Page 45 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

Theo’s purr dies.

Garrett and the officer go inside.

The footage keeps running. People pass. A woman with a green tote stops to tie her shoe. Two students nearly collide near the curb and laugh. The door opens and closes for strangers who have no idea that, inside, someone is putting my name on a blade and handing it to the woman I love.

I grip the edge of the table until my fingers go numb.

Zana keeps the footage moving. Minutes pass in clean little jumps. Then the entrance doors open again, and Garrett comes out alone.

He adjusts his cuff as he walks.

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 believeI 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.”