Read Chapter 10: The Vanished Assistant

The call came at 7:12 AM, a frequency Marcus recognized as trouble before he even answered. Evelyn was still asleep upstairs, her door cracked open the way she insisted on now, as if proximity might cure the paranoia that had hollowed out her nights.

“Marcus?” The woman's voice on the line was thin, frayed at the edges. “My name is Patricia Hollis. I’m Jemma’s mother. Jemma Whitmore.”

He sat up straighter on the couch, the file folder on Bill Cotter’s progress sliding off his chest. Jemma. Evelyn’s former assistant. The one who’d quit without warning four months ago, just before the letters had escalated.

“Ms. Hollis,” he said, keeping his voice level. “What’s happened?”

“She’s gone. She hasn’t answered her phone in six days. That’s not like her. She calls me every Sunday without fail—she’s done it since she moved to London.” A wet breath. “Detectives say adults disappear all the time. They keep telling me she’ll turn up. But I know my daughter, Mr. Cole. Something is wrong.”

Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose. Six days. That meant Jemma had gone silent two days before the audition. Before the photographer with the military bearing. Before Terry Voss had vanished too.

“Did she mention anyone following her? Any concerns about work?”

“She wasn’t working. She’d been signed up with a temp agency, picking up odd jobs. But she was scared.” The mother’s voice hardened. “She said it was nothing, that she was being silly. But she asked me once—only once—if I thought someone could watch you without you ever knowing. I told her not to be dramatic.”

Marcus stood, moving toward the window, checking the street below out of habit. Empty. Cold. Grey London light.

“Ms. Hollis, I’m going to help you. Can you give me the address of her flat?”

Evelyn appeared at the top of the stairs as he ended the call, wrapped in a silk robe the color of ink, her dark hair tangled from sleep. She’d heard enough. Her eyes were sharp, the calculation in them now a permanent feature.

“Jemma’s missing.”

“Her mother thinks so.”

“Six days.” Evelyn descended, each step deliberate. “The same week the photographer showed up. The same week your friend Hendricks went dark.”

“I know.”

“And you were going to tell me?”

Marcus turned to face her fully. “I was going to check the flat first. No point bringing you into the middle of a police investigation until I knew it was connected.”

“Everything is connected.” Evelyn stopped in front of him, close enough that he could smell the faint lavender from her pillow. “Jemma left because she was scared. She told me the letters were getting to her. She said there was something wrong with the way the sender knew our schedule—down to when I took my tea breaks on set. I told her it was a dedicated fan. I talked her out of going to the police.”

Her jaw tightened. Blame, aimed inward.

“She quit a month later. Told me she felt watched. Not me—her. She felt like someone was watching her because she was close to me.” Evelyn’s voice cracked. “I thought she was being paranoid. I called it anxiety and hired a temp. Three weeks later, a man broke into my dressing room and left a photograph of me sleeping.”

Marcus absorbed that. A dressing room break-in. He’d read about it in the original case file, but her assistant’s departure had been logged as voluntary resignation. Nothing more.

“Evelyn.” He said her name quietly, deliberately, pulling her attention back. “What did the police do with Jemma’s statement?”

“Nothing. She’d given it before I reported the break-in. By the time anything happened, her notice had already come through.” Evelyn’s eyes glistened, but she forced the emotion down, replaced by that familiar steel. “Her laptop. Jemma logged my schedule for two years. She had access to everything—ride bookings, hotel reservations, the codes for my flat alarm when I was away. If the stalker got to her, that’s what he was after. Or what he wanted to make sure she couldn’t tell anyone.”

Marcus was already reaching for his coat. “Her mother said the police went through her flat. Found nothing useful. But her laptop’s missing—they logged it as an unknown item, but Mrs. Hollis says Jemma never went anywhere without it.”

“So someone got there first.” Evelyn was already pulling on jeans and a jumper, moving past him toward the hallway. “We’re going.”

“We’re not. You’re staying here where I can—“

“Where you can what? Protect me from behind a closed door?” She shrugged into her coat, anger sharpening her movements. “Jemma was mine, Marcus. Whatever she knew, she knew because of me. And whatever happened to her, it happened because she was close to me. I will not sit in a safe house while someone else I care about disappears.”

The word *care about* landed like a punch. They both felt it.

Marcus held her gaze for a long moment. Her chin lifted, defiance humming through her frame. He could restrain her—the thought crossed his mind, professional and cold. But he’d seen the shift in her over the past weeks. Locking her away would only make her more reckless.

“You stay behind me. You don’t touch anything. You don’t approach anyone. If I say run, you run—no arguments, no questions.”

“Fine.”

“And you tell me immediately if you recognize anything. Anything at all.”

She nodded, something like gratitude flickering through her guarded eyes. He handed her a burner phone from the drawer, already set to his frequency.

The flat was a ground-floor studio in Hackney, cluttered but clean in a way that suggested someone had recently tidied. The police had left fingerprint dust in swirls across the window ledges. Marcus moved through the space methodically, while Evelyn hovered near the entrance, her gaze sweeping over the details with an actor’s attention to human texture.

“Coffee mug in the sink, single. A book facedown on the table—page 214, creased spine.” Evelyn’s voice was quiet. “She was reading before she left. That’s normal for her. She never finished books on purpose—she said it kept the characters alive.”

Marcus checked the bedroom. Bed made. Wardrobe carefully ordered, no gaps that suggested a packed bag. He pulled open the drawer of the nightstand. Empty. The second drawer. Empty. He checked under the mattress, the pillowcases, the back of the radiator.

“No laptop,” he said, returning to the main room. “And no phone charger. If she left willingly, she would have taken them. She’d have needed her contacts for the temp agency.”

“But you said the police found nothing traceable.”

“Because whoever took her cleaned it first.” Marcus stopped by the window, running his finger along the sill. Fresh paint. Too fresh. He crouched, examining the corner where the paint was slightly bubbled. “This was repainted recently. Within the last few days.”

“To hide something?”

“Or someone.” He scanned the exterior. Graffiti on the wall across the street, a camera angle visible from the flat’s only window. He pulled out his phone, photographing the view, the street, the sightlines.

A memory surfaced. Hendricks, on his last tour, sketching out sightlines for a covert observation post. The same language of surveillance, written in the layout of this flat.

Marcus straightened, turning to Evelyn. “Her mother said Jemma mentioned a man with military bearing before she stopped answering calls?”

Color drained from Evelyn’s face. “She said he’d been asking questions about me. Around the block. At the café she used. She said he moved like someone trained. I thought she was spinning stories—she’d always had a vivid imagination. She used to joke that I was the actress and she was the writer.”

Marcus felt the cold math clicking into place. Hendricks, missing. Jemma, missing. Terry Voss, missing. The photographer, paid by a man with military bearing. All of them threads leading back to Evelyn. All of them cut, one by one.

“He’s cleaning up,” Marcus said, more to himself than to her. “Anyone who knew anything about your routine, anyone who could identify him—he’s removing them before we can find them.”

Evelyn’s hand went to her mouth. “Jemma knew what he looked like. She saw him. She told me so—she said he had a scar above his eyebrow, like an old cut. She could identify him. I didn’t listen. I told her to let it go.”

Marcus was already dialing Danny’s number, the next move already forming. They weren’t chasing a stalker anymore.

They were chasing a cleanup operation. And Evelyn was the last name left on the list.