33. CJ
CJ
“No.”
No. No. No.
It hits like a physical thing, like the sound itself is trying to split my skull open and make me accept what I’m refusing to see.
“Say it again.”
My voice is too steady. That’s the only warning I get that something inside me is about to crack. I can feel it build in me. Fast. Sharp. As if my ribs are trying to hold back something that refuses to stay contained.
The room is silent except for the hum of monitors. PalMerc Security is frozen around me, every face turned toward the screens. I don’t look at them for long. I can’t. My eyes are locked on the frozen CCTV feed, like if I stare hard enough I can rewind time and stop it from happening.
The SUV. The alley. Eli and Finn standing near the water like it was just another day. Then the gun comes up. Then the fight. Then the world narrows into motion and violence and bad timing.
And then they’re gone.
The vehicle pulls away.
Deck and I running after it.
Too late.
Always too late.
The frame freezes on the moment we lost them completely, and my brain refuses to let it move on from there. Ten seconds behind him. That’s all I was. Ten seconds that keep repeating like punishment.
If I had held his hand longer. If I had walked slower with him instead of letting go for even a second. If I had listened to that instinct screaming at me not to let him out of my sight.
He was smiling at me. He was replying to my message. He was still here.
And then he wasn’t.
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.
“Finn’s coming home,” I say. My voice breaks slightly on the edge of it. “Eli, too.”
That lands between us like a vow we both intend to keep, no matter what it costs. I turn back to the room. Every person is watching now, waiting for what we become next.
And I feel something shift. Not clarity or control, but something sharper. Because people like Adrian always think they’re untouchable. That they exist outside consequence. But they always forget the same thing.
They leave traces.
Movement. Money. People. Patterns.
I step forward.
“We find them,” I say. “Every contact. Every associate. Every vehicle. Every camera between here and anywhere he could move. Ports. Roads. Airstrips. Safe houses. Anyone who’s ever been within reach of him in the last five years, we pull it all.”
My voice steadies into something hard enough to carry.
“We don’t stop until they’re home.”
Because I can still see Eli’s face in that last second before everything went wrong.
And because there isn’t a version of this where I let him disappear from me again.
* * *
The break comes after midnight.
I’m halfway through what feels like my tenth coffee when Deck appears, too fast to be anything but bad news. Silas and Mack are still talking over maps when he crosses the room, tablet already in hand, and the moment I see his face I know before he even speaks.
“We got him.”
Everything stops.
I’m on my feet instantly. “What?”
He doesn’t hesitate. He slides the tablet across the table, and the image fills the screen: grainy CCTV, black SUV, same shape, same plate, same sick familiarity that makes my stomach tighten.
“Thirty miles south,” Deck says. “Traffic camera picked it up two hours ago.”
My eyes lock on it like if I stare hard enough I can pull Eli back through the screen.
“How?”
Deck zooms in, fast and precise. “We tracked it through CCTV networks. It turned off onto Williams Beach Road. A shop camera caught the turn.”
Silas let out a low whistle. “That’s private land. Forest. Dunes. Wealth pockets. You can disappear there easy.”
Deck nods once, already moving. Mack is pulling up maps, satellite overlays, property lines spreading across the screen like a net.
Williams Beach stretches out in front of us in cold digital clarity. Long coastline. Dense forest. Expensive homes hidden behind gates and trees. The kind of place people go when they don’t want to be found.
“Might be empty houses in there,” Mack says, scanning. “Seasonal owners. Lots of gaps.”
“Then find them,” I say.
The room fractures into movement again. Calls, typing, search filters, systems waking up. Three hours of checking ownership records, land registries, shell companies. Nothing clean. Nothing obvious. Just noise.
Then Deck stops.
“What?” I ask immediately. Because Deck doesn’t freeze like that unless something has just clicked into place.
He’s staring at one file on the screen like it’s burned into him.
“I know this name.”
He opens it, his hands already steady in that controlled way that tells me he’s not steady at all.
