Chapter 76 NADIA

Chapter 76 NADIA
Elena was gone. It wasn’t just that she was missing. She was gone in a way that meant someone with real resources had moved her quickly and on purpose.

Her apartment was cleaned out. Her car was still sitting in the parking lot, which told me she hadn't left on her own terms. Her phone was pinging from a trash can three blocks from the coffee shop where I'd met Carter. Someone had wiped her exit and left just enough behind to confirm she wasn't coming back.

I spent the morning working through what Elena had actually given us versus what she could have given us. The difference between those two things mattered more than it might have seemed. 

All of Elena's information had been useful. Some of it had been urgent, giving us exactly what we were looking for, but none of it had turned out to be false.

But information that moved you didn’t have to be wrong to serve someone else's purpose. It just had to land at the right time and aim you in the right direction.

I didn't say any of that out loud until I'd thought it all the way through. When I did, I said it to Zane and Dex together, making sure I was clear about the accusations I was making and what I was only flagging as a possibility.

To his credit, Dex didn't brush it off. He just went quiet like it connected to a pattern he'd already been tracking.

"There’s something about the timing," he said. "Elena pointed us toward Avery right when Marcus's press conference was getting traction. It pulled our attention sideways."

"But Avery is real," I said. "The financial trail is real."

"Yeah," Dex said. "Real bait still catches."

Zane sat very still through all of it. Then he said, "What does Carter actually want?"

Neither of us had an answer for that.

The council hearing on Ferguson was in four days. The city's emergency public safety session that Avery had pushed through was in two days. We were supposed to walk into both of those events looking calm and organized while two separate hostile proceedings came at us from different directions. The performance of it was almost as exhausting as the actual problem.

Coach Reeves joined us that afternoon. He sat and listened to everything without interrupting. When we were done, he looked at me intensely, not with hostility but with something more complicated than that. Something that had been on his mind since the beginning and had finally come forward enough to show itself.

"You put us here," he said. He wasn't cruel about it. He was just saying a fact. "But you're also the only one who can read the other side clearly enough to get us through it." He paused. "Don't hold anything back again. Not a single thing."

I met his eyes. "I won't." And I meant it.

He nodded once, like that was enough for now, and left it at that.

That evening, Sera found me in the hallway outside the locker room. I was sitting on the floor with my back against the wall and my knees pulled up. 

That was how I sat when I was in my feelings, not putting up a facade for anyone.

She didn't say anything when she saw me. She just sat down right next to me in the same position without asking if it was okay. We stayed like that for a while, not talking, which was the thing I hadn't realized I needed until she did it.

"What happens if it doesn't work?" she asked eventually.

I thought about the seven photographs on Marcus's wall and the coordinated collapse he'd been quietly building for years. I thought about Elena's empty apartment and the car still sitting in the parking lot.

"Then we’ll figure out the next thing," I said.

Sera nodded. She seemed to actually accept that, which I appreciated.

Then after a moment she said, "Zane hasn't slept properly in four days."

I didn't say anything.

She looked at me sideways. "I'm just mentioning it," she said. She didn’t say anything else after that.

That night I found Zane still working at his desk at midnight. I sat down opposite him without saying anything. When he looked up, I reached over and closed his laptop. He looked at my hand on it for a second, then let it stay closed.

We sat there for a moment without moving. Then from down the hallway, Dex's door swung open.

"She has a name," he called out. "Carter's real name."

He appeared in the doorway, phone in hand, looking at both of us with an expression that said he already knew this was going to change everything.

"And you're not going to like it."