Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
He wavers, then caves. Phones. Laptop. A flood of texts. Rae starts cloning before I can ask. Brice talks too fast. “He found me after the pop-up,” he says. “Said the algorithm was plateauing, said we needed an inciting incident. He wanted a ‘conversation.’ He said he could deliver her to the alley so you could ‘save’ her. He’d get clicks, you’d get hero points, we’d get virality. He swore. He swore.”
“You let a man who hurt her set the stakes,” I say, and the way Brice flinches tells me he knows exactly what he did.
“I didn’t think he’d—” He gestures helplessly at the alley’s empty air.
“Stop thinking,” I say. “Start remembering. What did you see?”
“White van,” he says immediately. “Sliding door. A rosary hanging from the mirror? I think. One of those pine tree air fresheners.” He swipes his face. “He gagged her. He—he had zip ties. He—” His breath stutters. “He looked at me like I was a lens and he was playing me.”
“Good. Keep talking while I work.” I follow the tire scuffs to the alley mouth, to a faint arc of rubber where the driver overcorrected heading left. Pine cleaner rides the heat, a ghost of gasoline under it. I log it all. Turquoise bead, blood, pine, rosary—details become a trail.
“Rae,” I say, “flag every traffic cam on the alley’s outbound route. Look for white vans with low left rear. Jaxson, feed me plates off the corridor to the ramp. Hayes, the tape.”
“Tape’s cheap craft brand,” Hayes says, bored. “Same glue signature as our last notes. Post-it’s generic—office supply chain, store number on the stamp is local. You’re in Austin; half the world shops there. I’ll try to narrow.”
“Lina,” I say, finding her in the doorway, face pale, eyes wet. I soften in the half-second it takes to pivot. “You okay?”
She nods too fast. “She dropped her bracelet,” she whispers. “Like…on purpose.”
“She did,” I say. “That’s a map. We’ll follow it.” It steadies her. It steadies me.
My phone vibrates. Dean. His voice is loud in my ear. “Talk.”
“Kellan pulled her with Brice’s help,” I say, low and clean. “White van. We’re sixty seconds behind. I’ve got beads and blood in the alley and a manager who taped his cameras because the client said privacy.”
“Media?” he asks.
“Not yet,” I say. “We keep this off the grid. We push decoys—Vanessa stepped out, ‘be right back’—we let Turner run quiet and keep the tabloids hungry but empty.” I look at Brice, who hears all of this and starts to stammer a question about statements. “We don’t give Kellan the stage he wants. We put him in a room without lights.”
“Do it,” Dean says. “You have point. I’ll sit on the brand and tell them they’ll tank the IPO of their own souls if they leak. Turner’s en route to you. He’s in plainclothes with no marked cars.”
“Lalo?” I call.
“I’m circling,” Lalo says into comms. “White van with a left sag took the frontage road toward the loop. We lost visual when he threaded two trucks, but I’ve got a construction cam that might’ve caught a plate. Sending to Jax.”
“Rae, ghost the feeds,” I add. “Freeze every account that could turn this into content. Delay our scheduled posts, spin up noise—old footage, out-of-order reels—anything that keeps the wolves running in circles.”
“Already lifting audio from three weeks ago and calling it a sneak peek, she says. Brands think it’s brilliant. God help us.”
Brice makes a sound like he’s drowning. “Is—shouldn’t we—like—make a statement? People saw her go back. People—”
“Brice.” I put a hand on his shoulder, weight just shy of a push. “Shut up. If you leak, if you ‘clarify,’ if you even breathe in the direction of a DM, I will assume you’re still working with him and I will freeze you out so hard you’ll be begging a ring light for warmth.” I soften nothing. “You are done. Right now, you’re only useful as a pipeline. Be one.”
He nods, tears standing. I don’t have time for his redemption arc.
I go back into the stall. The mirror doubles me. On the floor: more turquoise beads, a single broken heel tip—hers. She’s writing in the language I taught her. I bag the heel, pocket two beads for luck, and catch a faint smear on the curtain edge, rust-dark already oxidizing. Shoulder-height. She fought. Good.
Jaxson: Plate off a construction cam: 8KZ-1—no last two. Van’s got a sticker on the bumper of a local church—Our Lady of Something with a wildcat mascot in the school seal. There’s a water tower with the same cat on your outbound corridor. If I were a narcissist with a Catholic hangover, I’d keep the rosary and drive past my favorite picture of myself.
“Give me a grid around that tower,” I say, already moving. “Outbuildings, warehouses, yards full of junk.”