I locked my eyes on him. “Did you trace it?”
He shrugged, his head shaking. “No, because as I just said, you saw him do it.”
My eyes turned to slits. “And how long did it take us to realise that what we saw wasn’t always the fucking truth, Oscar?” Anger fuelled my stance. “We’ve never run on hunches. We’ve never not done things by the book. Never!”
I was heaving, but I couldn’t stop. I pointed at my desk, at the screen still full of files. “Trace it. Go back to the logs and trace it.”
Oscar barely looked at me before he stole back the chair, his fingers flying across the keyboard. The screen was a blur of code in no time, coordinates flashing like wiring sparks. Before long a map filled the screen, but it wasn’t familiar. Not at first. But the closer the pin got, the more I could make out Manhattan. The more I could make out Liberty Street. The more I could make out the building we were standing in right now.
It felt like the floor dropped out from under me. Like the room was tilting sideways, dragging me towards the screen, daring me to see just how royally fucked we were. I jabbed my finger at the screen, adrenaline deadening my arm. “The fuck is this?”
The edges of my vision blurred as Oscar turned, eyes wide, shaking his head. “I don’t know. None of this makes sense.”
Nathaniel stormed behind him, crowding the desk. “That can’t be right.”
But it was. God, it was.
Oscar didn’t get things wrong. His skills eclipsed mine. Hell, eclipsed our entire network team. Which is why it felt like someone had stapled my chest to the floor, nailing my heart in place until it couldn’t beat right.
I staggered back, every nerve short-circuiting. I needed air. I needed space. I needed Cora.
“Marcus?” Oscar’s voice cut after me. “Where the hell are you going?”
I hadn’t even realised I was moving until the door handle was burning under my palm, until I was spilling into the hall. My legs carried me to the lift on autopilot. The steel doors closed me in, trapping me with nothing but the sound of my own ragged breathing—and the scream I didn’t let out until the world couldn’t hear it.
All this time, I thought we were counting down the days until he got to us.
But I was wrong.
He was already here.
chapter thirty eight
traffic: mending relationships everywhere
The road was quiet. Just the hum of the tyres on the asphalt and the low murmur of the wind slipping past the windows. Lana sat beside me in the passenger seat, curled slightly towards me, her gaze distant.
We hadn’t really spoken since we left Cora’s for the airport. Had barely spoken the entire forty-eight hours she’d been in New York. But that was all me, and we both knew it.
When we left the house, she’d hugged her goodbye like they’d known each other for years instead of hours, and Cora had clung to her like someone who knew what it felt like to be held up when everything inside was crumbling.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter than necessary.
“You’re still doing that,” Lana said softly, and I knew she was looking at me.
I gripped tighter. “Doing what?”
“That.” She blew a laugh through her nose—the way she did when I used to splatter paint everywhere. “When you have too many things on your mind, whatever you’re holding, you hold it tighter.”
I huffed a breath and loosened my grip. “I’ve never done that.”
“Liar.” She jested, eyes still on me. Mine were still on the road. “You did it when you painted.” She let a giggle slip, soft and delicate and familiar. “You would squeeze the brush so tight that I thought it might snap—”
“If I wanted to walk down memory lane, I would have called you sooner.”
The car was void of noise then, my voice killing every bit of it.
The soft warmth of her stare still burned the side of my face, and after a mile of quiet, she broke it. “Why do you pretend like I don’t exist?” She turned fully to face me then. “And before you say it’s because you’re busy, or the days get away from you, you should know that Oscar has been to Marcus and Anna’s birthday parties for the past four years.”
