Storm snorts. “You don’t want to breakhisdoor.”
“I want to break his face.”
“You don’t,” Atticus says lightly. “You want to fix it so he doesn’t break himself.”
He’s right and I hate it.
We stop first at the townhouse. Empty. Blinds down. The kind of tidy that means the man inside is either sleeping, dead, or gone. He’s gone.
“Gym,” Storm says, and I don’t argue because there are only a handful of places you can put a certain kind of rage where it doesn’t bounce back and kill you.
We find him in the old boxing gym that used to take our sweat when we were kids without words for any of this. The door’s rolled up halfway, and the bag’s already swinging. Conrad’s knuckles are taped and raw. He’s not looking at us because he doesn’t have to to know it’s us.
“Check your phone, asshole,” Atticus says by way of hello.
“Later,” Conrad answers without turning.
“Not later,” I snap. “Now.”
He turns then, and it ruins me a little because his eyes are too clear—the kind of clear that comes after your body makes a decision your mind hasn’t caught up to. “You want to fight me?” he asks, easy.
“I want your phone,” I say. “Everything else we can do after.”
“Fuck you,” he says, and taps the bag with two fingers like the leather owes him an apology. “I’m trying here.”
“By meditating on whether or not you can kill a bag?” I wave at it. “By ignoring your phone? By leaving her with a sentence and an empty bed?”
He peels the tape off his right hand like he’s unwrapping a bad idea. “I told her because I won’t touch her again with that lie between us. Then I left before I said something I couldn’t take back. I took a walk. I hit a bag because I’d already put a bullet in my old man, and I’m not hurting anyone else. I answered the part of me that wanted to burn the city instead of the one that wants me to destroy the world.”
Storm’s voice is a quieter knife. “You’re not going to jail. We’ll make sure of that.”
“He came to me,” Conrad says. “He confessed things he should never have said out loud.”
Atticus doesn’t waste time judging. “Give me the tracker endpoint,” he says. “Please.”
Conrad unlocks his phone and tosses it to him. “Folder namedProvidence.Passcode is the date we got Phoenix off the boat.”
Atticus’s mouth quirks despite himself. Of course that’s the pass. He plugs in, patches, mutters code at a god who actually answers him sometimes.
I step closer to Conrad and take a better look. He’s steady. Sober. Held together with barbed wire and posture, but I can see the pain there.
“We’re going to get her,” I say, simpler now. “And when we do, you don’t run again. Nobody gives a fuck what test results say. You belong to her, and she belongs to all of us.”
He wants to argue. He doesn’t. He nods once.
Atticus exhales. “Damn it, Conrad. Your phone is shutting down to install a required update. So now, we have to fucking wait for ten goddamn minutes.”
“Fuck this.” Storm mutters. “I’m going to sit in the office. At least that has a couch. Guys, I’ve been trying to tell you something for the past hour if you want to follow me.”
We follow him into the other room, and I watch as he opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of mineral water like it will absolve him. “You want the good news or the shitty news?” he asks, voice rough. He takes a swallow, winces. “Full disclosure, there’s not a lot of ‘good’ in either pile.”
Conrad’s mouth flattens. “What are you talking about?”
He’s deliberately not saying her name. I hear the work it costs him. A muscle jumps in his cheek and goes still.
“The lab called me at three,” Storm says, sliding my phone out. “We had the DNA retested. Full panels for everyone, just to be extra cautious. Different lab. We put the chain of custody under Spencer’s initials, so no opportunities for anyone to play god.”
Conrad’s eyes come to mine. That’s good. Focus is good. Rage I can work with. Fog wastes time.
