The disappearance. Then the second clip.
Her body between them.
Again.
And again.
And again until the image burns itself into the back of my skull.
Taken.
My hand braces on the edge of the table hard enough to make the wood creak.
“All available footage,” I say, voice flat enough to sound calm. “Street cams. Traffic cams. Businesses near the station. I want every angle of them coming in and every angle of them leaving.”
Pietro nods fast. “Already pulling.”
“Faces. Plates. Routes. I don’t care how blurred it is. I wantsomething.”
Dimitri is already on his phone. Ivan doesn’t say a word now.
Vaska watches me from across the room, too still.
I drag a hand over my mouth and taste blood where I bit the inside of my cheek without realizing it.
She crushed her phone. Packed her bag. Took the money.
Tried to disappear. And still they got her.
All this time I’ve been trying to decide which truth was worse.
There isn’t one.
They both are.
My eyes go back to the frozen frame on the laptop.
Ayla hanging limp between two men like she weighs nothing.
“Find Kaya,” I say.
The room sharpens instantly. My gaze stays on the screen.
“I want him alive if she’s not with him. Dead if she is.”
***
I don’t sleep.
The house went quiet around me hours ago, but I don’t sleep.
I stay on the couch with one arm thrown over my eyes and the other hanging off the edge, gun still within reach on the table beside me, like I’m going to wake up to her walking through the door and somehow still need to shoot somebody.
The bedroom upstairs can go fuck itself. I’m not going in there.
Not with the sheets still smelling like her. Not with the imprint of her body probably still in the mattress. Not with the ghost of her laugh and her mouth and those fucking eyes of hers still stuck in my head like something sharp under skin.
So I stay here.
