CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
KAI
Dre’s call lasted one minute and forty-eight seconds.
Long enough to trace the general area.
Not long enough to find him.
Malik narrowed the burner to a tower sector covering parts of Gloucester Township. Apartments. Shopping centers. A twenty-four-hour gym. Two hotels. Three gas stations. Too much ground to chase blindly.
Kai didn’t.
He split the work.
Ray moved from Nola’s townhouse to her parents’ block for the night.
A second contractor covered Nola’s place.
Dez pulled camera access from businesses near the strongest tower coordinates.
Malik worked the phone. Kai contacted the private investigator he used for skip traces and handed over Dre’s recent bank, employment, and known-friend information.
No police yet.
Not because Kai feared police.
Because reporting an employee missing while explaining the employee was also tied to eighty-seven thousand dollars missing from company control would change the whole shape of the situation. Once it became a theft investigation, Kai lost discretion.
He wasn’t there yet.
Nola stood in his office while he made calls.
Arms folded.
Still in the black dress from Silo.
Bare back exposed.
No crop-top joke tonight.
“What can I do?” she asked when he hung up.
“Make a list of every person Dre might trust enough to hide with.”
“Already did.”
She handed him her phone.
Twelve names.
Addresses where she knew them. Mothers’ names for three. One cousin in Delaware. An ex-girlfriend in Cherry Hill.
Kai looked at her.
“Good.”
“Don’t sound surprised.”
“I’m not.”
“Your face—”
“That’s my face.”
She almost smiled.
Almost.
They worked the list.
By three in the morning, nine were cleared.
Two phones went unanswered.
One address was old.
Kai told Nola to sleep in the office couch while he kept going.
She told him to kiss her ass.
He gave her a blanket anyway.
At five, she finally fell asleep sitting upright with her head against the armrest and one heel still on.
Kai removed the shoe.
Not the other.
She woke immediately.
“What are you doing?”
“Your foot was bent under you.”
“You touching my feet now?”
“Go back to sleep.”
“That’s how fetishes start.”
“Nola.”
She smiled faintly and closed her eyes again.
At seven, Rome arrived.
He stopped when he saw Nola asleep in Kai’s office.
Kai saw the look.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
Rome walked in and lowered his voice.
“Dre called her last night?”
Kai had told only Dez, Malik, and Ray.
That mattered.
“Who told you?”
Rome’s face changed.
“Keem.”
“Why Keem calling you?”
“Because I called him yesterday asking if Dre made contact.”
“After I told you not to freelance this.”
Rome’s expression hardened. “I’m trying to find eighty-seven thousand dollars.”
“So am I.”
Nola stirred but didn’t wake.
Kai stepped into the hallway and shut the office door behind him.
“Dre mentioned your initials.”
Rome went still.
Good.
Now Kai could watch the reaction without warning.
“My initials?”
“Message told him move the box. Signed R.B.”
Rome stared.
“You think that was me?”
“You were at Silo when another person in a white Tahoe talked to him the night before. Your truck never left valet.”
“So no.”
“I didn’t say no. I said that specific Tahoe wasn’t yours.”
Rome rubbed his jaw.
“Somebody trying to make it look like me.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? Kai, I been with you eleven years.”
“Which is why I’m talking to you instead of accusing you.”
“Feels like an accusation.”
“Then imagine how Dre feels.”
Rome’s eyes hardened.
There it was again.
The impatience with Dre specifically.
“That kid ran.”
“He panicked.”
“He ran with knowledge of where the money disappeared from.”
“And didn’t spend any of it.”
“That we know.”
Kai stepped closer.
“Why you want him guilty so bad?”
Rome’s mouth opened.
Closed.
“I don’t.”
“Then stop acting like facts are getting in your way.”
Rome held his stare.
“You getting soft.”
It came out quiet.
Not a challenge exactly.
Something worse.
Familiar disappointment.
Kai’s voice stayed level. “You want to say that again?”
Rome shook his head. “Nah.”
“Good.”
He walked away.
Dez was standing near the break-room door.
He had heard enough.
Kai looked at him.
Dez said, “Too eager.”
“Yeah.”
“You still trust him?”
Kai watched Rome disappear into the warehouse corridor.
“I trust what eleven years earned.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Kai looked at him.
“Less than last week.”
Dez nodded.
No satisfaction.
No I told you.
That was why Kai trusted him.
His phone buzzed.
The private investigator.
One of Dre’s old friends had a mother who rented a duplex in Sicklerville. The son claimed he hadn’t seen Dre, but his mother’s Ring camera caught Dre crossing the porch three nights earlier.
Kai grabbed his keys.
Nola opened the office door behind him.
“Where we going?”
He looked at her.
Hair flattened on one side. One heel on. One bare foot. Eyes still tired but awake.
“Sicklerville.”
“Give me two minutes.”
Kai glanced at her one shoe.
“You need more than two.”
She looked down.
“Don’t start.”
Dez laughed.
Nola pointed at him. “You too.”
Ten minutes later they were in the truck.
Dre wasn’t at the duplex.
But the woman who lived there remembered him.
“He stayed one night. Wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. Left before breakfast.”
“Did anyone come by?” Kai asked.
“No.”
“Call?”
She thought.
“Phone rang around midnight. He went outside to answer. Came back pale.”
“Anything he left?”
She disappeared upstairs and returned with a sweatshirt.
Dre’s.
Nola pressed it to her face for half a second before catching herself.
Kai pretended not to notice.
The woman handed over a crumpled receipt from the pocket.
A convenience store in Lindenwold.
Same night.
Another step.
Not enough.
Outside, Nola leaned against the truck.
“He keeps moving because they keep finding him.”
“Looks that way.”
“How?”
“Phone maybe. People he contacts. Somebody following Keem. Could be all three.”
Nola stared at Dre’s sweatshirt.
“I told my parents he was safe.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“I wanted it to be true.”
Kai leaned beside her.
“Different thing.”
“Still a lie.”
“Yeah.”
She looked at him.
“You’re not gonna tell me it’s okay?”
“Do you think it is?”
“No.”
“Then why would I?”
Nola nodded slowly.
“That’s what I like about you.”
Kai glanced at her.
“You admitting it now?”
“Don’t ruin the moment.”
He smiled.
For five seconds, the world got quiet.
Then Nola’s phone buzzed.
A text from Dre.
I’M SORRY.
Nothing else.
Nola called immediately.
Phone off.
Kai watched her shoulders fall.
The person controlling this understood exactly how much one message could do.
Kai wanted him found.
Not because of eighty-seven thousand anymore.
That part had become secondary somewhere along the way.