A THRILLING MYSTERY COMING SOON

I came home after a long meeting with my publisher, and my front door was ajar. At first, I thought I’d left it that way in the morning—hardly unusual, given how scattered I’d felt all week. But as I stepped closer, the strip of darkness between door and jamb seemed to widen, swallowing what little light spilled from the hallway behind me. The cottage was silent. Too silent. No hum from the fridge, no clatter from the pipes. Just the heavy thud of my own heart as I pushed the door open with one finger. Inside, nothing looked out of place. My shoes lined up by the wall, jacket slung over the banister, keys still in the blue bowl on the table. But there was an edge to the silence, as if the room itself was holding its breath. That’s when I noticed it—the faint chemical tang in the air, sharp and unfamiliar. Almost like hospital gloves that have that smell. And if they used those gloves, there won’t be any finger prints anywhere. Someone had been here. After dinner, I settled into the familiar groove of my old armchair, remote in hand, letting the evening news flicker to life on the TV. The anchorman’s voice was just background noise, a static hum. My mind kept drifting—as it always did—to the half-finished manuscript sitting on my desk upstairs. I was reaching for my mug when something in the room tugged at me. Not a sound, exactly—more like the absence of one. I looked over at the bookcase, expecting the same cluttered chaos that always greeted me. But a wedge of blank space caught my eye. One of my books was gone. I frowned, counting the rows. My name glared up from several spines: Connor Shea, and I’d written enough over the years to fill 1 shelf. But the third one, with the rainy blue hardback—the one no one ever really talks about—was just... missing. It was a true-crime story I wrote 7 years ago. Friends sometimes borrowed my books, but they always asked first. No notes, no texts, no dent in the dust beside the empty slot.