ECHOES OF A SIGNATURE

The Missing Hour

Chapter 3: The Missing Hour

Glass rained down around them like ice shards.

Jason’s instincts kicked in. He yanked Emily out of the closet, shielding her as he ducked behind the bed.

“Are you hit?” he whispered.

She shook her head, wide-eyed, still gagged. Jason cut her bindings with a flick of his pocket knife and checked the window. Shattered glass. Wind rushing in.

But no figure. No sound. Whoever had smashed it—was already gone.

Emily gasped for breath, her voice raspy. “Jason, what the hell is happening?!”

He grabbed her face gently. “Are you hurt?”

“No. Just… shaken. I came home and someone was already here. I tried to run but—he grabbed me. He wore a mask. I didn’t see his face.”

Jason scanned the room. Blood smeared on the wall. No signs of forced entry. Same as his apartment.

“It’s him,” he said coldly. “He’s watching both of us.”

Emily blinked. “Him who?”

Jason didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled her to her feet. “We need to move. Now.”

FBI Safehouse – 9:44 p.m.

Emily sat on a couch, wrapped in a blanket, while Jason paced the room, his phone pressed to his ear.

“We have a breach,” he told Reyes. “Same M.O. Victim tied, message on the wall. He left a print again.”

“Jesus,” Reyes muttered. “He’s escalating.”

“I need full access to the sealed case files from ten years ago—mine.”

“Jason, you know what that means. You’ll have to—”

“I know,” Jason cut in. “I need the tapes. The transcripts. All of it.”

He hung up, jaw tight.

Emily looked at him. “What are you not telling me?”

Jason hesitated. Then sat across from her.

“There’s a gap in my memory,” he said. “The night my parents were killed… I blacked out. I found them. Then I woke up with the knife in my hand.”

Emily’s face paled. “You think… you killed them?”

“I used to. I don’t anymore.” He met her eyes. “But someone wants me to believe I did. And he’s back.”

Emily stared at him. “This… this thing he wrote on my wall—‘You forgot her too.’ What does it mean?”

Jason’s breath caught. “I don’t know.”

But even as he said it, something deep inside whispered otherwise.

11:12 p.m. – FBI Archives

Jason sat alone in a cold, fluorescent-lit records room, surrounded by boxes marked CASE #1147-JH.

He opened the first one—transcripts from his therapy sessions after the murders. Pages filled with scribbles, half-sentences, suppressed memories.

He flipped to one labeled SESSION 9 – REDACTED.

The first line chilled him:

“Do you remember the missing hour?”

Jason’s hand trembled as he turned the page.

“Patient exhibits signs of dissociation. Repeated reference to ‘a man in the mirror.’ Claims someone else was there that night but refuses to name them. Repeats phrase: he told me not to tell.”

Jason’s mouth went dry.

He kept reading.

Therapist: “Who told you not to tell?”

Jason: “The man with the handprint. He said if I did, he’d take someone else too. Like he did with Lily.”

Jason froze.

Lily.

He didn’t remember any Lily.

He searched the name through the case records.

Nothing.

Then, in a subfolder marked supplementary victims, he found it.

Lily Monroe – Age 17 – Missing. Last seen two days before the Holt murders.

Never connected. Never investigated.

Jason stared at her picture.

A girl with short dark hair and a nervous smile.

His fingers shook.

You forgot her too.

The message on Emily’s wall.

The killer wasn’t just taunting him—he was reminding him.

Lily was part of this. And Jason had buried her memory.

But why?

1:03 a.m. – Jason’s Apartment (Revisited)

He returned to his place alone, unable to shake the image of Lily’s face. He sat on the floor and opened an old shoebox buried in the back of his closet.

Photos. Letters. Clippings.

And there—folded in an envelope with the initials LM—was a note.

He unfolded it slowly.

“You said you’d protect me. But he knows. If I disappear, don’t trust what they say. Remember the basement. -L”

Jason’s breath caught.

The basement.

There was no basement in his childhood home—or so he thought.

But then it hit him.

The old storm cellar behind the house.

They’d called it a "storage pit" when he was a kid. Off-limits. His father always kept it locked.

Jason stood up, determination hardening in his chest.

If there were answers, they were there.

He opened his front door—

And found a small box sitting on the floor.

No return address.

He opened it carefully—

Inside was a bloodied photo of Lily…

And his own name scrawled across it in red ink.

Then his phone rang again.

Blocked number.

He answered.

“Digging up the past, are we, Jason? Good. That’s exactly where I’ll bury you.”