Chapter 26
Roque
T he road blurred beneath me, miles flying past as the early light of dawn spilled over the horizon in hazy streaks of gold and pink. Under any other circumstances, I might’ve noticed its beauty, but right now, all I could see was red.
My hands gripped the wheel tight, knuckles white, the pressure enough to make the leather creak beneath my palms. Every part of me was wound tight with rage, the kind that threatened to tear through my bones and muscles if I gave it an inch. I wanted to scream, I wanted to pull over and beat the hell out of something, but none of that would bring Sayla and the kids back.
Instead, I buried the screaming beast and kept my eyes on the road as I ran through everything I knew.
Titian—we’d never seen his face clearly, but he’d been behind every dirty thread woven through Palmerstown. All of the drugs, threats, coercion, and murder, with the order for Kaden Roper’s execution, came from him. And now, so had the abduction of Sayla and the kids, that much I was sure of.
I should’ve gone after him sooner, we all should have. But he’d been a ghost—no digital trail, confirmed name, or public identity.
My phone buzzed against the dash, the screen lighting up with a name I hadn’t expected to see, especially not at this hour—Ned Dahl.
I answered without slowing down. “Dahl.”
“Morning,” Ned said, voice calm but alert, like someone who hadn’t slept much either. “Sorry to call so early, but I think I recognize the guy in that grainy video clip Hurst sent me.”
My jaw tightened. “Go on.”
“I met with the mayor of Palmerstown yesterday,” he continued. “He brought a bodyguard—tall, broad, tight jaw, thick scar near his left ear. Matches the guy in your footage.”
That caught my attention. “You’re sure?”
“Not a hundred percent, but close enough to follow up on. He moved like ex-military, quiet and cold.”
I was already reaching for my comms. “Thanks, sir. I’ll take it from here.”
I ended the call and immediately hit Judd’s number. He answered on the second ring.
“Talk to me,” he said, voice as rough and ready as mine.
“I think we’ve got him. The guy from the footage might be working as security for Palmerstown’s mayor. Ned just saw him yesterday.”
Judd let out a breath through his teeth. “That makes sense. I’ve been going through what we found at Topper’s, and it links back to the mayor’s office—shell companies, payments hidden in infrastructure budgets. All of it quietly approved.”
“Titian’s got protection,” I mused.
“Or heisthe protection.” There was a beat of silence, and then Judd added, “We need to meet, there’s more. I’ll bring everything with me.”
“Where?”
“Lay by on the old service road between Palmerstown and Piersville. The one near the dry creek.”
“On my way,” I said, checking the rearview mirror to ensure Kai and Keir were still behind me.
In the rearview mirror, the headlights of the vehicles behind me stayed steady, unwavering beams cutting through the early morning haze. Kai and Keir—loyal as hell, always close, and always ready. They hadn’t said anything during this nightmare aside from asking questions, they justshowed up at my side without hesitation. That meant more than I could say.
Their presence kept me anchored and reminded me I wasn’t doing this alone, even if itfeltlike I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.
I turned off the main road, tires crunching over loose gravel as I veered onto the old service route that curved between Palmerstown and Piersville. The world got quieter out here. Trees framed the road in tall, silent rows, their shadows reaching across the asphalt like fingers.
Something shifted inside me as I took that turn. This wasn’t blind rage anymore, and it wasn’t the spiraling, helpless fury of not knowing. I had direction now. All the anger, the guilt, the relentless ache in my chest—it finally had somewhere to go.
I wasn’t chasing ghosts anymore, I was hunting something real.
And when I got there—when I stood face-to-face with the man who had dared to come into my house, to threaten Sayla, to terrify my children—I wasn’t going to hesitate.
It ended today.
I pulled into the lay by just as the sun began rising, streaks of light cutting across the sky like they were trying to burn through the darkness still clinging to everything. Gravel crunched under my tires as the truck rolled to a stop. Seconds later, Kai and Keir pulled in behind me, their headlights swinging wide before settling into place. They were out of their vehicles before I shut the engine off.
“What’s going on?” Keir asked, his voice calm, but I saw the tension in his shoulders—he could feel it, too. Something was shifting.
I stepped out, the cold morning air hitting me like a slap, but I barely felt it. I was too hot inside, not from the sun or the drive, but from the pressure building in my chest. The barely restrainedneedto do something, move, rip the world apart until I found Sayla and the kids.
But I kept it down, I had to.
If I lost it now—if I gave into the tightness in my throat and the images clawing their way into my head—I wouldn’t be any good to them. I wouldn’t be able to see straight, let alone lead this thing. And right now, every second mattered. We had to find a clue somewhere in the chaos and this mess. Something that told us where they were.
So, I focused.
