By the time he was done, she had no friends, no family, no voice. Even the people closest to her turned their backs on her. So she fled across borders, carrying the ashes of who she used to be. Jason found her months later, half-starved, half-mad, living under a borrowed name. He helped her build a new identity and get out of the country.
She fights now because she already died once—not by a bullet, but by a system that lets people erase others for convenience.
And we keep going because that system keeps breathing. We know it will never truly die, not completely. But if we can sever one of its heads, maybe the rest will learn to live in fear, too. Let them spend their lives paranoid, always looking over their shoulders, knowing people like us exist.
Watching. Waiting.
But my nerves are shredded now. And at this moment, I’m holding more questions than answers. All I want is constant progress, but instead I’m watching my colleague unravel in front of me. The purpose is slipping through our fingers—because an agent is gone, because I can’t stop thinking abouther, and because somewhere deep down, I’m starting to lose sight of who I truly am and why I feel this way at all.
“Where’s Lucia?” I ask flatly. If they could just handle this on their own, I could focus on the bigger picture. For all we know, Ezra’s silence might be nothing but a product of our paranoia.
Jason exhales, long and heavy. “She’s been driving around, questioning everyone who knows him—old contacts, old clients. Ten minutes before you came in, she called. Still nothing.”
I frown, my gaze snapping to the wall covered in maps, strings, and photographs. Sometimes it all feels unreal, like I’mstill nineteen, lying in a wrecked car with metal twisted around me and cold air biting through the gashes in my skin.
The memory crashes over me too vividly, too suddenly. I drag a hand down my face again, scraping against the roughness of my beard as if I could scrub the image away.
“When was the last time you even shaved?” Jason asks, his chair squeaking as he spins toward me. “Jesus, man. I haven’t seen you with a full beard in years.”
Shaving used to mean something—a sign that I still cared, that I wasn’t losing control. But ever since Estella, I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s like I want to keep a piece of her words with me, even if it’s ridiculous.
She seemed to truly like it, after all.
“I just don’t pay that much attention to it,” I say, lying through my teeth. I nod toward his computer, needing the shift. “Any leads? Last place Ezra visited?”
Jason turns back, brushing aside a pile of papers and grabbing the mouse before he starts clicking through the windows. “I checked everything. His house, his street, nearby spots, even his mother’s place—nothing.” His voice cracks at the end, stretched thin by exhaustion. “It’s like the guy just vanished.”
I hum under my breath, my mind already sifting through memories. Ezra was the kind of man who always stayed balanced, the sort who never gave too much or too little. Lucia once called him an exemplary son, saying he would answer his mother’s calls even in the middle of a mission briefing, and for some reason, it stuck with me.
“You said you checked his mother’s house?” I ask, leaning closer.
Jason nods. “A couple of times. Nothing there.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
He stands, lifting his arms in mock surrender. “Be my guest. Maybe you’ll magically find what I couldn’t,” he mutters, sarcasm dripping from every word. I ignore him and drop into the chair. Following his directions, I pull up the footage.
“There,” Jason says, pointing at the screen. “That’s from a few days before he went missing. She goes out, takes out the trash, waters the garden—normal routine. Nothing strange.”
I squint at the footage, a small jolt flaring inside me. The sensation is fleeting at first, but it grows, swelling into something stronger.
“Remember what Lucia called him?” I ask.
Jason frowns. “What?”
“An exemplary son.”
“You think his mom’s got him locked in the basement or something?” Jason laughs, the sound dry and humorless. “Come on, man. The fact that he was a Momma’s boy doesn’t mean shit.”
My eyes narrow to slits as I stare at the footage. Ezra’s mother goes about her day, and then a white van rolls into the frame, stopping near the house. She walks out to meet the driver.
“Pizza delivery,” he says flatly. “Damn, now I’m hungry again.”
I zoom in, and the pixels fracture into tiny mosaics, but I keep pushing closer, scrubbing the footage back and forth until I finally see it. I point to the screen, to the moment she takes the pizza box, barely open, revealing something white tucked inside.
“See that?”
He leans in, squinting. “Napkins?”
