“No,” I said, my voice dropping. “Why would we be with him? He’s supposed to be at the safe house with our witness. We’re at the Command briefing.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“He left,” the officer said. “A few minutes after you did. Said he was bringing the witness to you. Told me Command needed her and that you’d ordered the transfer. I cleared him through the gate—”
I ended the call before they could finish.
“Fuck!” My fist clenched at my side. “Yuri’s working with Marco. There's no other reason he would have left with her!FUCK!How the hell did we miss that?”
“Yuri?” Knox shook his head, disbelief flashing across hisface. “No. No way. He’s saved our asses more times than I can count. You remember that raid in the east district?”
“Don’t kid yourself,” I snapped, already pacing while lacing my fingers through my hair. “We both smelled it on him. The alcohol. The desperation. The beta pussy. He was slipping, and we ignored it. We were too busy withthis,too focused on Marco to question him.”
I dragged a hand through my hair, rage burning hot under my skin.
“I should’ve looked closer. I should’ve dug deeper.” My words came out rough. “I fucking trusted him!”
Knox gritted his teeth. “Wetrusted him, Silas.”
“And with that fucking bounty on Lena, we shouldn’t have trusted anyone,” I shot back. “Nothim.Notanyone!”
Panic surged, hitting harder this time, cutting throughmyanger.
“She’s scared,” I murmured. “I can feel it.”
Knox stilled for a fraction of a second, then nodded once.
“Yeah,” he said. “I feel it too.”
That was all it took.
Our panic didn’t linger. It couldn’t. We pushed it aside, locking it down the same way we always did. There was no space for second-guessing or replaying what we should have done differently.
We were trained for this.
Fear didn’t go away, you just learned how to move past it.
And right now, the only thing that mattered was getting her back.
“We need to move,” I said, already heading for the car. “Now.”
“Safe house first,” Knox said, keeping pace. “We'll go through everything again. Files, locations, patterns.”
I nodded, forcing my thoughts to focus.
"I'll call the rat too. Maybe he knows something."
“We need to think like her,” he continued. “Like Lena. What would she notice? What would she piece together that we didn’t see?”
“He won't bring her back to his house,” I said immediately. “Too exposed.”
“No,” Knox agreed. “It’ll be a stash site.”
My grip tightened on the car door.
“Let’s just hope it’s one of the seven we already have,” I muttered. “Not one we don’t.”
Knox’s expression darkened.