“Ned called me,” I relayed, voice tight, clipped. “He thinks he recognizes the guy from the video. He might have seen him yesterday with the mayor of Palmerstown acting as his new bodyguard.”
Kai frowned. “I didn’t even know the mayor had changed his security detail.”
“Neither did I,” I muttered. “But the pieces are lining up. Judd found links between the mayor’s office and the shell companies Topper was tied to. Titian’s name—if you can call it that—is in there somewhere. If that guy’s working with the mayor, we’ve been staring right past him.”
Keir held out his hand. “Let me see the photo again.”
I passed him my phone, and he studied the grainy still, brow furrowed.
“I’ve never seen this guy standing next to the mayor before,” he said slowly. “Not in public or the background, but something’s off…” He trailed off, thinking hard. Then— “Do we have a shot of the van driver?”
Kai was already texting before the words were even fully out. “Mark might. He was nearby when they loaded him into the ambulance.”
The wait stretched, taut, and thin like a wire about to snap. I kept my breathing steady, forcing myself to focus on the here and now, not the what ifs. Not on Sayla’s face twisted in fear, Kaida crying in the dark, or Kairo trying to be brave when he was just a baby.
If I let myself spiral, I’d crash. So, I didn’t.
I reminded myself that Judd was back in Palmerstown, probably already ten steps ahead, with Kapono combing through every piece of evidence they’d pulled from Topper’s place. That man’s brain could make sense of anything. He saw patterns where most of us saw noise. And Imogen was nearly as good. If there was something to be found in those files between the two of them, they’d find it.
Kai’s phone buzzed. He looked down and swore under his breath.
“He got one just before they loaded the guy into the ambulance.”
He turned the screen toward us, and suddenly, the air shifted.
Even with the neck brace, even with the blood and bruising and the paramedics crowding around him, I recognized the face. It took a second, but then it clicked, and when it did, it hit like a punch to the chest.
Kai’s voice dropped. “I might not know the first guy, but I know exactly who this is.”
He didn’t even need to say the name, but he did anyway. “AJ Huntley.”
I stared at the screen, and my breath caught halfway up my throat.
He’d worked beside us and broken bread with us. He told stories about his kids—his kids , damn it. We’d never suspected him and put his name on a list. Not once.
Keir swore quietly. I did, too, the sound sharp and bitter in the cold morning air.
We hadn’t seen him clearly at the scene—between the wreckage, the paramedics trying to keep him stable, and what was left of the windshield, he’d been just another injured suspect, not one of ours .
How long had he been watching us? Listening in, slipping through the cracks, feeding information to people we were trying to bring down. And worse—how much did he know about Sayla and the kids?
My heart pounded hard in my chest, a steady, brutal rhythm that I forced myself to breathe through. I kept my face still, my focus locked in tight, unwilling to let the weight of it all show—not now, not yet.
This was a lead, one of many, if we were lucky. And somewhere in the middle of all of this—AJ, the mayor, Titian—was the answer I needed. The one that would take me straight to Sayla and the kids.
All I had to do was hold onto this thread and start pulling. And I wouldn’t stop until the whole damn thing came apart.
Judd’s SUV roared into the lay by, engine growling as it skidded to a stop on the gravel. He jumped out without even bothering to shut it off, the vehicle humming behind him as he stalked toward us with a laptop tucked under one arm and a thick folder clutched in the other. His face was drawn, focused—he looked like a man who’d been breathing adrenaline for hours and wasn’t ready to stop anytime soon.
“I found something,” he said without preamble, slapping the folder onto the hood of my truck. “Kapono and Imogen are still combing through the rest of Topper’s files, but this is the kind of thing you don’t keep unless you plan on using it as leverage.”
He flipped the folder open to reveal a worn ledger, each page filled with neat, deliberate handwriting. There were payments in and out, scribbled notes, and addresses—some that sent a cold chill down my spine. They were all real places, all connected to real people. Most of them didn’t even know they were being watched, let alone used.
“No digital backups,” Judd said, his voice hard, “just ink and paper. You only do that if you want to blackmail someone or if you’re scared it’ll come back to bite you electronically.”
Then he opened the laptop and turned the screen to face us. “But this is worse.”
The desktop was almost empty—just one folder labeled Chess . Inside, there were three audio files. Judd didn’t wait, he clicked on the first one, and the moment the audio started to play, I felt a fresh surge of fury rise in my chest.
The voice was unmistakable: the mayor of Palmerstown.
“Now that I’m here,” he said, calm and casual, like he was giving a speech at a fundraiser, “things are going to change. Small towns get overlooked. That’s an opportunity, it doesn’t have to be legal.”
I felt Kai shift beside me, tension winding through all of us.
