Chapter 13
Kane
C harlotte retreated to her bedroom after our conversation and her yoga workout, and I stood in the kitchen for a long moment, processing what had just happened.
She believed me.
After two years of being treated like a criminal by everyone who’d once called me friend or colleague, Charlotte Massey—the woman who’d written the article that destroyed me—had looked into my eyes and chosen to trust my word.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
I went into my own room, stripped off my work out clothes, and stepped into the shower to wash away the dried sweat on my skin while letting my mind replay the conversation.
It had felt good to finally say it all out loud.
To tell her directly, face to face, that I hadn’t done what she’d accused me of.
To explain my theories about being framed, about colleagues who’d lied under pressure, about a system that had failed me at every turn.
For two years, I’d carried that weight in silence. Even my parents, who believed in my innocence, didn’t really understand . They loved me, but they couldn’t comprehend why I hadn’t fought harder, why I’d walked away instead of demanding justice.
Charlotte understood because she’d been through the same thing with her father, because she knew—intimately, personally—how corrupt the world could be. How easily good people could be destroyed by those with power and no conscience.
She’d been raised by a conman. I turned that knowledge over in my mind, imagining what that childhood must have been like. Understanding manipulation as a survival skill. Never being able to trust the person who was supposed to protect you.
No wonder she’d become a crusader for truth. No wonder she’d believed the evidence against me so readily. When you grew up surrounded by liars, trusting anyone felt like walking into a trap.
But something she’d said was still nagging at me as I shut off the water and toweled dry. She couldn’t trace where Calloway had gotten his money. He’d appeared in Vegas already wealthy, with no explanation for his fortune and no verifiable history before that.
You could disguise your identity or past pretty well these days, but you couldn’t vanish from every database completely. Not in the modern world, with cameras everywhere and digital footprints trailing behind every transaction.
If Vincent Calloway wasn’t his real name, then somewhere out there was evidence of who he’d been before.
And if he’d done this kind of thing in the past, there might be a trail of victims and crimes that could help build the case against him.
What Charlotte needed to expose him was more evidence strong enough to withstand scrutiny.
There was one person I knew who had the skills to uncover Calloway’s buried secrets. I dressed quickly and headed to the living area. Charlotte was still in her room, so I pulled out my phone and called Tate.
He answered on the second ring. “You two settled in okay? I saw that the alarm was disarmed last night, so I assumed that was you.”
“Yeah, we’re good.” I dropped onto the couch.
“I need a favor. Charlotte still plans to publish the story, but she needs stronger evidence. She traced Calloway’s shell companies that proves he owns the clubs where the trafficking is happening, but without live witness testimony, she can’t directly prove the operation itself. ”
“And witnesses aren’t exactly lining up,” Tate said dryly.
“Exactly.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “So here’s what I’m thinking: a guy running an operation this sophisticated didn’t build it overnight. People like Calloway escalate. They refine things over time. I want to know who he was before he came to Vegas.”
“You think Vincent Calloway is an alias?”
“I do. Or at the very least, I think he changed identities at some point. I want you to dig into his background—old names, prior businesses, financial records, anything that explains where his startup money came from and whether he’s done this before.”
“If he’s operated elsewhere, there may be prior victims or investigations that never fully connected back to him,” Tate said, already working through the implications. “A pattern we can build on.”
“Exactly.”
“I can find him.” Confidence sharpened Tate’s voice. “Facial recognition, financial activity, digital records. If this guy exists anywhere under another identity, I’ll track him down. Following the money trail might take longer, but I’ll find the man behind the name.”
“How long?”
“A few days to do it right. I’ll move as fast as I can.”
“I appreciate it.” I leaned back against the couch cushions. “In the meantime, I’ll keep Charlotte contained.”
Tate was quiet for a beat. “And how are things between you two?”
“I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Kane. After talking to Charlotte last night, I did some digging. She’s the journalist who wrote the article about you. The one that cost you your badge.”
“She wrote the article,” I agreed evenly. “But the person who destroyed my career is the one who framed me.”
