𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚁𝚘𝚐𝚎𝚛𝚜' 𝙲𝚊𝚜𝚎

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Toby creaked open the door with the safe tucked under one arm. He wanted to open it himself, but he wondered if he could get the password from Y/N before he tried to pry it open.

Toby looked inside the cabin to see that the lights were off. A hint of worry entered his expression, and he set the safe on the kitchen counter.

Toby went to the back of the cabin, toward his room, to see where Y/N was hiding. She wasn't hiding at all; in fact, she was sleeping under the heavy quilt on his bed. Toby froze at the sight, not sure if she was actually sleeping. He didn't blame her for sleeping after such a long trip here, but he was also surprised she was able to sleep after he abducted her.

Toby tilted his head, his eyes wandering to her clothes. She wasn't wearing the things she had on before she got here; she was wearing his clothes.

A faint blush crept up his neck as he resisted the urge to see what she was wearing fully; from what he could see, she was in one of his old band-tees. Toby hasn't worn that shirt in a few years, and he was surprised she was even able to find it.

Toby stood in the doorway, his shadow cast on the bed from the light in the other room. There was a temptation to stay there and watch her rest, which he was able to fight off.

Toby locked the front door with his house key and tucked it into his jeans pocket. With a sigh, he took a comfortable change of clothes: basketball shorts and a large shirt. He set them on the edge of the bed and went to the bathroom to shower. His mind went to a different thought.

Toby hasn't showered in... Actually, he can't remember the last time he showered. He peeled off his clothes, which smelled bad from the dried blood and dirt that covered them, and got in the shower.

The shower was small, but he didn't mind; it kept him from staying in there for too long-not that he's ever been in the shower for a long time. After washing his hair and the parts of his body that were particularly smelly, he dried off with a towel.

Toby could see the steam that rose off his body, but he didn't necessarily feel any warmer. He did feel a hell of a lot cleaner, though. It almost felt like he washed off an entire layer of his skin.

Toby wrapped the towel around his waist and went to reach for his clothes. The counter next to the sink was empty. He blinked.

"What did I do-" Toby shortly cut himself off when he remembered that the clothes were on the end of the bed. Toby cracked open the door, and there they were, nicely folded on the edge of the bed. Toby groaned out of frustration internally and opened the door slightly more.

Y/N was still sleeping. He prayed that Y/N was a deep sleeper and that she wouldn't realize that he was almost naked as he tiptoed out the door. He reached his arm out and successfully grabbed the pile of clothes with one hand holding his towel up. The floorboard under Toby creaked under the pressure, and his eyes shot open.

Y/N rolled over on the bed, laying on her other side. Toby froze, waiting for her to stop tossing, and turned. His hands clenched around the clothes, and he brought them to his chest, taking them inside the bathroom.

Toby softly closed and locked the door. The mirror reflected his red face back to him, and he was a bit surprised at how red he was. That could have gone horribly, but it didn't, so that had to be a good sign.

Right?

Toby put his clothes on and went over to the other side of the bed. Coincidentally, it was the side that he slept on every night-the side with the Toby-shaped dent in the mattress. Toby laid on it with a sigh, covering himself with the quilt. His eyes traveled over to Y/N, and, despite his insomnia, his eyes started to grow heavy.

"Are you trying to tell me we have no evidence for what could have caused the fire?" Officer McKenney said, crouching under the police tape.

"No, everything was destroyed in the fire. There's only ash and rubble," Detective Jardine said, following McKenney as they went to the remains of the singed house.

"And the people who lived there?" Officer McKenney added, looking around the destruction for anything.

"Gone. We have no clue if they died or disappeared," Detective Jardine shrugged, crossing his arms. McKenney put a hand on her holster.

"It doesn't make any sense. We've had so many instances like this in the past. They're all here in Denver." McKenney said, shaking her head in disbelief as her boots crunched under the crispy floor.

"Yes, I know," Detective Jardine replied, "the same type of 'spontaneous' fires and missing-people cases for the past ten years." Jardine furrowed his eyebrows. Officer McKenney looked over to the other group of officers.

"Excuse me for a moment," she said, walking over to them. Jardine nodded, putting his hands in his pockets. He cursed under his breath, rubbing his jaw in thought.

Detective Jardine thought back to the first arson-related case he's tried to figure out: the Rogers' case. It was pushed off as a 'simple house fire' and dismissed, even though there were missing people.

"Rogers'" he muttered under his breath, opening the Notes app on his phone and writing something down. He was just about done with these 'disappearances'.

Later that night, Detective Jardine was sitting at his computer. He stared at some of the things he wrote on a pad of paper.

The same damn case, but who? Who would commit such a crime? The detective looked up the records of the Rogers' household, skimming the results.

Two adults and two children. The daughter, Lyra Rogers, unfortunately died in a car accident. The son, Tobias Rogers, fortunately survived. Blah, blah, blah.

Detective Jardine sighed and leaned back in his seat, twirling a pen in his hand. The night was getting darker; in fact, it was almost midnight. He should have been heading home by now, but he was more than determined to find something-anything.

His eyes landed on one line of the report.

Tobias Rogers was institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital on multiple occasions.

Detective Jardine's eyebrows raised, and he sat up, scooting his chair closer to his desk. He searched up a more detailed file on the boy.

It turns out that Tobias had plenty of disorders to go around. He clicked on the image of the boy. Rather thin and young, probably because the case was ten years old. Jardine crossed his arms, tapping his pen on his chin as he read the text.

Missing.

He ripped the top page of notes out of his pad of paper and started fresh. Writing at the speed he was, it looked like a three-year-old wrote it, but he could read it just fine. Detective Jardine searched up something else regarding the Rogers' household.

He was going to solve this case, no matter the cost.





𝐀𝐦𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐚 (Ticci Toby x FEM reader) Where stories live. Discover now