Page 89 of Fractured Devotion
Stupid.
I begin mapping out who he’s been calling. A few unknown pings route through Reyes’ lab, and one spikes from a city network.
It’s encrypted. But not enough.
I smile.
He thinks he’s careful.
But everyone slips.
And I’ll be there when he does.
She’s mine.
He just doesn’t know it yet.
I sit back, tapping the edge of the tablet with my knuckle. There’s a map forming in my head—one I didn’t plan for, but one I can use. Alec’s careless connections, Reyes’ persistent digging, Celeste’s silence… they’re all linked.
But there’s still too much noise. Too many blind spots.
I swipe to the mirrored overlay I rigged last month, a skeletal reconstruction of the clinic’s traffic patterns over time. Then, I highlight every off-schedule movement in the past weekand cross-reference it with badge IDs, timestamped entries, and proximity alerts.
A pattern starts to emerge.
Alec’s visits to the storage level always follow Reyes’ by less than an hour. And Celeste? Her office lights are logged as powered even when her badge hasn’t officially been used. Someone’s letting her in.
I stare at the screen until the numbers blur.
It’s a collaboration. The three of them.
And I’m on the outside.
I clench the tablet so hard that the casing creaks.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go.
I exhale sharply and force myself to think, to strategize.
The obvious move is to tell Rourke.
But Rourke isn’t the one I care about.
I care about her.
And if I lose her trust now, if she finds out I’ve been watching, then everything I’ve built disintegrates.
I have to bring her back to me.
But not with force.
With necessity.
I rise, pocket the tablet, and straighten my coat.
Time to make her need me again. And this time, not as a watcher.
But as her only safe place left.
