22. Chapter 22
SEAN
SILENCE HAS A WEIGHT.
It settles across my shoulders like a jacket made of lead. The apartment's emptiness pulses around me. Regrets multiplying in the stillness. Each creak of the pipes, every distant horn from traffic, is just a punctuation mark in a conversation I'm having with my failures.
I'm getting too familiar with these noises.
The way the refrigerator stutters before its cooling cycle, like it's struggling to find words.
That spot near the bathroom that groans when stepped on.
Voices and laughter from a TV that highlight how fucking alone I am in this room.
The ebb and flow of the building settling into night reminds me of how some things, like guilt, only get heavier in darkness.
My eyes dart around the security feeds of Londyn's place like I'm searching for something to fix. Her living room. Her windows. The hallway. All secure. All quiet. All impossibly distant now that she's pulled away after I pushed too much in the kitchen.
Mike went to bed about an hour ago. He was exhausted from another day of fruitless surveillance. He'll be up at 2:00 AM to relieve me, and then I'll crash for a few hours before we do it all again tomorrow. The routine has become its own kind of cage.
My phone vibrates, so I check it and find a new email notification. It's from Torres, my old Marine buddy who went FBI after his discharge:
Sean. Ran your boy Alan Miller through every database I could access. Clean. No criminal record, no flags, no associations with known criminals. Not worth pursuing. Torres
That's… odd. Not worth pursuing? Torres has never responded like that. Also, Torres and I are solid. He usually cracks a joke or tells me I owe him a beer for the effort. This feels too careful, like he's afraid someone is monitoring his communications.
Before I can think on it further, another email appears. The sender is a jumble of random characters and numbers. It's from someone who definitely doesn't want to be traced.
The message is completely blank except for a single attachment that's another string of random letters and numbers. I run it through every virus scanner I have before opening it.
The document loads, and my exhales come rapidly. It's an official police report, dated two years ago, but half the text is blacked out with heavy redaction bars. Through the gaps, I piece together fragments:
RAID CONDUCTED ON PROPERTY BELONGING TO [REDACTED] MILLER [REDACTED]
ADDRESS: [REDACTED] MALIBU, CA [REDACTED]
SEIZED: APPROXIMATELY 15 KG COCAINE, 8 KG HEROIN [REDACTED]
WITNESSES REPORT [REDACTED] HUMAN TRAFFICKING AT [REDACTED]
CHARGES FILED: [REDACTED]
CASE STATUS: DISMISSED - INSUFFICIENT [REDACTED]
My jaw clenches as I read between the redacted lines. Torres risked his career sending me this. The fact that none of this showed up in Miller's official record means someone with serious influence made it disappear. Money, connections, corruption—the holy trinity of making problems vanish.
But the Navy Caps still don't fit. If Miller is running drugs and trafficking, why would he be interested in Londyn?
She said she never had a drug addiction, and I trust her word.
But she did say she got involved with 'bad people.
' Even if that's Miller, that doesn't explain exactly why he'd send men to watch her.
Why have these men silently observed her routine for weeks? They could've kidnapped her before I arrived, if that's the end goal.
My gut is telling me this isn't about wanting to kidnap her. So what's the plan? Are they trying to extract money? Blackmail her for something?
The questions multiply without answers, and I hate it.
Open loops make my skin crawl. Without proof linking Miller to the surveillance on Londyn, the cops won't touch this.
And if Miller is skilled enough to erase a raid from his permanent record, he's probably skilled enough to stay ten steps ahead of any investigation.
I set my phone on the table and glance at the new security feeds Mike and I installed the day we confirmed the Navy Caps exist. The property manager specifically said no exterior cameras, but some rules are there to be broken.
We found the smallest devices we could and tucked them onto building ledges.
One faces the street and one covers the alley.
If our Navy Cap friends show up again, we'll have them on video this time.
Both feeds show empty pavement under the glow of street lights. Nothing moves except the occasional taxi or late-night pedestrian hurrying home.
It's frustrating as hell, but there's nothing more I can do tonight. My job right now is surveillance, keeping watch while Londyn sleeps.
