Page 84 of Grim

He stopped, chest heaving, breath shaking.

Stone stepped closer. “You’re no good to her like this. You want to get her back? Then you need to get your head straight.”

Grim’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I can’t lose her.”

Stone’s expression softened. “You won’t.”

No one slept.

The Saints worked through the night, boarding up windows and cleaning blood from the floors and checking the perimeter. Every patched member moved with purpose, anger simmering beneath the surface.

Havoc barked orders, voice sharp. Rook coordinated rotations, jaw clenched. Vandal and Ghost hauled debris, their movements jerky with barely contained fury. Fish moved silently through the shadows, checking blind spots, tracking footprints, analyzing angles of entry like a ghost retracing the attack.

Every man carried Switchblade’s death like a weight on his shoulders. His cut lay folded on the bar, untouched. No one had the heart to move it. No one dared.

Grim didn’t sit once. He kept clenching and unclenching his fists, as if trying to hold himself together by force. Every few minutes, his gaze drifted to the hallway where Switchblade had fallen — and he’d flinch, like the memory physically struck him.

He paced like a caged animal, eyes burning, jaw clenched so tight it looked painful. Every sound made him flinch. Every shadow made him turn. Every minute without Sophia felt like a knife twisting deeper.

Ledger sat at the bar, laptop open, fingers flying. He hadn’t stopped since the attack. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands shaking from too much caffeine and not enough sleep.

“Come on… come on…” he muttered.

Grim stalked over. “Tell me you found something.”

Ledger swallowed. “I’m trying. The Reapers wiped their usual channels. No chatter. No pings. Nothing.”

The room seemed to shrink around Grim, the walls pressing in, the air too thick to breathe.

Grim slammed his hands on the bar. “Try harder.”

Ledger didn’t even flinch. “I am.”

Soft footsteps approached, controlled and deliberate. Fish stepped into the dim light, eyes sharp from whatever he’d found outside.

Grim turned toward him, eyes wild. “Tell me.”

Fish stepped closer, voice low and steady. “Tracks outside the back fence. Three sets. Heavy. They carried her.”

Grim’s vision tunneled. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if he was going to pass out or tear the entire building apart with his bare hands. Grim’s breath hitched. His hands curled into fists.

Stone walked in, rubbing a hand over his face. “Any luck?”

Ledger hesitated. Then his brows pulled tight, the kind of frown that meant something wasn’t adding up.

“Hold on.” His fingers flew, pulling up a corrupted data stream.

Grim leaned in so fast the stool beside him toppled. “What.”

Ledger didn’t look away from the screen. “I picked up a stray packet off a Reaper relay node. No sender tag. No signature. Just… noise.” His jaw flexed. “Except it isn’t noise.”

He isolated a sliver of code, jagged and messy and human. A single embedded coordinate flickered through the static.

“I don’t know who dropped this in their system,” he muttered, “but they knew I’d see it.”

Fish frowned. “You think it’s a trap.”

“I think it’s deliberate.” Ledger clicked again. “And whoever wrote this… they’re good. Better than anyone the Reapers have. Almost like they wanted me to follow it.”