The mayor kept talking. “I’ve been approached by someone who knows how to make that happen, but we need real estate. Quiet. Off the radar.”
Then came Topper’s voice, low and oily. “I know how to make that happen.”
“Whatever it takes,” the mayor replied. “You’ll get your cut.”
They haggled like they were discussing prices at a farmers' market. Then Topper said, “It was Nice doing business with you.”
Judd clicked on the second file.
The tone was colder this time, more direct.
“Ailee needs to be taken care of,” the mayor announced. “She’s talking to Roque and the others. She knows too much—especially about the prostitution side of things. If they pull on that thread, they’ll unravel the rest.”
“She won’t be a problem,” Topper answered flatly.
Then, they moved on to Kaden Roper.
“Smart kid and well connected. We can use him. Bribe him or pressure him—get him moving product. If he takes the fall when they get too close, that’ll keep our best men clear for bigger jobs.”
I clenched my jaw until my teeth ached. Kaden hadn’t stood a chance.
Judd played the final recording.
“I want Dahl out,” the mayor said bluntly. “Man’s too clean. He’s in the way. Start planning. I don’t care how.”
The recording cut out.
“I already called Ned,” Judd said, shutting the laptop. He just laughed and said it’s one of ten death threats he gets a week, but I called his security detail anyway. They’re on alert.”
I glanced at Judd. “This about Cyn?”
His mouth twitched, but he didn’t deny it.
“Partly,” he admitted. “But Ned’s one of the few left who still gives a damn about doing the right thing. We lose him, and we lose a hell of a lot more than a politician.”
I nodded, but my mind had already shifted. “You said Imogen and Kapono were going through the digital evidence?”
“Yeah,” Judd confirmed. “Kapono’s already flagged three potential names, and Imogen’s checking for coded entries in our information. If there’s a trail, they’ll find it.”
They would, I trusted them with my life.
But then Judd looked at me again, a different kind of concern in his voice. “None of Sayla’s trackers are pinging. Was she wearing the ring?”
A cold wave washed over me, and I swore under my breath. “No, she takes her jewelry off at night.”
My mind reeled, racing through every mental image I had of that morning. Her work shoes had been sitting by the front door, right where she always left them. Her purse, too. Her phone was still in my back pocket. She hadn’t grabbed anything before she’d been taken, which meant every tracker we had—her purse, her shoes, her car, her phone, the ring—all of it was useless.
They’d taken her and the kids into the night without leaving so much as a breadcrumb behind. Now, it was just silence and shadows, stretching out endlessly in every direction.
I had never felt more helpless in my life. The weight of that realization settled in my chest like a stone—heavy, unmoving, and cold enough to steal my breath. It wasn’t just the fear of not knowing where they were—it was the idea that they could be anywhere, enduring anything, and I was standing here with nothing but gut instinct and secondhand scraps of evidence to go on.
But helpless didn’t mean hopeless. I wouldn’t let it. I couldn’t let it.
If there was even the faintest trace left to find, I knew Kapono and Imogen would uncover it. The two could see through smoke and static, find order in chaos, and pull answers from the smallest, most insignificant fragments. If the trail were faint, they’d sharpen it. If it were buried, they’d dig it out.
And if there wasn’t a trail at all, I’d carve one out with my bare hands. I had no choice because there was no version of this story where I didn’t bring them home.
Judd’s phone buzzed, vibrating against the hood of the truck where he’d set it. He glanced at the screen and picked up immediately, putting it on speaker without a word. I could tell by the crease between his brows that whatever he was hearing wasn’t good.
“It’s Imogen,” his voice was tight.
From the other end, her tone was urgent but level. “Kapono’s been checking some of the vehicles we tagged. Most of them parked or stayed close to town, but one stood out. It passed by Roque’s house right after he left.”
My heart kicked hard in my chest.
Imogen continued, “He ran the plates. It's registered to one of the property companies linked to the mayor's office. He’s tracked it to a residential address in the center of Palmerstown—it’s parked at a house near the old square.”
Judd straightened, already more alert. “He’s there now?”
“He was headed that way for a drive-by,” she replied, “but he passed a van driving toward him on the way there. Said it looked beat-up, but the shape and size matched the one from the scene. He was going to see if—” The line went dead.
Judd pulled the phone from the hood and looked at the screen like it might explain something, but the call had dropped clean.
“Shit,” he muttered, “signal’s gone. Towers are still spotty this far out after the storm.”
But my gut twisted. The timing was too perfect, too sudden.
Keir stepped closer. “You think someone cut her signal?”
“I don’t know,” Judd said, already redialing. “But I don’t like it.”
I stared at the horizon, the morning light finally settling across the trees like a cruel mockery of peace. Somewhere out there, Kapono was either driving into something or already had.