Page 55 of Loco

Kapono blew out a breath. “At least four, two of them with ties to Lynch. The others... I’m still digging. But it’s coordinated. This wasn’t a few bad apples, this was all done with strategy.”

“They clear the families, clear the heat,” I muttered. “Then the syndicate moves in clean.”

“And we’ve got Topper in the middle of it all,” Kai said. “Jesus.”

The dominoes were falling fast now. And from the way they were lined up, it was starting to look like Topper had been building something more significant than any of us realized. And he’d been using the badge to do it.

Judd exhaled through his nose, then straightened up. “We need to tag the ones we know are dirty. Watch where they go and who they talk to. Phones, vehicles, body cams—anything we can get without tipping them off.”

Kapono gave a sharp nod. “Already on it, I did it this morning while you three were out at the scene. They won’t even know they’re being followed.”

Judd looked impressed for half a second, then glanced over at Kai, who’d joined us. “Good, you and Kapono loop in Imogen and Keir quietly. Things are about to get heated.”

Kai muttered a curse under his breath but nodded. “They’ll be in.”

Judd turned to me next. “Might be time to pull the kids from daycare, Roque. At least for a little while.”

I bristled. I knew he was right—hell, I’d thought the same thing more than once—but it still hit like a gut punch. They were finally settling in, finding a rhythm again after being sick. I didn’t want to rip that away from them.

“I don’t want to mess up their routine this early,” I said. “They’ve finally got a place they feel happy in, and I picked that place for a reason. It’s got a full lockdown protocol and a panic room.”

Kai’s eyebrows lifted. “A panic room in a daycare?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Steel doors, independent air and power, reinforced comms. They built it after that attempted abduction last year over in Grafton, and the owners didn’t want to take any chances.”

Kai shook his head. “Sad day when a place that teaches finger painting and potty training needs a panic room.”

“Sadder day if it didn’t have one,” I muttered. “I need you to cross-reference the prints from the knife in Sayla’s tire. See if they match the guy whose DNA was on the envelope.”

Kapono’s eyes narrowed. “Eckhart?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t have prints on him—just the DNA. I happened to come across a coffee cup he left behind at a table a few weeks ago. I took a gamble and ran it, but he was wearing gloves so there aren’t any prints.”

Judd, standing nearby, sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Jesus, so, we’re trying to build a case on evidence we can’t legally use. That’s fantastic.”

“Hey,” Kapono protested, holding up a hand. “It gave us a name, didn’t it? Now we just have to work backward.”

“Right,” Judd muttered. “Just means when the time comes to file for a warrant or put cuffs on the guy, we’re gonna need a story that doesn’t include ‘we ran a cup we weren’t supposed to have.’”

Kapono smirked faintly, unfazed. “That won’t be a problem. Trust me.”

Then, he added, more seriously, “Should we go to the DA now and try for a warrant based on what we’ve got so far?”

Judd shook his head. “Not yet, it’s not enough. DNA from an untraceable envelope and a maybe link to a tire slash is smoke, not fire. We need to tie him to something else—visually, physically, digitally—then we move.”

Kapono gave a slow nod, already thinking ahead. “All right. I’ll find a way to bring in Eckhart that’s clean and above board. Maybe we’ll get a traffic stop and bring him in for questioning—whatever holds. I’ll get his prints the right way, then I’ll check them against the tire.”

I met his eyes. “If he touched that knife, I want to know yesterday.”

“You’ll have it,” Kapono promised. “One way or another.”

He peeled off, leaving Judd and me in the quiet tension of the hallway. Neither of us said it, but it was clear—Eckhart wasn’t just a ghost anymore. He had a face, a name, and soon, maybe a fingerprint.

And once we had that, we’d have enough to burn his whole world down.

We all stood there for a beat, no one saying what we were all thinking: that things were slipping fast, and we were getting closer to the edge of something we couldn’t walk back from.

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