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I look over at Sadie staring at me and I give her a smile. “Try not to stress too much about your routine, you’ll kill it.”

Then I leave and get to work. My professors are going to hate me this week. I’ve not been to too many lessons, but there are more important things which I need to do.

The image enhancement software finished its run; it took eight hours to do so. I left the coffee shop at nine; it’s now five in the evening.

When my phone beeped, I thought maybe I finally have a location or something, but no it’s something else. It’s something I almost missed on the first three watches of the third video, just a frame, it’s less than two seconds where the angle shifts and the sleeve of one of the figures in the background rides up.

A tattoo.

The wrist and lower forearm, caught for ninety-three frames before the angle corrects and the sleeve drops back down. I've had the enhancement algorithm running on those ninety-three frames and what's resolved on my screen now is clear enough to work with.

It’s a circular design, Eastern European in origin which, I can tell from the style of the linework and geometry of it. There are three interlocking symbols that I don't recognize yet but will soon. If I find something, I’ll always find the answers to it.

I screenshot it. Clean it up. Run it through the tattoo identification database I built access to eight months ago for a completely different problem Cain involved me in. So now every tattoo I see goes into my database.

The algorithm takes six minutes, and then it returns a hit.

It’s not a name, but an origin, a prison in Romania where this design was documented twelve years ago as belonging to a network. The network has infrastructure, and resources. They have enough patience to watch seven locations across six time zones for months before they move.

This network sells people.

I sit back, because I know all of this, I’ve found them selling girls, I just don’t know where they are holding them.

The tattoo connects the figure in the video to a documented organization. Which means this isn't just a trafficking operation, it's an established one, with history, with reach, and with a trail that goes back further than fourteen months ago.

I open a new window.

Then I start pulling everything I can find on the network: arrests, known associates, and documented activity across Eastern Europe and the US. It takes twenty minutes just to build the first layer of it.

I pick up my phone and send Cain a message.

Miles

I have something. Tonight. It's bigger than we thought.

Looking back at the screens, the tattoo sits in the center of the fourth monitor, cleaned and sharp, with three interlocking symbols that just cracked the case open wider than I was prepared for.

I turn back to the keyboard.

Work first, everything else after. I’m getting closer, I know I can find these people and stop them. I just have to fucking sleep before I miss things which means another girl goes missing.

I’m working on one screen, then the other. Right now, I have something, I can’t afford to sleep right now. I need to look into the new missing girl and pull up all the camera footage I can. Hoping, praying they have messed up, it’s wishful thinking because they haven’t done so far, but you never know.

I will stop whoever this is.

Nineteen

Sadie

The music begins before I’m ready, a cascade of Debussy notes spilling through the gym. My body is ready for this.

I stand in that coiled stance, my weight balanced on the balls of my feet, my arms loose and open, every nerve humming. But beneath the focus, my mind flickers traitorously to him. Miles. How he was with me in the library, and at Grounds in the morning. He was flirting, well I think he was flirting with me. The memory sends a warm spark through my chest that I shove it down hard. Not now, I need to focus on my movements. I need to win this floor routine.

Then the music calls, and I launch.

Three steps, then gravity releases me. The front aerial into the double pike unfolds like muscle and longing braided together. It’s clean, weightless, and inevitable. My feet meet the mat with perfect certainty, my arms high. There’s no time to linger on the ache of wondering what Miles would see if he were watching.

The melody dips, soft and aching, the piano breathing like a lover pulling away just enough to make the heart chase. My body follows, flowing where it once fought. This is the part that used to resist me, until Miles sat across from me in exhausted silence and cut straight through my doubt. Now the movement pours out of me, my arms tracing slow, sensual arcs that echo the melody. My weight shifts, effortless on the surface but costing everything underneath. My spine lengthens, my chest opens, and the gym fades. There is only the piano’s sigh… and the persistent, unwanted awareness of how much I want Miles to see me like this. Truly see me.