CHAPTER 21
CLOSER TO HOME

THE POUNDING AGAINST her skull was practically lethal. As soon as Sloane opened her eyes the next morning, she was greeted with an ache settling inside her forehead, pulsating between her eyes. She groaned, flopping a pillow over her head to hide from the sun, but it did nothing to dull the hangover. She was utterly fucked.

There was nothing else to do but eat. Sloane knew that if she took any ibuprofen on an empty stomach, her eventual vomit was going to be all the more violent. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she walked out of her room and into the kitchen, already engulfed by the smell of pancakes and bacon. Just the scent made her queasy. Much to her surprise, Sabrina was cooking and doing a little dance in front of the griddle. The sight in front of Sloane made her blink. None of it seemed real.

Sabrina was flipping a pancake, tapping her foot to the beat of an old Christmas song blasting from her phone. She already had a Christmas tree set up next to the TV — plastic, but as tall as a real one and somehow smelled like one too. A box of new ornaments sat by it, waiting to be hung, unlike the old ones with pictures of a teenage Sloane that were probably packed away in storage. Frank sat in the living room, a Sunday morning paper in one hand and an espresso cup in the other. He sipped gingerly. The seat that Everett usually occupied at the island was empty, but Sloane still sat in the chair across from it, head in her hands.

Sabrina looked over her shoulder at her daughter. "You look like you had fun last night."

Sloane thought back to the way Peter smelled last night. She could still feel the soft press of his lips against her forehead. She huffed out a sigh and rubbed her eyes. "I guess so."

Flipping another pancake onto a plate, Sabrina walked over and placed it in front of her. Sloane's surprise was evident on her face. "Were you out with Peter?"

Sloane looked away and already began tearing through the pancakes with her knife and fork. "It doesn't matter."

"You really should let me know where you're going, Sloane." Her mother chastised, gesturing to her with a spatula. "I know you're twenty-six, but there's a lot of crazies out there right now. You never know what might happen –"

Everyone in the penthouse looked up when loud music poured from the TV in the living room. Channel 5 News plastered the words, EMERGENCY REPORT, on the screen, guiding their eyes. A red-haired woman with heavy eyeliner appeared and began speaking immediately, "Apologies for interrupting the Today Show. Police are currently reporting a third victim has been found relating to the Jawbreaker case."

Sloane dropped her fork.

"A body was found early this morning by an alley in Jackson Heights. Police were called and arrived moments later," the reporter continued. "The victim was found with a portion of her bent braces on the ground, along with her teeth. The murderer had also taken the effort to wrap the victim's braces elastics around the teeth he left inside her mouth. However, most of her mouth was completely shattered, along with her trachea, where a Jawbreaker candy was shoved down."

The scene switched to a video of Larry Fogelman from earlier in the morning. He was surrounded by a dozen microphones. Shifting uncomfortably on his feet, Larry pulled the zipper on his jacket higher and said to the crowd of mics, "We are still working on leads with the Jawbreaker investigation, but that's all I can tell you. My team and I are dedicated to finding out who this vile human being is and bringing them to justice. Thank you. No more questions."

When the redhead appeared on the screen again, she held a hand to her ear, as if hearing something through an earpiece. She looked into the lens of the camera. "We have just received confirmation now that police have identified the victim as Naomi Varma of Jackson Heights. This investigation is still ongoing. I'm Sally Stratford for Channel 5 News."

The kitchen was dreadfully silent until Sabrina finally gasped, both hands covering her mouth. "Oh ... my god," she rasped. "Oh, my god. Oh, my god." She couldn't stop repeating the same set of words, muffled by her hand against her mouth. Frank rushed over to her as Sloane couldn't help but sit still. The pancakes on the griddle began to burn.

"Frank, I ... oh, my god," she cried against her husband's shirt. Her tears soaked the cotton of his button-up. "What are we going to tell Everett? That was his girlfriend. He's going to be so upset. I'm so upset. How could that little girl be gone, just like that? We need to help her family. Maybe I'll buy one of her mom's paintings ..."

Sabrina's voice faded into a high-pitched ringing in Sloane's ears. The world felt like it was spinning in slow motion as she finally stood up and walked out of the kitchen. The scent of burning pancakes enveloped her nostrils, refusing to go away. Her body felt completely numb. Even the hangover went dull. She couldn't blink; she couldn't speak. Sloane was simply a husk of a human being.

When she closed the door to her room, she pressed her back against it and closed her eyes. Suddenly, she was berated with images of Naomi laying in the dark corner of an alley, jaw slack. Purple and black braces elastics scattered around her. Teeth littered her hair and corpse. Sloane made a similar gasp to Sabrina's, smacking a hand against her mouth to muffle her tears.

This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be happening. This. Couldn't. Be. Happening.

But it was. It fucking was. There was a serial killer on the loose going after young girls, and he was getting closer and closer to her. Naomi was just the first of many, and Sloane's heart broke at the thought of it. Did the Jawbreaker know about the article she was writing, that she was actively working on exposing them to the public? Were they trying to get closer and closer to her before she was able to figure it out? Her breathing quickened, and she thought of Naomi again. When she closed her eyes, she saw the teenager's bright smile, shiny silver braces, her dark eyes. She could hear the cries of Naomi's family on the living room TV.

