Page 44 of Wells

My fingers go still on the edge of my desk. My chest tightens, sharper this time, because I recognize the pull. It's the same one I feel when Cera walks into a room and the air changes. I've been calling that attraction. Sitting here in the dark, I'm not sure it was ever only that. Something in me goes quiet around both of them, the way it goes quiet nowhere else, and I can't explain why my body keeps insisting they're the same kind of safe.

"You still there?" Peoria's voice cuts through.

"Yeah. I'm here. I like watching you talk."

"Good."

We talk until past midnight. When she finally says goodnight, her voice has gone soft, and I feel the loss of it the second the screen goes dark.

Sitting in the silence and realizing I didn't end it, I did the opposite. I pulled her closer, made it mean more, and let myself need something I have no right to take.

I reach for the pack of cigarettes beside the keyboard, light one, and let the smoke settle my nerves. It doesn't work. The conversation lingers.

I turn to the other screen, to work, the one lever I trust when everything else slips out of reach.

I pull up the file on Ronnie Louvre.

Two hours pass as I trace financial records, access hospital logs from the night Ronnie died, and cross-reference security footage from the neighborhood around his apartment. Most of it gives me nothing. Then I find the gap.

Ronnie's building has external cameras from four angles. Three of them recorded the night he died. One went dark for forty minutes, the window bracketing his time of death.

That's not an accident.

I flag the timestamp and move to Dane Carter. One of the two men who stood outside the door the night my father bled out on a warehouse floor, and the only one still breathing. I've wanted to get my hands on him for a long time. Now I know where he is.

He's easier to track down than I expected.

St. Petersburg, Florida. He works at a marina under his real name, which means he either doesn't know he's exposed or thinks he's far enough out to be safe.

He's wrong.

I write down the address and cross-check the marina's hours, then call to have the jet ready for Friday morning. No one questions where a Stone flies. The only thing I keep to myself is why. A long drive or a short flight, and I don't have the days to spare for the road.

If I traced him, whoever cleaned up Ronnie can too. I need what's in his head before someone closes his mouth for good. A dead guard tells me nothing. I couldn't care less if he's offed after I talk to him.

My phone vibrates. It's Ridge, and I answer without thinking.

"You still up?"

"Yeah. What the hell are you doing up this late?"

"Working on a few last-minute things. I need you to run some extra reports before the council meeting on Thursday. I'll email you everything I need. Maybe get that girl to make it look pretty for you."

"That girl? Her name is Cera."

"Right. Cera. Her name keeps escaping me."

I don't know why that annoys me. I take a drag of my cigarette.

"I'll take care of it."

Ridge rattles on about some bullshit with Vin while I mull over telling him what I've found since we last talked.

"Ridge."

"Yeah?"

I pause. The only question is how much of it I'm willing to hand him. He's already pushed back, so I'll test him, and if he's still not interested in following this thread, then what he doesn't know won't kill him.