Peter Swale.
Private residence. Williams Beach.
“Who is he?” I ask.
Deck doesn’t answer straight away. Instead, he scrolls deeper, pulls another file, and the color in the room shifts with it.
“Retired businessman,” he says finally. “Owned the property for years. But that’s not what matters.”
He turns the tablet so I can see it properly.
My stomach drops before my brain catches up.
“Tell me you see it,” Deck says quietly.
I do.
And I hate that I do.
“Adrian knows him,” I say.
Silence hits the room like a slammed door.
Deck taps again, and the file projects onto the main screen so everyone can see it. Every head turns. Every voice dies.
“Peter Swale,” Deck says, his voice lower now. “Was one of Adrian’s patients. Five years of trauma counseling.”
Five years.
Long enough to build trust. Long enough to learn everything that matters without ever looking like a threat.
The realization of it burns into every fiber of my body. He didn’t just take Eli; he built a path to do it.
“He didn’t pick that location randomly,” Deck continues. “This has been planned for a long time.”
Not a panic move. Not a mistake. A system.
A route already walked.
A place already owned in all the ways that matter.
I grab my keys before anyone else speaks.
“Let’s go.”
* * *
The house sits alone at the end of a private road, the ocean crashing on one side and thick trees covering the other. The kind of place people come to disappear. The front door stands open, and that bothers me immediately.
“Clear it.”
Silas and Mack move first, checking every room while Deck and I follow behind.
The house is silent. We clear the kitchen, the living areas, the upstairs rooms. Nothing.
No Adrian. No Eli. No Finn. Just signs that someone had been here and left in a hurry.
My jaw tightens. We’re close, I know we’re close. Silas’s voice cuts through the silence.
“CJ.”
We find him downstairs. Not in the bedroom. In the basement. The air changes the second I step inside. This is a place where someone hides things.
Everything in this room feels like a bruise to my skin as I take it all in: the marks on the floor, the scuffs, the signs of recent movement. They’re fresh enough that my stomach turns.
Eli was kept here. Finn was restrained here. One of our boys bled here.
Deck moves carefully around the room, taking everything in, until he stops beside the wall. Something small catches his eye. A piece of paper wedged in the couch. He pulls it free and looks at it before handing it to me. A LunchShack receipt with a name scrawled on it.
Eli.
My chest tightens. Proof that he was here. Eli was here. I look around the basement, imagining what happened in this room. Adrian bringing him here. Keeping him here. Thinking he could control every part of what happened next.
Mack walks in holding his tablet, looking far too pleased with himself for the situation.
“I got into the security system,” he announces. “Honestly, it was embarrassing. People really should pay for proper security cameras. This was way too easy.”
Deck doesn’t even look up. He reaches out, snatches the tablet from Mack’s hand, and starts scrolling.
“Not now,” he growls.
Mack opens his mouth to argue, but one look at Deck’s face makes him think better of it. For once, he stays quiet.
“Wait.”
I watch over Deck’s shoulder as the screen flickers. A timestamp appears in the corner. A vehicle leaving, the SUV. But it’s not the vehicle that catches my attention. It’s the direction.
“He’s not heading north.”
Deck shakes his head. “No.”
He zooms in on the road, following the route Adrian took. And suddenly every piece fits. The beach house wasn’t the destination. It was a stop. A place Adrian knew he could use to hide while he figured out his next move.
I stare at the screen. “He’s taking him back.”
Silas looks at me. “Back where?”
I already know. Port Angeles. The place Adrian came from. The place Eli came from. The place where Adrian believes he still has control.
My hands curl into fists. “He’s taking Eli home.”
Deck looks at the map. “Then that’s where we go.”
I nod. Because for the first time in days, we aren’t chasing ghosts. We have a direction. Adrian thought he erased every trace. Thought nobody would find the trail. But he forgot one thing: he left evidence behind.
And now we’re following it all the way to Port Angeles.
Back to where this all started.