Naomi. Naomi. Naomi. Naomi. Naomi.

Her phone began to blast her ringtone. Sloane gasped again, and then wiped away her tears before picking up her phone. Just the man she expected to call.

Releasing a heavy breath, she answered, "Hey."

"Uh – hi," Spider-Man answered awkwardly.

She rubbed at the end of her runny nose. "Did you see the news?"

"Yeah." He paused, allowing a sigh to slip past his lips. "Peter said you knew the girl?"

Her brow arched. "Is Peter there? Can I talk to him?"

Spider-Man cleared his throat. "Oh – uh, no. He's not here. He texted me."

"Oh," she huffed, plopping down onto her bed. "Anyway, I did know her. She was my step-brother's girlfriend. Or at least, the girl he had been seeing."

"Step-brother? As in the one you think is in a fan club for a serial killer?"

Sloane snorted. "Yeah, unfortunately." She leaned forward, holding one hand to her throbbing head. "Maybe it's just the hangover talking ... but this person is getting closer to home. What if –"

"You're safe, Sloane," he replied, an edge to his voice. "Nothing's going to happen to you while I'm around."

For a moment, she repeated his words in her head, analyzed the protectiveness in his tone. She bit down on her bottom lip before saying, "This is probably –" She stopped short. "No, this is definitely a bad time to bring this up, but –"

His staticky laugh on the other end calmed her nerves. "I'll stop you before it gets awkward. Strictly a working partnership, right?"

Sloane chewed on her thumb's cuticle, wondering if he had told Peter of their kiss, if Peter told him what to say. Shaking her head, she realized she was being ridiculous and finally replied, "Uh ... yeah. Right. Definitely."

"Glad we're on the same page. I'm going to stake out the police station and see what I find about the latest victim. Let's meet tonight on top of the Brewster."

"Okay, see you at nine?"

"Nine it is."

Sloane ended the call at the same time she heard the elevator ding when it reached the penthouse doors. That could only mean one thing. The walls were so thin that she could already hear Sabrina crying and engulfing her son.

━━━━━━

As Sloane stood by the emergency railing of the Brewster Building, she wondered if this assignment was worth all the trouble. It was reaching eight forty-five PM. She got to the meeting spot early and decided to hide in the cover of darkness by the railing rather than under the flickering street light. Hugging her parka close to her chest, she debated going back home. What the hell was she doing out so late, alone, when there was a serial killer on the loose?

In times of distress, she tended to call Bobby. In fact, her finger was already moving to tap on his number and she brought the phone to her ear. He picked up instantly, and just the sound of his voice soothed her nerves.

"Been a while, Bernstein," he said, chuckling into the speaker. "I imagine you're still hard at work."

"Always." She kicked a loose pebble across the pavement. "Actually, I've been having some writer's block lately. I've been going in and out of it for weeks."

"Have you tried laying off the booze?"

She rolled her eyes. "I called you just to talk, not a therapy session."

"Please, I'm practically your therapist as is." He sighed for a long moment. "What are you up to right now?"

Sloane's breath hitched as a gust of wind blew past her. Oh, well, she thought, I'm only just regretting coming here. The Jawbreaker is getting closer and closer to me. I think he might know about my article. I want to give up. What about you?

Her mouth opened to speak the words into existence, but they shriveled up into nothing on her tongue. Rubbing her forehead, she said, "I'm just – uh – waiting to meet up with Spider-Man. Another victim was found this morning and he's going to retrieve the autopsy."

"Damn," Bobby replied, "you two have become quite the team."

Sloane thought back to the infamous wet dream she had of the masked hero; all the times they soared through the air together with her shrieking in his ear; when she kissed him on the fire escape ... She grimaced, "You could say that."

Bobby laughed. "Anything else you want to tell me, or did you really just call to shoot the shit?"

I want to give up. I'm scared. I don't want to die – "Nope," she huffed into the cold air. "Actually, before I let you go, how's Jerry?"

"The cat sleeps all fuckin' day long," he explained, "and then, terrorizes me and the wife before we go to bed. Did you use to give him energy drinks instead of water or something?"

Sloane snickered. "No, he's just a night owl. You'll get used to it."

"Hopefully, not too much. He misses you. We all do at the Post."

"I know. I want to be home soon. I promise."

"If you stopped drinking for a night, I guarantee it could cure that writer's block."

She shook her head. "Night, Reyes."

He exhaled heavily. "See 'ya later, Bernstein."

Sloane ended the call with a click and threw up her hood before ascending the staircase to the roof. Her footsteps were quick. Even being out at night was starting to terrify her. When she pushed open the door at the top, he was already waiting for her. Her body relaxed at his presence. Somehow, being near someone she had only seen in a superhero getup comforted her more than being with family.

"You're late," Spider-Man said, playing with the straps of his old backpack.

