Because this is what Cole wants.
I’m a message, nothing more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Ryder
This isn’t just a delay.It’s everything slipping out of place.
Aurora said five minutes. Maybe ten. She smiled when she said it, she trusted the shape of this town now, she could step out of The Hollow and expect the world to behave itself long enough for her to come back.
By the time it hits twenty, that quiet sense of wrongness settles into my chest.
“Where is she?”
Zane looks up immediately, already tracking the shift in the room. “Granger’s. That’s where she said she was going.”
“How long?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
Too long.
Finn is off the stool before the thought finishes forming. “I’ll go?—”
I cut him off with a look. “Zane, pull the cameras. Even the back ones, just in case. Alley, street, everything between here and Granger’s.”
He’s already moving, laptop open, fingers flying.
“Finn,” I add.
He turns, wired tight, anger sitting just under his skin. “Yeah?”
“Front street. Check the shop. Keep your head clear.”
His jaw flexes, but he nods. “Got it.”
I head out the back.
The alley holds that strange, hollow quiet that comes when something has already happened, and the space hasn’t caught up yet. Light spills unevenly from the door behind me, catching on brick and metal and nothing else. Nothing I can immediately see.
My phone buzzes.
Zane.
“Talk.”
“I’ve got her on camera,” he says. “She leaves the alley. Time stamp’s nineteen minutes ago.”
“And after?”
A beat. “Nothing.”
I slow just enough to feel that land.
“She passes the small blind spot,” Zane continues. “After that, there’s no movement. No one crossing the frame. No exit on the far angle. It just stops.”
Fuck.
