Page 53 of Hidden

"Seven. I haven’t traced the final number yet, the currency was coded. I need another day, maybe two with the audio enhancement before I can give you a reliable figure."

"And the Seattle girl." He pushes the laptop away and rubs his eyes.

"Nadia Herrera. Twenty-three. Filed fourteen days ago. There’s a camera gap it’s the same profile as Coleman in Colorado and Okafor in Austin." I close the metadata window. "There are three with direct library connections. The network is running a preference pattern I hadn't identified until tonight."

"Libraries?"

"Academic environments. Graduate students, mostly. The age range skews older than I initially modelled, the median is twenty-two, not nineteen." I pull up the updated map. "Someone is selecting women for a specific profile: educated, independent. Someone who will be filed as a missing person from friends, but not immediately escalated."

Cain looks at the map for a long time. "You said you needed another day on the audio," he says.

"At least, maybe more."

"Then go do that." He closes the laptop and slides it back across the table toward me. Then he stands. "Come back when you have the figure and the voice confirmation."

"Cain." I pick up the laptop. "This isn't a standard kind of trafficking operation. The selection is too specific, the execution too clean. Whoever is running this has resources, patience and they've been doing it long enough to have a system." I pause. "This is organized at a level that doesn't get built overnight."

He looks at me.

"I know," he says. There’s a lot more about this case that he knows but clearly doesn’t want to tell me.

"How long have you known?" I ask.

"Go work the audio," he says, then walks back to his bedroom, and I stand there for a moment grabbing all my things and get in the elevator.

I walk back to the car thinking about what Cain knows. Not tonight-knew, but before-knew, and the weight of those two words, I know.

Which means someone came to him. Someone with enough information to bring this to a Crawford, enough trust or enough leverage to put it in Cain's hands and say, fix this, find them, do whatever it takes.

Someone came to Cain.

Who?

I get in the car and think about whether I should go straight home or check on Sadie.

***

I stand across the street, under the shadow of an old oak tree, my hands in my pockets, my eyes fixed on her window. I sat in my car for so long fighting with myself whether or not to come see her tonight. I started the car and now I’m here.

This has become an obsession. I know that. Yet, here I am, waiting to smell her again. That sweet strawberry scent which lives around me now.

The images of her in bed after what we did, after what I helped her do, and how she looked sexy when she had her orgasm, flip through my mind on repeat. It only reinforced how much I wanted to be buried deep inside her.

My beautiful, exhausted girl. The memory of her moans through the phone still hums under my skin.

The cloned swipe card feels warm in my hand as I cross the quiet quad. The building’s side entrance opens, the lock beeping its familiar green approval. I move through the silent hallway. For being first-year students, I would have thought at least some of these dorm rooms would be awake even at two in the morning. But no, they’re all asleep. They all need to have some fun.

Inside her dorm, the air is warm and sweet with the scent of her strawberry lotion and the faint trace of sex still lingering, and I smile. I set the fresh violets on the kitchen counter first, deep purple and perfect. Beside them I place the breakfast, an oat milk latte from Grounds, still warm in its insulated sleeve, and a warm croissant wrapped in paper from the bakery she passes every morning. She’ll find it waiting when she wakes up, another quiet reminder that I’m thinking of her.

I move to her bedroom; her door is slightly open. She’s lying curled on her side, facing me this time. The thin tank top has ridden up, exposing a strip of soft skin at her waist. Her hair spills across the pillow, her lips slightly parted. She looks so peaceful. So completely mine in this stolen moment.

I step closer and pull a small silver bracelet from my pocket, it’s delicate, with a tiny violet charm. I leave it on her nightstand, right next to her phone, where she’ll see it first thing. A gift. Something she can wear and feel me against her skin all day.

Why does the thought of me being with her all the time make me hard?

Before I go, I can’t resist, I sit carefully on the edge of the bed. She doesn’t stir. My gaze drops to her right hand, the one she used earlier while I listened to every gasp and whimper. I lift it gently, bringing her fingers to my face. They still carry the faint, musky sweetness of her. I inhale deeply, my eyes closing for a second as the scent fills my lungs.

“Fuck, Sadie,” I whisper against her skin. “You smell incredible. Sweet and desperate and all mine.”