Page 72 of Collateral Love
As mad as Zayden was with me, I knew I made the right decision. The Dre situation wasn’t isolated. The more I dug, the more hairline fractures I found. Cameras that should’ve been offline came back mysteriously operational during our drop windows. Security patterns that used to be lazy had sharpened around the west routes.
Somebody was sniffing.
And you didn’t wait to see if sniffing became biting.
I spent the night at my campus apartment, lights low, code and spreadsheets open across my laptop like an altar. The hum of the old fan in the corner and the thump of bass from some party three floors down made everything feel more normal than it was.
I mapped every transaction over the past thirty days.
Time stamps.
Locations.
Runner names.
I color-coded them, watching clusters appear.
The west side glowed like a rash.
I made the call.
We were shutting that arm down.
Not in a week.
Now.
By two in the morning, I’d sent encrypted AIM messages to my core runners, rerouted all inventory to an off-campus storage unit near an old laundromat I had eyes on, and spun up a new shell front for the next set of drops.
I didn’t call Zayden.
Not because I didn’t trust him.
Because if he picked up the phone in that moment, half-sleep, angry, we’d waste time arguing instead of moving.
By sunrise, the system had shifted.
Clean.
Efficient.
Mathematically sound.
It should’ve stayed that way.
It didn’t.
At ten in the morning, my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then something in my gut tugged.
“Hello?”
All I heard at first was breathing.
