16. Sloane #2
That is the detail that almost gets me out of my chair.
Not rage. Not proof. His fucking cuff, straightened in afternoon light after he stood somewhere we can't see and helped make Callie believe I wanted her legally gone from my life.
Idris' hand lands on the back of my neck before I realize I have moved, his grip hard enough to hurt, anchoring enough to keep me from splitting the table with my teeth.
“Stay with us,” he says, low and rough.
I sit because Theo is pressed into my side and shaking.
Garrett leaves the frame. The timestamp crawls forward. Five minutes. Seven. Nine. Then the doors open again.
Callie comes out.
The room goes silent in a way no room should be able to survive.
She has her phone pressed to her ear. Her hair is half-loose from whatever she did to pin it back that morning, and her bag is slipping off one shoulder.
She walks too fast, then almost stops, then moves again like her body can't decide whether to run or collapse.
The footage is too far away to show her face clearly, but I know every line of her.
I know the shape of her panic. I know the way she holds herself when she's trying to be brave in public because falling apart might make things worse.
Her mouth moves.
No audio. No answer.
She looks at the phone, taps the screen, brings it back to her ear, and keeps moving toward the parking lot.
“She’s calling,” Theo whispers.
The sound breaks something open inside me with such precision that for one second I can't breathe.
She's walking out of that building with my name destroyed in her hand and her phone pressed to her ear, and the only reason she would be calling is because some part of her still believed there was something to reach.
“She was calling us,” I say. It doesn’t sound like my voice. “She was trying to get through.”
Idris doesn't answer. His grip on my neck tightens once, then loosens because he's shaking too.
On the screen, Callie reaches her car. She fumbles with the keys, drops them, bends, picks them up, looks back toward the building as if she expects someone to come after her.
No one does. Then she gets in and drives out of frame.
Zana pauses the footage on the empty space her car leaves behind.
“She was coming home,” Theo says, and then his hand flies to his mouth as if the words have cut him. “She came home.”
I feel the bond flare, vicious and faint. Pain claws through my shoulder and down into my chest, so sharp my vision spots at the edges. There she is. Somewhere. Still there. The medication bottle waits beside my coffee, and I want to throw it through the screen.
The conference room door opens, and Kade Rourke steps in with a hard case in one hand and exhaustion written into the lines around his mouth. He takes in the opaque glass, Zana’s laptop, Idris' hand on my neck, Theo against my side, and the campus footage frozen on the screen.
“Didn’t realize this was a party,” he says, dry out of habit. Then his eyes land on the frame of Callie’s empty parking space, and whatever almost-humor he brought with him dies before it can breathe. “Sorry.”
He closes the door behind him and sets the case on the table.
I can't make my mouth form a greeting. Kade doesn't seem to need one.
He has seen me angry before, back when I worked for him and anger still had uses besides keeping my bones from collapsing inward.
He looks at me now with something closer to grief.
“You’re going to want to see this,” he says, opening the case and pulling out a small encrypted drive. “But I need you to brace yourself.”
Theo goes very still. Idris turns toward Kade, already understanding from the change in his voice. “House footage?”
“Recovered enough of the corrupted window to establish sequence. Not all of it. The file was damaged, and whoever did it knew what they were doing.” Kade looks at Theo, and his voice lowers. “Theo, you may not want to watch this part.”
Theo’s fingers dig into my sleeve. “I do.”
Kade holds his gaze for a second, then nods once. No arguing. No treating him like a child. “Then sit where someone can hold you.”
Idris moves before I can. He eases Theo away from my side and into the space against his chest, one arm folding around our Omega’s middle, the other hand cupping the side of his neck near the fresh bite.
Theo lets him, but his hand stays locked around two of my fingers.
I should move closer. I should be the one holding him. I can't get my body to obey.
Kade plugs in the drive.
The screen flickers to the front approach of our house.
The porch is there, the rail, the planter Callie filled with winter greenery because she said the house looked too severe without something living near the door.
The timestamp is the right evening. The image tears across the middle, static chewing through half the frame.
