“Two left, three right,” he murmurs.
Magic leans over his shoulder. “What, turns?”
“Maybe.” Alpha doesn’t look up. “Maybe rhythm. Maybe both.”
Shady speaks. “Both.”
Every head turns.
His eyes stay on Lady’s frozen face.
“She counted turns in the van. She would. She knows music. She uses beats to remember movement.”
My chest tightens. Lady once taught me how to breathe through a panic attack in the girls’ bathroom by tapping a beat against the tile and telling me to follow her fingers.
“Dale,” I tell Alpha, stepping closer. “Play it again.”
Alpha’s gaze flicks to me. “You know something?”
“She used to do that. Beats. When we were teens.” My throat tightens. “Music is how she remembers things.”
“She said flowers,” Alpha says, turning back to the screen. “Planes scream. Trains cry. We are looking near a flight path and rail.”
Vice pulls a phone from his pocket. “That narrows half the damn city.”
“No,” Alpha says. “The flowers narrow it.”
He rewinds again, dragging the video frame by frame. Lady’s head jerks when the man yanks her hair. The camera shakes. A blur passes in the background. White buckets. Concrete floor. A blue-green wall. Some kind of sign.
Alpha freezes it.
The room leans in without moving.
The letters are cut off behind Lady’s shoulder, half blocked by a man’s arm, but I see enough to make my stomach drop.
REYES FLORAL.
“Reyes Floral Imports,” Alpha says.
Shady lifts his head fully.
The air changes.
Not relief.
Direction.
Diablo steps closer to the table. “Where?”
Alpha types fast. “Three registered locations. Main office in Doral. Retail event front in Coral Gables. Cold storage and import warehouse near the airport rail spur, west of Allapattah.”
Magic smiles without humor. “Planes and trains.”
“Owner?” Vice asks.
Alpha clicks once.
His screen changes to business records, a glossy website full of wedding arches and funeral arrangements, then a woman’s photo.
