Shadows in the Frame – Chapter 1

After-Dark Diaries:

Thriller Series – Chapter 1

Dear Reader,

I’m trying something a little different. I’m diving into a fictional thriller with a sexy twist, releasing it one chapter at a time. Your feedback is invaluable – you’re my most honest critics. If this doesn’t hit the mark, I need to know, so I don’t bore you with future stories in the same vein. Your thoughts will help shape the journey, and I can’t wait to hear them. Thank you.

Reader Intro 

Everlaine, a reclusive tech genius, lives a quiet life in her inherited home – until shadows appear in her hallway and a mysterious man across the street begins watching her every move. Secrets, danger, and an enigmatic messenger guide her into a world she thought she understood… but never truly did. This is the first chapter of Shadows in the Frame, a thriller with a sexy, suspenseful edge under the umbrella of After-Dark Diaries – Thriller Series.

Chapter 1

Everlaine was not a remarkable woman by any conventional measure. She would have been the first to tell you so. In fact, on most days, she actively tried not to be remarkable. Blending in was easier. Safer. Cleaner.

At thirty-seven, she had the soft, undisturbed pallor of someone who lived indoors more than most. She wore her uniform of tracksuit bottoms, thick fluffy socks, and oversized sweatshirts like armour, and they were practical, warm, and unassuming. Her clothes whispered silence, and silence was the language of her life.

Except for the silk.

Everlaine had never told a soul about her obsession with silk underwear… the French knickers that whispered when she moved, the camisoles that clung like water and warmed instantly against her skin. To anyone else, the contrast might have seemed odd: tracksuit bottoms over luxury lingerie. But to Everlaine, it made perfect sense.

The world saw the surface she chose.
She lived in the layer beneath.

Her house was an old, beautiful Edwardian place on the edge of the city, which had been left to her five years ago after the accident. People still left flowers at the bend in the road sometimes, the one that iced too quickly in winter. Everlaine never went there. She didn’t need physical reminders; the memories lived in every room.

The brass doorknobs her mother meticulously polished.
The dent in the hallway skirting where her father crashed a vacuum cleaner one Christmas.
The garden her parents had attentively loved, and she now let grow wild.

It was a house with good bones and generous light, the sort of place people said “deserves a family.”

But houses don’t get to choose their inhabitants, and Everlaine filled the rooms with her quiet routines: the hum of computers, the soft padding of slippers, the low murmur of podcasts playing to empty air.

Her work was her world. Freelance digital problem-solver, systems fixer, code whisperer… she was, in certain online corners, a small legend. Not famous enough to be dangerous, but respected enough to be whispered about.

Her legal name was Everlaine Callow.
Her working name or her shield was E. Voss.

Most clients assumed E. Voss was a man. A few believed she was a team. No one ever guessed she was a solitary woman working from a mismatched desk wedged between a cat tower and a cold window.

She liked it that way.

The cat had arrived the way most trouble does in Everlaine’s life – quietly, then all at once.

It was a foggy autumn morning, and she’d opened the door to take a grocery delivery when a streak of ginger fur shot between her ankles like a furry missile. The delivery driver startled. Everlaine startled. The cat did not.

It trotted down the hallway as though late for an appointment, tail upright, and with ownership implied.

She’d chased it half-heartedly at first, then more desperately when it squeezed behind the washing machine, then gave up entirely when it reappeared ten minutes later, sat in the doorway, and began licking a paw with smug, territorial satisfaction.

She named him Morris because he looked like a Morris.

He never left.

He also never stopped judging.

Everlaine’s days had a rhythm to them. Wake. Feed Morris. Shower. Put on silk. Cover the silk with boring clothes. Work. Tea. More work. Podcasts. Tea. Fix someone’s broken network in California at 1 am. Sleep.

It wasn’t a glamorous life, but it was hers – soft, quiet, and controlled.

Until the night it wasn’t.

It started at 2:14 am on a Wednesday… a time when the world is at its most honest.

Everlaine was perched at her desk, her screens glowing pale blue, lines of code reflecting in her glasses. Morris sat in his usual monitoring position atop the printer, tail flicking in judgmental rhythm.

She was completing a job for a finance firm, the legitimate kind, not the… questionable ones she sometimes took out of curiosity (or boredom). A basic patching task, nothing complicated, something she could do with half her brain asleep.

Then her screen flickered.

Just once.

Like a blink.

She frowned. Checked the connections. Everything fine.

Then it happened again, but this time the flicker wasn’t random. A new window flashed open. It was black, empty, waiting.

Her fingers hovered above the keyboard.

This wasn’t her doing.

Her pulse flickered like the screen had. She’d seen intrusions. She’d handled intrusions. But never one that got through her safeguards. She built her own systems. She trusted them like she trusted no one else.

A single line of text appeared.

HELLO EVERLAINE.

Her breath caught.
Because whoever wrote it – whoever managed to bypass her walls – they knew her name.
Not E. Voss.
Not Miss Voss.
Her legal name.

Something cold crawled over her skin.
Morris stopped flicking his tail.

Another line appeared.

DON’T CLOSE THIS WINDOW. YOU WON’T LIKE WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DO.

Everlaine exhaled slowly, the way she had been taught in therapy after her parents’ accident – in through her nose, out through her mouth, steady, calm, don’t let the fear get claws.

She typed.

Who is this?

A pause.

Then:

SOMEONE WHO NEEDS YOUR HELP.

Her heartbeat steadied slightly. That didn’t necessarily mean danger. People got dramatic when they needed something. Desperate people are even more so.

But then:

AND SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT YOU DID FOR THE HOLLAM TRUST.

Her blood went cold.

That job was buried. Deeply. Quietly. Illegally.

She hadn’t even taken payment through her usual channels. That work was supposed to be invisible.

She typed again, fingers tight on the keys.

Explain. Now.

But the screen went black.
All three monitors.

Her entire office died.

The only sound was the soft, slow purr Morris made when sensing her fear.

She stood. Backed away.
The house felt wrong – too still, too listening.

Then, from the hallway, came the unmistakable sound of a door creaking.

Her breath froze.

She wasn’t expecting anyone.
She didn’t have anyone.

Slowly, carefully, she stepped out of her office and peered into the dark hall. Her heart lodged itself high in her throat.

The door that should have been locked… the heavy old door her father always said could withstand a battering ram,  was standing open.

Not wide. Just an inch.
An invitation.
Or a warning.

Cold night air slid into the house like a curious guest.

Morris hissed.

And for the first time in five years, Everlaine wished she wasn’t alone.

That was the moment everything changed – though she didn’t yet know how, or why, or who had slipped into her quiet, orderly life.

Later, she would look back and realise it wasn’t an intrusion.

It was the beginning.

The moment the plain Jane with the silk secret stopped being invisible.

The moment Everlaine Callow… not E. Voss, was pulled into something bigger than her grief, her computers, and her self-chosen isolation.

The moment a door opened, literally and metaphorically…
And someone walked in.

Someone who knew her name.
Someone who needed her.
Someone who would not let her hide anymore.

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