Chapter 22
twenty-two
Zach
The drive out to the warehouse feels different to the others.
Not quieter, not calmer, but tighter, like everything inside the car has been pulled into a single line that’s stretched too far and is about to snap if anything shifts the wrong way.
No one fills the silence. No one tries. There’s nothing left to say that hasn’t already been said, nothing that’s going to make this easier, nothing that’s going to change what we find when we get there.
Elijah is in the front, still and unreadable in a way that’s worse than when he was pacing, worse than when he was breaking things just to move the energy out of his body. It sits in him now, contained, held too tightly, like it’s waiting for somewhere to go.
Jackson hasn’t stopped moving since we left. It’s small things, subtle if you’re not looking for them, his fingers tapping once against his leg, his hand dragging through his hair, his jaw tightening and releasing like he’s forcing himself not to say something every few seconds.
Christian drives.
I sit in the back and watch the road disappear behind us, forcing my head to stay where it is instead of slipping somewhere else, instead of letting it drift back to her again in a way that doesn’t help anything.
We’re close.
I can feel that much.
Not because I know where she is yet.
Because this is the first real direction we’ve had.
The warehouse comes into view ahead of us, sitting low and empty against the dark, the same place from the video, the same concrete, the same structure that’s been sitting in my head since the moment we saw it.
Christian doesn’t fully stop the car before Elijah is already moving.
There’s no hesitation as we cross the distance to the entrance, no pause to think, no moment to plan anything out further. The door gives under Elijah’s hand hard enough that it hits the wall behind it, the sound echoing through the space as we move inside.
Empty.
The word lands immediately, even before we fully register it.
Empty.
The air inside is stale, unmoving, the space too open, too still in a way that feels wrong after everything we’ve seen, after everything that should still be here.
Jackson steps further in, turning slowly, his eyes scanning everything.
“This is it,” he says, his voice tight. “This is where the first video was taken. The concrete...this is it.”
Elijah doesn’t answer him.
He’s already moving, crossing the space, checking corners, pulling open doors that lead nowhere, his movements sharp, aggressive in a way that doesn’t quite break control but sits right on the edge of it.
“Are we sure,” he says, the words low, more to the room than to any of us.
“We’re sure,” Christian replies.
I don’t move straight away.
Because something hits me before I do. Her scent.
Faint.
Almost gone.
But still there.
My chest tightens slightly as I take a step further in, my attention narrowing, my focus shifting away from the empty space and onto something else entirely.
“I can smell her,” I say.
The words come out before I think about them.
All three of them turn.
“What?” Jackson asks.
I move further in, slower now, my head tilting slightly as I breathe in again, trying to catch it properly, trying to separate it from everything else.
“Her perfume,” I say, quieter this time, more certain. “It’s still here.”
Not strong.
Not fresh.
But there.
It settles something in me and makes everything worse at the same time.
“She was here,” Jackson says, like he needs to say it out loud to make it real.
Elijah doesn’t stop moving.
He starts tearing the place apart.
Not methodically.
Not cleanly.
He grabs at anything that could be something, throwing it aside when it isn’t, checking behind, under, inside anything that could hold even the smallest clue.
“Fuck,” he mutters, the word low and vicious as he moves to the next thing.
Jackson is already on his phone.
“Evelyn,” he says the second she answers. “We’re at the warehouse. She’s not here.”
He turns slightly as he listens.
“There has to be something else,” he continues. “Anything connected to Paul in this area. Anything. You and Lucian need to look again.”
Another pause.
“No,” he says sharply. “Not general. Specific. I need anything that puts him near here, anything that suggests where he would go next.”
He starts pacing as he talks, the same restless movement from before coming back harder now that we’re here and she isn’t.
“Search harder,” he says. “Search faster. I don’t care how small it is, I need something.”
I tune him out.
Not fully.
Just enough.
Because standing in the middle of this empty space isn’t helping.
Looking at the same walls isn’t helping.
I need something else.
My gaze shifts. To the door. To the outside. To the area around us. Then back inside.
I move back toward the entrance, pulling my phone out as I do, bringing up the map of the area, zooming out just enough to see where we are in relation to everything else.
Warehouse.
Roads.
Nothing obvious.
No immediate connections. I force myself to think the way he would.
You’ve taken her. You’ve already had one location. You know they’ll find it eventually, so you don’t stay. You move. But you don’t go somewhere obvious. You don’t go somewhere that can be tracked easily. You go somewhere...
My gaze shifts across the map.
There.
A large stretch of land, darker on the screen, unbroken by roads the way the rest of the area is.
Forest.
I zoom in slightly. The edges of it. The access points.
The way it spreads out wide enough that you could disappear inside it if you knew what you were doing.
If you had time. If you had a place already set up. My pulse picks up slightly.
It’s not guaranteed.
But it fits. Too well. I turn back toward them.
“Jackson.”
He stops pacing and looks at me.
“What.”
“Ask them if there’s anything connecting Paul to this area,” I say, holding his gaze. “Property. Deliveries. Searches. Anything tied to land out here.”
He frowns slightly, but he doesn’t question it.
He turns back to the phone immediately.
“Evelyn,” he says. “Check for anything tied to land near the forest outside the warehouse. Property purchases, deliveries, anything he’s searched or accessed connected to that area.”
We wait.
The silence stretches.
Elijah is still moving in the background, still tearing through what’s left of the space even though there’s nothing here.
Jackson doesn’t speak again until Evelyn does.
“There’s something,” he says, his voice sharpening. “Six months ago? Delivery to that area?”
My chest tightens.
I nod once.
“That’s it,” I say. “It has to be.”
Christian looks at the map, then back at me.
“That’s a massive area,” he says. “We can’t just—”
“We don’t have another option,” I cut in.
The words come out steadier than I expect.
“We go there. We figure it out when we get there.”
Because standing here isn’t doing anything.
Because this...this is something.
“I know it,” I add, quieter now but no less certain. “He’s out there.”
There’s a moment where it could be questioned.
Where it could be argued.
It isn’t.
Elijah stops moving and looks at me, then nods once.
“Move.”
That’s all it takes.
We’re already heading back to the car, the shift immediate, the energy changing from static frustration to something sharper, something forward.
Jackson is still on the phone as we move.
“Keep searching,” he says. “Everything you can. Lucian, see if you can get satellite, traffic cams, anything that leads out there.”
The warehouse disappears behind us as we head toward the forest, the road stretching out in front of us in a way that feels endless and too short at the same time.
We’re close.
I can feel that much now.
Not hope.
Not yet.
But something stronger than what we had before.
Direction.
My hand presses into my thigh again, the tension sitting there, controlled this time, contained instead of spilling over.
Please let us not be too late.