His gaze sharpens, something dark flashing behind it.
“I don't care.”
Picking up my phone, I respond to Melissa, letting her know I’ll be there, then turn it off.
And just like that, I’m not walking into that house alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Friday morning,I sit in a chair next to Slater, boots propped on the desk, ankles crossed, phone in hand. The surveillance booth hums around us. Monitors flicker. Radios crackle low with day-shift chatter. Everything looks normal, but it’s not. Nothing is.
On my phone screen, Ashlynn’s asleep in my bed. Her red hair fans across the pillow, one arm stretching into the empty space beside her–the space I left twenty minutes ago. I watch her, my jaw tightening.
She was adopted.
A fact she never shared. Based on the way her shoulders tensed, the way her voice flattened, she doesn’t just avoid it–she buries it. What made the little girl who grew up without a family pretend she still doesn’t have one? What happened in thathouse? And how the fuck was I never able to find her, even with access to closed records and back channels that don’t legally exist?
My thumbs pinch the screen, zooming in on her face.
I’ll find out tonight.
Slater glances sideways at my screen, then back at the monitors in front of him.
“She still asleep?”
“Yeah.” I exit out of the app, pocketing my phone when Maverick enters the room, followed by Elias and Nick.
Maverick doesn’t waste time with greetings.
“Alright Slater, what do you have?” he asks, pulling up a seat next to me.
Slater points to one of the monitors in front of him. Grainy footage fills the screen of the top floor of the parking garage. We’ve all seen this a hundred times, so he isn’t pulling it up for no reason.
The jumper.
Nick steps closer, stuffing his hands in his pockets watching intently.
“We’re running out of time,” Slater says. “We’ve got less than two weeks before the county cremates the body. He didn't have an ID. No phone. No next of kin. If we want anything else from him, we need to get it now.”
Elias folds his arms. “Autopsy?”
“Clean,” Slater replies. “No defensive wounds. Nothing in his system. But–” He rewinds the footage. “This is where it gets weird.”
The screen shows the man walking toward the outer wall of the parking garage. Then–a concrete wall that divides the parking lot partially blocks the angle. The camera catches him climbing to the ledge, then he’s gone. No struggle visible. But the blind spot is big enough to hide one.
Nick leans forward slightly. “Slow it down a little.”
Slater does. Frame by frame. Right before the fall, there’s a small flicker of movement, a shadow on the ground that doesn't match the man about to jump. It’s not clear enough, and that’s a problem.
“What about the other cameras on that level?” Maverick asks. “Were you ever able to catch anything on any of those?”
Slater shakes his head. “The feed is still intact, but the angles are wrong. Not only that,” he pauses, pointing to a different screen. “This is from the exact same time from the floor below.”
My eyes bounce back and forth between monitors. The feed from the floor below is perfectly clear. No grain. “Someone jammed the cameras.”
Slater nods. “Signal was disrupted. Short-range electromagnetic interference. Just enough to fuzz the lens without triggering a system alert.”
“He didn’t jump,” Nick says quietly.
