Page 181 of Reckless

He looks down at the screen but doesn’t touch it. “And if I still say no?”

This time it’s Slate who answers, “You can.” His drawl rolls through the kitchen. “Ain’t a soul here gonna force a pen to your hand…” He pauses. “But you’ll leave this house knowin’ you just picked Calloway over yourself.”

The room falls quiet again, and I watch Travis work through it. He looks for leverage but finds none.

I lean forward, resting my hands on the table. “You’ve got one thing left I can’t take with a keyboard.” His eyes lift to mine. “Your pulse.” His eyes widen at my clear threat. “If you walk away from this…” My voice stays level. “Calloway will spend the rest of his life wondering whether you’ll talk.” I let that settle. “And so will we.” His breathing shallows. “You know what’s east of Las Vegas?” His breathing stutters as he shakes his head slowly. “The desert.” I glance toward the dark window. “Hundreds of miles of it.” My eyes come back to his. “Dry washes. Dry creek beds. Abandoned mine shafts. Places nobody’s looked in for fifty years because nobody has a reason to.” The calm presses in around him. “If it were me… I’d rather file paperwork.” I shrug. “But I’m prepared to do either.”

Travis’ hands shake against the table, his eyes darting between all of us like he’s having trouble deciding his next move.

Slate steps forward, folding his arms across his chest. “Look, kid, Calloway’s done.” The words settle over the kitchen, and Travis doesn’t answer. Slate doesn’t seem to expect him to. He studies him for a long moment before speaking again, “Ain’t much point pretendin’ otherwise.” The air thickens, heavy enough to feel. Finally, he says, “Question is… whether you’re smart enough to outlive him.”

Travis’ gaze drifts to the window over the sink, unfocused, like he’s searching for a version of the night where the answer changes, and his shoulders lose a fraction of their tension.

Barely noticeable.

But enough.

I don’t reach for the laptop yet. “Before we get to the paperwork, I want you to say it. Out loud.”

Travis looks at me, wary. “Say what?”

“The security firm. The car that ran Sage off the highway. The man who followed her sister and photographed her outside a studio full of people who had nothing to do with any of this.” I keep my voice level, because that’s the only tone this deserves. “That was you!”

Something in Travis’ face tightens, but he doesn’t deny it. “I told them to watch her. Follow her. Make her nervous enough to back off the inquiry before it went any further.”

“That’s not what happened on that highway.”

“That wasn’t supposed to—” He stops, then starts again. “That was supposed to be pressure. I told them to scare her, not…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.

“You told armed men to scare her?” I don’t move. “And you had a deaf kid photographed outside her job and followed on the street because you needed to look useful to a man you already knew was dirty?”

“I needed him to trust me!” The words come faster now, like he’s been carrying the answer alone long enough that he’s relieved someone’s finally asking. “If Calloway thought I was soft, if he thought for one second I wasn’t handling problems the way he wanted them handled, I’d have been the next loose end he cleaned up. So yes… I made the calls he expected me to make. And every damn night I went home and copied another folder onto a drive he doesn’t know exists, because I always knew a day like this might come, and I wanted to be the one still standing when it did.”

“So you protected yourself twice?” Slate’s voice comes from behind me, quiet and even. “Once by hurting people. Once by keeping the receipts that let you walk away from having done it?”

Travis doesn’t argue. I watch him decide not to, which is the first honest thing he’s done since we walked in.

“I’m not going to tell you it was right. I’m telling you it’s what happened.”

Nobody answers him.

I turn the laptop around and slide it across the table until it stops in front of him. “Read the damn paper.”

He exhales, then nods, leaning in to finally read it.

Every page lays out exactly what he knows about Calloway’s operation. The shell companies used to move money. The private security firms that acted as cutouts. The meetings he attended. The instructions he carried out. The payments he witnessed. The names of the people sitting between Calloway and the crimes they thought they’d buried beneath layers of paperwork. Every statement cross-referenced against the files we already pulled from his servers and the evidence sitting on drives back at the clubhouse.

It’s more than a confession.

It’s the roadmap that ties Calloway’s entire operation together.

At the bottom of the final page sits a declaration that everything he’s provided is true to the best of his knowledge and given voluntarily.

His signature makes him a cooperating witness.

Once the statement is filed, copies land with enough agencies that they can’t quietly disappear, and Calloway loses any chance of burying this alongside everything else.

Travis reads every word, then his jaw tightens. His thumb rubs slowly over the edge of the table while he weighs whatever future is still left to him.