“Fair enough.” Tate’s tone turned more careful. “I just know this situation can’t be easy. She seemed conflicted when we talked. And now you’re isolated together in a safehouse.”
“Christ, what is this?” I grumbled irritably. “You get a girlfriend and suddenly you think you’re qualified to psychoanalyze everyone’s relationships?”
An unoffended laugh rumbled through the line.
“Not psychoanalyzing. Just observing. You’ve been carrying resentment for two years, and now the woman tied to all of that is suddenly back in your orbit.
” He paused for a moment before adding, “Also, your phone pinged at The Players Club for a couple of hours last night, so I’m assuming things got… complicated.”
Heat crawled up the back of my neck. “We cleared the air. That’s all.”
“Sure.” Tate sounded deeply unconvinced. “Did it help?”
I didn’t answer immediately.
If anything, it made things worse because now every time I looked at Charlotte, I remember the sounds she made, how she’d unraveled for me, the trust she’d given me despite everything between us.
“It’s handled,” I said finally.
“If you say so.” Tate let it drop. “What else do you need?”
I seized the change in subject. “The company phone I’m using, is it completely secure?”
“On your end, yes. Encrypted, scrubbed metadata, the works. But if you call someone on a device configured to capture incoming call data, their phone could still expose your location.”
“How?”
“Signal triangulation,” Tate explained. “If Calloway has access to the right tech, and I’m assuming he does, they could use the connection between the two phones to trace the origin point of the call.
Once your phone pings nearby cell towers, they can compare signal strength, timing, and tower overlap to narrow down your location to a pretty specific area. ”
I considered what he’d told me. “Could they do it without the other person knowing?”
“Absolutely. You planning on contacting someone on the outside?” Concern crept into Tate’s voice.
“Not yet. But eventually Charlotte may need to reach out to her editor or other sources when she’s ready to break the story.”
“Then be careful. Every call outside our secure network is a potential security risk.”
“Got it. Let me know the second you find anything on Calloway.”
“Will do.”
We hung up and I exhaled a deep breath. If anyone could trace Calloway through the digital underbrush of fake names and hidden accounts, it was Tate.
The man could find a needle in a haystack and then find out who put it there.
I just had to keep Charlotte safe—and confined—long enough for him to work his magic.
While I waited for Charlotte, I busied myself reading the hard copies Tate had given her of Calloway’s information, spreading them across the coffee table and organizing them by category.
Shell company records. Property transactions.
Interview notes. Ruth’s testimony, transcribed and annotated.
Looking at it all laid out like this, I could see how much work Charlotte had already put into this story, and how close she’d come to having everything she needed before Ruth’s death had torn it all apart.
A short while later Charlotte joined me in the living room, settling cross-legged on the couch beside me. She glanced at the papers I was organizing and reading over, but didn’t comment on my meddling.
“I called Tate while you were in the shower,” I said, leaning back against the cushions. “Filled him in on what you told me about Calloway, how you couldn’t trace where his money came from and how he just appeared in Vegas a few years ago with no verifiable history and a shit ton of money.”
Charlotte’s attention sharpened immediately. “And?”
“He’s going to dig and see if he can find out who Calloway was before he became Vincent Calloway. If the name’s fake, or if he changed it legally, Tate will find the trail. Might take a few days to comb through everything, but if there’s something to find, he’ll uncover it.”
“Thank you,” she said, her tone sincere. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“You’re not going to stop pursuing this story,” I pointed out. “I figured the least I could do was help you pursue it safely.”
“Still.” She held my gaze, a warmth flickering behind her usual guardedness.
“I know I haven’t exactly made this easy on you.
And after everything between us…” She shook her head.
“You could have just done the bare minimum. Kept me alive and waited for Calloway to lose interest. Instead, you’re actively trying to help me take him down. ”
I didn’t have a response to that, at least not one I was willing to voice. So I let the silence settle between us.
After a moment, Charlotte tucked her legs beneath her and turned her attention to the papers spread across the coffee table. “So,” she said, her tone shifting back to something lighter and more curious. “What about you?”