I try to relax into this hard metal chair as I grab the poetry book Londyn loaned me.
I flip to the middle. I've read it cover to cover five times already.
This is my sixth, and soon I'll have every poem memorized.
My favorite is about stars being the memories of light: beauty that travels across impossible distances only to be seen long after its source is gone.
Just like Londyn's smile—rare now, and vanishing so quickly I wonder if I imagined it.
Would she smile if I recited the poem to her? Or would she add another brick to the wall between us?
It's been three days since we confirmed the stalkers, three days since I tried to talk to her about her past, three days since something shifted.
I keep replaying that moment in her kitchen: me pressing for answers, her shutting down.
The walls came up so fast I could practically hear the clang of steel.
Our conversations since then have been stilted.
The easy flow we'd found has dried up, leaving awkward silences.
No more beautiful smiles. No book club because she bumped our meeting to next week, saying she was too exhausted from work.
Even her glances at the camera have stopped, like she wants to forget I'm watching.
I run my hand over my face, feeling the stubble drag against my palm. She's running from something much worse than what she's been telling me, and I'm only trying to keep her safe.
I've been trying to implement some tactical patience, but I miss the way things were.
I miss her.
Damn, when did I become this person? Pining after a client. The old Sean would be disgusted. He also never met a woman like Londyn.
I sip my lukewarm barley tea—something I managed to find at a corner market—and force my attention back to the book. My eyes trace stanzas while my mind drifts. Two men in navy baseball caps. Coordinated surveillance. Professional, almost military.
I close the poetry book with a hard smack then run my hands through my hair. I stopped styling my hair completely and just let my bangs do what they want since Londyn likes that. Now, it's all over the place like my thoughts.
Fuck, I'm so frustrated from hitting dead ends.
These past three days have been a never-ending grind of trying to find some path forward to identify the Navy Caps.
I've barely been in the apartment during the day, hustling between businesses near where we spotted them.
I've been trying to sweet-talk employees and managers into sharing security footage.
Two places finally caved: the corner bodega and the coffee shop across from the candle store Londyn visited.
Their outdoor cameras might have caught something useful.
Took more charm than I knew I possessed to convince them, but Mike and I scrubbed through hours of grainy footage, looking for any concrete evidence.
We've made it through one pass, and so far, nothing.
Just apparitions and maybes and "is that him? " moments that lead nowhere.
This morning's video call with Sienna was at least productive. She's a great artist, so I described the Navy Cap men in as much detail as I could while she sketched.
"Rounded jaw on the second one. No, less square than that. Yeah, that's getting closer."
"Like this?" she had said, holding up her sketch to the camera.
"Damn, you could work for the police department with these skills," I'd joked with her.
Her only response was a theatrical frown and a deadpan, "My art is more than that, Sean. Do you lack sensibilities for the finer things?"
We'd both cracked up. For a second, my stress lifted, but it was only a heartbeat until I was back in reality, wondering if anyone might know Londyn's stalkers.
The sketches Sienna produced were good enough to send out to other contacts like Torres—guys from my Marine days who've scattered into various law enforcement agencies. I even got in touch with an old CIA buddy. He'll try to run facial recognition through databases I shouldn't have access to.
But even with Sienna's skills, sketches don't beat actual photos. We need some kind of video confirmation.
Right now, it's a waiting game for a lucky break and to see if my contacts get back to me with something useful.
I'm not trying to interrogate her, but I really wish Londyn would give me a little more about her past. I can see her fears and all I want is to take them away.
But I understand her reluctance, too. We all have our demons. I wouldn't want someone digging into my past with Wunmi and exposing that raw failure.
Still. Knowing more will help me understand what I'm protecting her from. I need to keep her safe.
No matter what it costs me.
My eyes flick back to the monitors. Left screen: hallway clear. Center-left: living room dark. Center-right: all windows closed and secure. Right screen: bedroom door closed. Laptop: exterior has empty sidewalks.
All quiet. All—
A light clicks on in Londyn's living room. My body tenses.