EchosofJade
Mara Reed has built her life around keeping it small.
She works from home, avoids crowds, and moves through the quiet New England town of Greyhaven along carefully chosen routes, preserving routines that limit contact and reduce risk. To most people, she appears withdrawn-perhaps a little strange, but harmless. What they do not see is how deliberately her life has been constructed to remain unseen.
When a sudden death places her in the path of a police investigation, Mara is drawn into the orbit of Detective Jonah Cross, a man she cannot read in the ways she has learned to read everyone else. Around him, something in her perception goes silent. The world grows quieter. Safer. Wrong.
As Mara becomes entangled in a series of violent crimes, she is pulled into the investigation as an unwilling asset, offering insights she cannot explain and refuses to justify. The closer she grows to Jonah, the more she realizes that their proximity shields her from what she has spent years avoiding-while placing others directly in harm's way.
Bound by secrets neither of them can fully name, Mara and Jonah navigate a growing intimacy that threatens to unravel both the case and the fragile equilibrium that has kept her alive. In a town where death leaves echoes behind, some absences are more dangerous than any ghost.