Chapter 4
FOUR
The coffee at Club Persephone tasted like it had been filtered through motor oil, but Ryan drank it anyway. At least the taste distracted him from the image of that kid on the screen.
The sky outside was a flat, lifeless grey.
It wasn’t even noon, and the heat was already pressing in.
A fly buzzed against the barred window. He sat at a small table near the back of the club—off-hours, dead quiet—and opened a second burner phone.
One of two he kept in a cloth pouch in a lockbox under the floorboards upstairs.
If they were watching the boy, they were watching for a reason. And if that reason had anything to do with Kylie’s death, or the men who had used her and discarded her, then he was already running behind.
The phone felt heavier than it should’ve in his hand. He stared at the screen for a full minute before scrolling to a number he hadn’t used in over a year.
Mark Lyman. One of the few people who might not shoot him on sight. Or worse, turn him in for a promotion.
Emphasis on the might.
Years back, they’d worked together in the Caribbean fugitive unit. They’d shared six months of late-night stakeouts, heatstroke and impossible cases. Mark had once taken a bottle to the ribs in Curacao, and Ryan had been the one to patch him up with a stolen first aid kit and a hotel towel.
In return, he’d helped Ryan out of his own tight spot a year ago, when he’d lent him his car to drive to Panama City Beach and find a woman named Jessica Meeks.
That was the last time they’d spoken. It was also the last time Lyman had ever seen his car, but that was a whole other story.
He was more than a colleague. Maybe not quite a friend. But back then, Lyman had looked at him like he was someone worth backing.
Ryan rubbed his hand across his mouth. This was a risk. A real one. If Lyman was wired, if the number was monitored, if someone even flagged a ping off a tower, Ryan could have a drone over his head before sunset.
He knew he should leave it alone, that he should pack his bag and disappear south. But Noah was just a kid. Kylie’s kid. A kid being watched, maybe worse. And Ryan had very few allies left. So he hit “Call.”
One ring. Two. Three. It clicked. No voicemail. Just dead air.
Then—
“This number is not in service.” The mechanical voice cut sharper than expected.
Ryan stared at the phone. Hit redial. Same result. He tried the old work cell Lyman used to carry. Nothing. Then his backup contact, the Gmail they’d used for dead-drops.
Login failed.
He tried again.
Password changed.
He exhaled, feeling a sharp pain in his chest. Then he closed the phone and sat still for a long time. The kind of still that didn’t feel strategic. Just…empty.
The walls felt like they were closing in now. He pushed away from the table and paced once across the room. His boots thudded softly against the floor.
He poured himself another cup of the sludge-coffee and sat again.
Think.
He ran through a mental list of names. One he knew for sure was a no-go: Tomás Gates.
They’d come up together at Glynco, friendly rivals through the academy, always neck and neck on quals.
Later, they’d served on the same task force, back when Ryan was second-in-command of the Two Rivers Violent Fugitive Unit.
Gates, ever the poster boy, had headed it.
He’d always been the kind of guy who knew how to play politics, keep his nose clean and his boots polished.
Ryan could still picture him, leaning against his SUV, in the humid Tennessee dusk.
That easy laugh, the one that made you forget how sharp the guy really was.
Once, Ryan would have trusted him with his life. Now? He wouldn’t.
The silence in the room pressed in. He was a thousand miles from anyone who knew him, and even farther from anyone who gave a damn. He had no backup. No flag on his badge to fall back on. The brotherhood was gone.
He felt it then: the tipping point. The moment when his old life finally stopped being a resource and started being a liability. He stared at the phone on the table for another long minute, like it might ring on its own. But it didn’t.
The club was still quiet as he made his way back upstairs. Just the distant thump of someone restocking bottles and the low hum of the AC unit that never gave off any cool air.
He climbed the narrow back stairwell and unlocked the door to his room.
Inside: stillness. The mattress. The fan. He turned the bolt, slid the chain across, set the chair back under the handle.
Then he lay down on the mattress and stared at the ceiling.
He didn’t have a plan, or even full understanding of the problem. He had the memory of a face on a screen, and a threat wrapped in silence.
And now he had one less person to call.