do you?" Jessica asked, voice quieter now. "You don’t want to talk about the fact that Jason’s death means you might’ve wasted half your life chasing something that was never real."

Leanna went still. Not a muscle moved, but Jessica saw the reaction anyway, the flicker in her gaze, the way her breath caught. A hit. A clean one.

"Screw you, Jess," Leanna muttered, looking away.

Jessica huffed out a breath, shaking her head. "Not what I meant. I just… I get it, okay? I get what it feels like to not know where you come from. But I need to figure this out. I need to understand what I am."

Leanna turned back to her, arms still crossed, but her posture had shifted, less anger now, more exhaustion. "And what if there’s no answer? What if you were made in some lab like those clones in Argentina? What if you were never meant to be anything more than another failed experiment?"

Jessica rolled her shoulders, staring at the ceiling for a moment before dropping her gaze back to Leanna. "Then I need to know that, too."

Leanna sighed, running a hand through her hair. "We’re watching the news cycle, waiting for another name to drop. Another loose end to tie up. We’re sitting here, waiting for the next shoe to fall, and I…"

She cut herself off. Didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to.

Jessica nodded, slow. "Yeah. I know."

Outside, the rain kept falling. The news continued to scroll on the muted screen, Langford’s mugshot frozen in time beneath the words Suicide or Cover-Up?

Jessica already knew the answer. So did Leanna. So did Olivia.

And somewhere out there, whoever pulled the strings was already getting ready to make their next move.