"I know," she groaned, walking toward him. "I was on the phone with my editor." Snow began to fall as she got closer to him, but she still didn't notice the small patch of ice right in front of her. Sloane's foot slipped, but Spider-Man was catching her hands before she was even halfway to the ground. He pulled her up, steadied her balance.

"You okay?" His protectiveness over her always sent shivers down her spine.

Slipping her hands away from his, she sputtered, "Um - yeah. Yeah. Fine, I guess." She adjusted the strap of her bag. "What do you got for me, Bug Boy? It's cold out here."

"I was able to get the bare bones of the autopsy so far," he said, pulling a folder out of his bag. "Of course, autopsies can take almost weeks to finalize, so this isn't near complete, and with the way we know the NYPD conducts them, I wonder if it'll ever be finished. But a coroner did inspect the body, and both he and a detective wrote down here –" He pointed out a specific section on the second page. "– They suspect that Naomi was leered out of her home somehow and knocked out. It makes sense because she was found in an alley near her apartment building. Her teeth are mostly gone, but her braces were left behind as a way to identify her, I'm guessing. And then, the candy was shoved down her throat." Spider-Man clicked his tongue and skimmed down the page, finding another section. "It also says here that there might've been poisons in her system. They still don't have a definitive answer on that. But it makes me wonder if the candy that was in her throat wasn't a real Jawbreaker. Maybe it was manufactured by the killer and dosed in some kind of poison?"

Sloane tugged on the collar of her coat. Her teeth began to chatter, but not from the cold. What kind of sick fuck was into this shit?

"Back up," she interrupted. "How the hell did some stranger leer her out of her home? Isn't the first lesson most parents teach you is, 'Don't talk to strangers?'"

Spider-Man closed the folder full of copies. "What if it wasn't a stranger?"

Her brow raised in suspicion.

"I mean, think about it ..." He shot a string of webbing onto the exit door and leaned against it, playing with the string absentmindedly. "If Naomi was in the same serial killer fan club as your step-brother, then they had to trust the Jawbreaker somehow, accept something they believed in. She trusted the killer. Of course, he or she could've easily leered her out of her home."

Pushing a strand of hair away from her face, Sloane turned her back to him and began to pace. She bit at her cuticles – her tried and true nervous habit. If this person – this killer – could get people to trust them, who could possibly be next? What kind of person could they easily isolate before knocking half their teeth out? If the killer was close with their fan club, did they know about Sloane? And her article? And her partnership with Spider-Man?

"Sloane?" He called out to her. "Are you okay?"

She slowly faced him again. Her eyes were just a bit too wide. "It's just ..." She swallowed hard. "I know this is my job and I've been writing about it for years, but ... Something about it seems too real now. Being surrounded by all this death is starting to get to me."

"Do you want me to stop helping you?"

Her hands immediately grasped his, pulling tightly on his old gloves. "No, no. I just –" She looked down at their entwined fingers, how they fit almost perfectly together, and tilted her head up to meet his eyes. Slipping her hands away, she pleaded, "I need to go home. I'm getting scared. Can you take me back?"

He scooped her into his arms immediately. "Say no more," he rasped before casting a web and plunging them into the bustling city streets. Sloane was now used to closing her eyes for the whole ride, but the insufferable wind still managed to get the best of her. She stuck to burying her head in the crook of Spider-Man's neck. The scent of his favorite soap calmed her, but it also reminded her of the same cheap cologne Peter liked to use. And then, she was thinking of Peter, and she held onto Spider-Man tighter, wishing that the masked hero was the lean, dorky guy she came to adore.

Minutes later, Spider-Man landed on the fire escape outside her bedroom. She jumped out of his arms and smoothed out the wrinkles in her jeans. The last thing she wanted was to be back at the penthouse and have to see her step-brother crying, or her mother fake crying about a girl she didn't even like, but Sloane was so tired. Sending him a soft, quick smile, she turned to open the sliding window to her room, but she was stopped by a hand gripping her wrist.

"Are you going to be okay?" He asked.

She feigned another smile, too fake to fool anybody. "I'll be fine."

Spider-Man let go of her wrist, but she didn't turn away this time. So he reached up and brushed a few pieces of hair behind her ear, his fingers then caressing her cheekbone. Sloane, despite the cold, leaned into his touch. She closed her eyes and found herself imagining that it was Peter again. The hero's touch felt so similar to his. It wasn't as lustful anymore. Once she got a taste of something pure, so meaningful – she didn't want to go back.

"Sloane ..." He whispered, and with her eyes closed, she almost thought it was Peter.

She opened them finally, clasping her fingers around his gloved ones. Lowering his hand to his side, she muttered, "Goodnight, Spider-Man."

He nodded her way, keeping his mouth shut. She let go of his hand, slid the window open, and stepped inside her warm bedroom. "Goodnight, Sloane," was the last thing she heard before he jumped off the side of the fire escape.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: UH OHHHHH 🫣🫣🫣🫣 things are getting reaaaaal serious now!! also I hope you guys are ready for the next 2 chapters because they're gonna be a DOOZY