Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
I close the book and lean my head against the wall. The paint is cool. The cinderblock under it is older than I am. I tell myself I’m letting the building hold up some of the weight.
A cough from inside brings me upright. I don’t open the door. I don’t call her name. I put my palm against the wood directly over where I know her bed is—she likes to sleep with her head toward the window when she can. I don’t push. Just… anchor. It’s ridiculous. It steadies me anyway.
“Mr. Maddox?” Hartley again. He keeps his voice low. “We just got a heads-up: your boy Vale’s counsel is trying to get him wheels-up to Vegas ‘for meetings.’ We’re about twenty minutes from warrants.”
“Vegas is a hop to anywhere,” I say. “We can’t lose him. You got a legal way to sit on him until paper lands?”
“We can do a ‘consensual conversation’ that takes fifteen minutes and a lot of coffee,” he says, mouth twisting. “Or we can get lucky with code compliance on his office and have someone ‘notice’ an occupancy issue.”
“Do both,” I say. “I’ll call Dean to have the fed bark.”
He snorts. “Thought you’d say that.”
By the time I loop Dean in, his friend in the Bureau has already leaned on Vale’s counsel. A polite but ironclad “do not travel” request is now in writing. The kind that says “your boarding pass will print, but the men in windbreakers will meet you at the gate.” It’s not an arrest. It’s a glare that buys us an hour.
Rae drops a new pin in our shared map. Fox Hollow—co-working. “Bane” logged in as “Stark” last night (they cross-sell day passes online). IP address used to access a single page: municipal police scanner feed and a Craigslist posting for storage units near the airport. She adds: He’s compulsive about checking his own myth. Then: Hatcher likes us. He just texted an address on Third Street where Rourke sleeps when he’s between jobs. Cheap monthly. Unit 4B. We’re rolling.
“Riggs—do not hit 4B without me,” I say into the line, even as I know I can’t go. The words taste like broken teeth.
“I’ll put eyes and wait for the paper,” he promises. “Rae’ll give me a door cam in five. If he moves, I shadow.”
“Good,” I say. “If he spooks, don’t escalate. I want him alive to point at Vale.”
“You also want his teeth,” Riggs says mildly.
“I’ll settle for his phone,” I lie, because we both know I want both.
The fourth light flickers. Forty-seven seconds. Somewhere down the hall, a code page barks and slams through a different set of doors; an emergency we aren’t in. For once.
Gregory appears at the far end of the corridor like a ghost who got lost. He moves with the hesitance of a man who knows he isn’t welcome and wants to be punished for it. Hartley slots into place at his shoulder before I have to stand. He’s good at his job. I don’t move, except to tighten my hand into a fist on my knee.
Gregory stops a polite distance away. His eyes are a color softer than Cam’s but I can see the gene. “Is she—?”
“Resting,” I say.
He nods as if he deserved a different answer. He opens his mouth, shuts it again, opens it. “I’m going to turn over my phone to Detective Hartley. Everything. I’ve already called my general counsel,” he says, deflated. “And I scheduled a press conference for tomorrow to apologize to the community—”
“Cancel it,” I cut in, low, because the thought of Cam’s pain being chewed by cameras makes bile flood my mouth. “If you stand at a podium right now, you turn a target into a spectacle. Sit with law enforcement. Sit with your shame. Leave the podium until Cam isn’t the headline.”
He flinches. “I thought transparency—”
“Transparency is telling your daughter with your own mouth before she hears it from a man she’s paid to trust,” I say, and even I hear the acid. “You missed that window. Don’t miss this one.”
Hartley steers him away again. I exhale and realize my shoulders are somewhere around my ears. I drop them one notch at a time.
The nurse returns with a fresh bag of saline. She glances at me, at the way my hands want to punch and pray simultaneously. “She asked me to tell you something,” she says.
I straighten before I can stop myself. “Is she…?”
“She’s not ready to see you.” The nurse smiles gently when my face betrays more than I want it to. “But she said to tell you she heard you at the door.”
“What did I say?” I ask, wrong-footed.
“Nothing,” the nurse says. “That’s the point.”
I swallow. It lands like glass and I don’t care.
My phone vibrates in a staccato I’ve set aside for one thing only: incoming GO texts from Riggs. I step to the window to read.