Silence. The server hum grows louder in my head. I rub at the ache behind my eyes and feel the restraint I keep wrapped like gauze around the things I don’t say.
“I want this over,” I tell him. “When we get her back, I’m putting a tracker on her phone, her bag, her shoes. I don’t care if she throws it at me in retaliation. I’ll take the bruise.”
His expression brightens in that sideways way he does when he’s about to say something I’m not going to like. “About that.”
I turn fully. “About what.”
“I kind of already gave Phoenix a tracker.” His hands go up when my expression tightens further. “Relax. Not the creepy kind. The poker chip.”
“Poker chip?” I ask, even though I already have an idea what he’s talking about.
“You gave each of us one for Christmas a few years back—your ‘Bond phase,’ remember?” His mouth tilts. “You hid the electronics in them. Tap-to-open doors, little breadcrumb signal if it passes one of your readers. I kept mine on me. One night I…gave it to Phoenix. For luck.”
“Which one?” My chair scrapes back. I’m already at the keyboard. “I engraved IDs on all of them.”
“Of course you did.” He digs into his wallet and slides a twin from a narrow pocket. “Chip twelve.”
“Mav, you’re a fucking genius.” Relief flashes through me so fast it makes me dizzy. Something I can hold. Something I can analyze instead of sitting here useless. I open the sandbox program I built when I handed out those stupid, smart gifts—my private network of readers tucked under tables and behind counters for comps and games. If the chip gets near one of my hidden readers, it whispers its ID and the reader whispers back the time and place. Nothing constant. Nothing invasive. It will ping when the stars line up and send the GPS location of any of them, and I can track it.
I query Chip-12. The map populates with a flicker—one small dot, then an empty field where I want a trail.
“Come on,” I say to the screen. “Talk to me. Tell me where you are.”
Maverick rounds the desk and leans in. “Where was she?”
I zoom. The blue ribbon of the river cuts the city. A gray finger reaches into it—our pier.
“The pier,” I say. The word sits heavy between us. “Last ping at twelve-oh-seven a.m. Then nothing.”
“Boat,” he says, voice flat. “The only reason to take her to the pier would be to put her on a boat. They…that’s not good, Atticus.”
“Or they put her in a container that moved past a reader and then into dead metal.” I swallow. I keep my tone even. “Either way, she isn’t on land anymore.”
For a second, I let myself feel it. The gut-wrenching terror. The image of her in a place that doesn’t deserve her. Hurt. Bleeding. Fighting to come back to us.
The promise I make to myself stretches tight enough to hurt as it emblazons itself on my very soul. I swear I will get her back breathing, or I’ll join her in the afterlife.
Then I lock it down tight. “Okay. It’s not good, but it’s something. It’s a start.”
Maverick straightens. “Storm’s bringing Con in as soon as Zeus can travel. I’ll get the car. We start at the pier.”
“Go.” I dump the dot to the wall map, already pulling the list of anything that left from that dock between midnight and one. “I’ll pull public ship data, tug jobs, and private service calls. If a dinghy fucking sneezed, I’ll get information on it and make sure she’s not there.”
Maverick pivots for the door.
“And Mav—” He pauses. I meet his eyes. “Good job giving her the chip.”
His face softens, then resets. “Find me something else to work on,” he says, and is gone.
The office goes quiet again. The hum of impatience mixed with the fans of my servers returns. I set the system to scrape every manifest and radio call after midnight. I set alerts that will scream at me if Chip-12 breathes near any reader again—ours, downtown, at the marina, anywhere.
I rest my hands flat on the desk and let the restraint thin for one heartbeat.
Hold on, Kitten.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to bring you back to me. I can’t lose you before you know how much you mean to me.” I murmur the words aloud into the quiet office.
Give me one thread, and I will pull the world apart at the seams.
