Shelter Bed

"e;A safe place is just a locked room you haven't found the key to yet."e;Social services caseworker Cleo Macaulay knows how to read the paperwork. When Jolene Calder, a domestic violence survivor, vanishes in the middle of the night from Harbor House—a highly confidential, sealed-address shelter—the official record claims she left voluntarily. But Cleo notices the impossible anomalies left behind in Jolene's intake forms: a fake phone number, a wrong address, and a date of birth altered by exactly one year. These aren't mistakes. They are a map left by a desperate bookkeeper.As Cleo digs past the bureaucratic silence and missing files, she uncovers a chilling paper trail. The shelter's funding connects directly to Carthage County's most powerful figure: District Attorney Renata Voss. Renata didn't just fund the safe house; she built its walls, wrote its bylaws, and holds the master key to its darkest secrets. For twenty years, women who sought refuge have been quietly erased from the system.Now, Cleo is trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a brilliant predator who can make anyone disappear with a single signature. To find Jolene and dismantle a decades-old conspiracy, Cleo must risk her career, her sanity, and her life, armed with nothing but the truth hidden in the ledgers.