Page 103 of Collateral Love
Miles’s smile thinned.
Channy swallowed. “They want me to testify against y’all.”
I looked at the paper, then at my people.
Then on the screens.
Then, in the future, trying to close around us.
Charles hadn’t just kidnapped Kenya. He’d reached into the foundation of what we built and tried to rot it from underneath.
And the part that made my stomach go cold wasn’t the subpoena.
It was the precision of it.
Because to serve Channy like this, to reopen that alleyway case, to time it with Kenya’s kidnapping…
Somebody had to be moving like an engineer.
Somebody had to be thinking like Kenya. But with hate.
I stared at the screen again, then at Xavier.
Xavier’s eyes were locked on Miles.
Not accusatory, but measuring—the way men looked at a gun on a table and decided whether it was loaded.
Xavier’s voice came out calm.
“Miles,” he said, “where were you when Kenya got snatched?”
Miles exhaled slowly. “At my P.I. office as always trying to help people find their loved ones.”
“Who confirmed?” Xavier pressed.
Miles shrugged. “Security footage. My eyes. The fact that we all got the same phone call.”
Xavier nodded once.
Then he said, “And who told you about the subpoena before we saw it?”
Miles’s jaw flexed. “I have friends in law enforcement.”
Xavier didn’t move.
“But how’d you know it was coming?” Xavier asked.
Silence landed.
Miles’s eyes flicked, just once, towards me, as if he wanted me to save him from the question.
That’s when I knew Xavier wasn’t asking to accuse.
He was asking to verify.
And verification was a dangerous thing when you had a mole in the walls.
I stepped forward and ended the tension with my voice.
