Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Ryder
This isn’t just a delay. It’s everything slipping out of place.
Aurora said five minutes. Maybe ten. She smiled when she said it, she trusted the shape of this town now, she could step out of The Hollow and expect the world to behave itself long enough for her to come back.
By the time it hits twenty, that quiet sense of wrongness settles into my chest.
“Where is she?”
Zane looks up immediately, already tracking the shift in the room. “Granger’s. That’s where she said she was going.”
“How long?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
Too long.
Finn is off the stool before the thought finishes forming. “I’ll go—”
I cut him off with a look. “Zane, pull the cameras. Even the back ones, just in case. Alley, street, everything between here and Granger’s.”
He’s already moving, laptop open, fingers flying.
“Finn,” I add.
He turns, wired tight, anger sitting just under his skin. “Yeah?”
“Front street. Check the shop. Keep your head clear.”
His jaw flexes, but he nods. “Got it.”
I head out the back.
The alley holds that strange, hollow quiet that comes when something has already happened, and the space hasn’t caught up yet. Light spills unevenly from the door behind me, catching on brick and metal and nothing else. Nothing I can immediately see.
My phone buzzes.
Zane.
“Talk.”
“I’ve got her on camera,” he says. “She leaves the alley. Time stamp’s nineteen minutes ago.”
“And after?”
A beat. “Nothing.”
I slow just enough to feel that land.
“She passes the small blind spot,” Zane continues. “After that, there’s no movement. No one crossing the frame. No exit on the far angle. It just stops.”
Fuck.
I turn back toward The Hollow. “Pull everything else. Reflections, traffic cams, anything we can get.”
“Already on it.”
I end the call.
By the time I get inside, Finn is there, and he already knows.
The energy in him has changed. Less scattered now. Sharper. Focused in a way that usually means everything is about to break.
“She’s not at Granger’s.”
Aurora’s gone.
I go cold.
I move to the door and lock it, the bolt sliding into place with a sound that cuts through the room. Arlo doesn’t ask questions. He moves immediately, securing the secondary lock, shifting the space from open to controlled without a word.
Zane turns the laptop toward me.
Aurora fills the screen.
She’s walking down the alley, hands in her jacket, head slightly tilted, thinking about a softer world than the one she’s standing in.
It looks normal until she disappears past the edge of the frame.
Zane lets the footage run.
Nothing follows.
No shadow. No movement.
The absence says everything.
“She didn’t make it past the blind spot,” I say.
Zane nods.
Finn drags a hand through his hair, pacing harder now. “So what, he just steps out and takes her?”
“He planned it,” I answer.
I walk over to the back door once more and head towards the dreaded tiny blind spot. The one we could never quite cover.
Something catches the light.
Small. Metal. Out of place.
I move toward it without thinking, crouching down, the rest of the world narrowing to a single point.
A chain.
Thin. Broken.
I pick it up carefully.
And the air leaves my lungs.
Aurora’s necklace. Evie’s.
I’ve seen her touch it without thinking. When she’s nervous. When she’s calming herself. When she needs something real.
She never takes it off.
My hand closes around it.
Tight.
Too tight.
Everything inside me goes completely still.
He didn’t just take her, he put his hands on her, dragged her out of this town.
Behind me, Finn, who I didn’t even hear following me, swears under his breath. “Ryder…”
I don’t look at him.
I don’t look at anything except the broken chain in my hand.
Cole didn’t rush this.
He chose the spot. The angle. The moment.
And he left this behind.
A message.
I straighten slowly, every movement measured in a way that has nothing to do with restraint and everything to do with control.
“Lock it down,” I say. “Lock The Hollow down now.”
Finn moves. Doors secure. Lights adjust. The Hollow stops being a bar and becomes something else entirely.
Zane is already pulling additional feeds, mapping routes, building something usable out of fragments. Finn paces, hands flexing, energy coiling tighter with every second.
“We should call Kurt,” Finn says. “We should get—”
“No.”
That gets his full attention.
“He’ll vanish the second sirens hit the road. And then we’re chasing nothing.”
Finn’s jaw tightens. He knows I’m right.
That doesn’t make it easier.
I take my phone out and start dialing.
Names I haven’t used in months. Men I walked away from when I decided this place would be different.
“Varga,” I say into the first call. “I want everything you’ve got.”
I don’t wait.
Another call.
“Roads out. All directions. Track anything that moves.”
Another.
“Old routes. Storage units. Service roads. Anywhere he’d go to stay off the grid.”
Piece by piece, the net tightens.
When I lower the phone, the room feels sharper. Smaller. Focused.
Zane looks up. “I’ll have a direction in ten.”
“Make it five.”
He nods once.
Finn has stopped pacing.
That’s worse.
He’s standing still now, eyes locked on me, a hardness settling behind them.
“You’re not waiting,” he says.
“No.”
“Good.”
I look down at the necklace one last time—the broken clasp, the slight bend where it snapped.
He made sure she felt it.
He made sure I would too.
That’s his mistake.
I set it on the bar.
“She’s alive,” I say.
Zane nods. Finn doesn’t look away.
They both understand.
I reach for my jacket, pulling it on, the weight settling into place.
For weeks, I told myself I was building something better here. A life that wasn’t related to the man I used to be.
That man never went anywhere; he just stopped being necessary.
Until now.
I look at them.
“My way didn’t keep her safe,” I say quietly.
No one argues.
I step toward the door.
Pause.
When I speak again, there’s nothing left in my voice that pretends to be anything softer than what it is. “No waiting. No caution.”
Finn’s mouth curves, sharp and humorless.
Zane goes still.
They know.
I open the door.
Cold air cuts in.
“We bring her home.”