Then Callie is there.
She's closer than she was on the campus footage, close enough for my body to recognize her before the damaged video sharpens.
She's on the front approach, not fully on the porch, one arm trapped in an officer’s grip.
Another officer is in front of her, blocking the path.
Her scarf has slipped loose. Her bag is on the ground. Her mouth is open.
The audio bursts in with a crackle.
“Sloane!”
The world stops.
Her voice rips through the speakers, ragged and terrified, and I'm no longer in Blackline.
I'm inside that house. I'm behind walls.
I'm with Theo in a heat-crash panic while Callie screams my name outside and I don't hear her.
I don't come. I don't tear through the front door.
I don't put my body between hers and the hands dragging her away.
The footage lurches. Static claws through the audio. Callie’s voice comes again, thinner, breaking around the words. “I live here. Please, I need to talk to—”
The sound cuts out.
The image convulses into blocks of gray and black.
For several seconds, there is nothing but visual noise.
Then the picture clears enough to show movement at the edge of the driveway.
An officer gets into Callie’s car. The brake lights come on.
Her car backs out slowly, then disappears down the drive behind the patrol vehicle.
Kade stops the video.
No one speaks.
Theo’s hand slips out of mine. I feel the loss of his fingers before I understand why.
Idris has both arms around him now, Theo folded hard into his chest, shaking so violently his teeth click once before Idris tucks Theo’s face into his throat and starts purring.
The purr is low and rough, dragged out of him by force, not comfort.
Theo makes no sound at all. His eyes are open against Idris' neck, blank with a horror too large for his body.
I try to stand.
My knees hit the floor beside the conference table.
The impact should hurt. It does not. Nothing does, for a second.
Then everything does. My shoulder. My chest. My hands.
The place in the bond where Callie’s existence shudders faintly, miles away or worlds away, still there and still unreachable.
I fold forward with one hand braced on the carpet and the other pressed over my mouth because if I let the sound out, I will never get it back under my skin.
She came home.
She screamed for me.
Someone drove her car away.
Idris says my name, but he doesn't come to me. He can’t.
Theo is silent in his arms, and this time Idris holds our Omega because if he lets go, Theo may disappear somewhere inside himself Garrett will never stop paying for.
I know that. I'm grateful for it but I hate every second of needing to be grateful.
Kade crouches near the end of the table, not close enough to touch me. “Sloane.”
I shake my head as Zana’s chair creaks. She's standing now, one hand flat on the table, eyes bright with controlled fury. “That footage changes the filing posture.”
A laugh breaks out of me from somewhere ugly and ruined. “Filing posture.”
“Sloane.” Her voice cracks like a slap, and it is the only thing that could have made me look up.
“Yes. Filing posture. Because that is how I get the order stayed. That is how I get room to demand records instead of asking for favors from people hiding behind policy. The campus timing, Garrett’s presence with the officer, the house footage, the use of your name, Theo’s statement, and the compromised phones together give me a route.
It isn't enough to make tonight stop hurting. It may be enough to pry his hands off the legal mechanism.”
Idris' purr keeps going. Theo shakes against him, silent and terrible. I press my forehead to the edge of the conference table and force air into my lungs.
“Then do it,” I say.
“I am,” Zana says. “If the restriction is stayed or rescinded today, I can request current contact information through the university’s counsel-facing channel.
That doesn’t mean they’ll hand it over quickly, and it doesn’t mean anyone calls her without a plan.
But it gives us a lawful door Garrett doesn’t control. ”
I turn my head toward Kade because limits are the last thing I can survive hearing. “Hack the cameras.”
His jaw tightens. “Sloane.”
“Traffic cameras. Campus cameras. Hotel systems. Toll booths. Streetlights. I don’t give a fuck what it takes.
” I push myself upright on one knee, and my voice starts to shake because begging has entered it now, and I can't keep it out.
“You know people. You have people who know people. Find someone who can get into the feeds and trace her car, trace the patrol car, trace where they took her, trace where she went after. Anything.”