While most of the details didn’t make sense to her, one piece was clear—this man was the most wanted fugitive in existence.
No clear photograph existed, only a sketch. But Audrey didn’t need clarity—it showed the same eyes from the club and her backyard. Dark and steady. He watched her like she was a problem to solve, as if every move had already been decided and the rest of them were just catching up.
The same cold pressure she’d felt earlier returned with a new intensity.
Here was the man she’d been chasing all these years, and who had been taunting her in return. The man she’d blamed for everything.
And now he had a name.Ryker Valalli.
A desperate need to learn more about him surged through her. Typing frantically, she searched for additional information.
Nothing—no more pictures, no more news articles, and no more profiles.
Audrey was about to move on when her eyes fell on another folder. One that bore her name. Air rushed from her lungs as she double-tapped it.
Dozens of subfolders were inside. They held her court documents, police reports, psychological evaluations, and global news coverage. There were photos, too. One was of her in the high school grounds; another, in the courtroom. He even had her mugshot.
For years, Emerson had cataloged her. She was a case study…a variable, he had said.
Everything about it unsettled her, but she couldn’t let fear get in the way of finding her mother. She needed something more concrete about the warehouse district if she was going to chase the lead Emerson had given her. If this were a system, it would have seams. She filtered the transport logs by location until she found the place she’d been looking for—Tolusa.
The entries were far more familiar. All movement was tied to tangible infrastructure that Audrey recognized. It was all on Earth. She dove into one, and it flew open in a flurry of documents. From what she could understand, a warehouse in Tolusa had been flagged recently as the site of a known Silo-ID forger. She didn’t know what that was, but the timestamp had been within the last week. Its location was stated clearly in the margins: eastern Tolusa, the South Shore neighborhood.
Her breath shortened as more pieces shifted into place.
None of this had ever been random, and it was bigger than the night of the fire. She was one piece inside a larger game she didn’t understand.
Did Alex know all this?
The answer was yes, even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself. She hadn’t hallucinated that he and the killer recognized each other atSarai.
For a moment, panic crawled into her throat.
Then it calmed. Seeing it in black-and-white made her focus.
While she had a location for Sophia, there were still too many unanswered questions. What did Emerson really want? Was he tracking her for Ryker? Tracking Ryker for himself? Or had he been building his own file on Sophia long before Audrey entered the picture?
Audrey was done being the only one who didn’t understand the game.
Time for some answers.
She put the tablet back where she found it and walked to the hall closet where she’d left her coat. The knife was still in her pocket. She freed it, testing the weight in her hand, not because she intended to use it. All she wanted to see was how Emerson reacted to the possibility.
Back in the bedroom, Emerson lay on his back, face slack in sleep, looking younger than he had any right to. Audrey pressed the cold edge of the blade lightly beneath his jaw and moved close enough that her breath brushed his ear. “Wake up.”
His eyes opened at once. As if he’d been completely awake.
She held his gaze, the knife steady to his skin. “You’ve been watching me for far longer than you let on,” she said.
He didn’t deny it.
“You’re tied to Sophia. To Mihail.” She paused before saying the name that had anchored the entire night. “To Ryker.”
An unreadable look passed through his eyes at that third name.
Out of the corner of Audrey’s eye, the river moved through the city in a roiling current, the water glinting in the stark daylight. It was well into the morning now, and Emerson had said they had only the next twenty-four hours.
Tick-tock.
