I can still hear him. That’s the worst part. I can still hear “CJ!” tearing through the air like it was meant to carve itself into me permanently. I see his face every time I close my eyes. I see the moment he realized I wasn’t going to reach him in time.
The office erupts around me, phones ringing, voices overlapping, screens filling with movement and data and maps. Someone calls out stolen plates. Someone else is already tracking routes.
It all sounds distant, underwater.
“Check again,” I say.
“We already have.”
“Check again.”
They don’t argue. They just do it, because they can see I’m not in control of anything right now. Not anger. Not strategy. Just something collapsing in real time.
Across the room, Deck is everywhere at once. Calls coming in, calls going out, names of people who owe him favors and debts and silence. To everyone else he looks composed, but I know him well enough to see what’s underneath it. The tightness in his jaw when Finn’s name is spoken. The way his grip locks on the desk like he’s holding himself in place.
Finn isn’t just gone to him. He’s something worse than that.
Family.
“I’ll kill him,” I say before I even decide to speak.
The room goes still, but no one looks surprised. No one corrects me. Because they’re thinking it too.
Deck finally looks at me. We don’t say anything; there’s no need. This is already past consequences. Past law. Past anything that pretends to be clean.
Adrian doesn’t get arrested. He doesn’t get a trial.
He gets us.
I force the footage to replay again. Eli fighting. Finn refusing to stop. The gun. The shove. The van doors closing.
Gone.
The ache in my chest is relentless, caving in under its own weight. Every second he’s gone feels like another piece of me is tearing loose.
He doesn’t touch you.
He won’t get to you.
He has to come through me first.
Someone puts coffee in my hand. I don’t drink it. Someone talks to me. I don’t register it properly. Everything loops back to the same place.
Eli.
Is he alive?
Is he scared?
Is he hurting?
Is Adrian…I can’t finish that thought without something in me snapping.
Deck moves closer eventually, cutting through the noise without effort. When he speaks, it’s quieter than everything else in the room.
“We’ll find them.”
Not hope. Not comfort. A certainty that refuses to bend. I nod once, because anything more would fall apart. His hand lands on my shoulder. I know he is hurting, too.
