Page 120 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

“I told you I would stay.”

Sloane

Callie falls asleep against me before she finishes her coffee. She’s curled into my side on the living room couch, one leg folded beneath her and her cheek pressed to my chest. Her fingers remain loosely hooked in the fabric of my shirt, and the bond between us carries the heavy warmth of exhaustion without any of the distance that used to sit beneath it.

Theo is stretched along the other end of the couch with his head in Idris' lap. His spike eased hours ago, but his skin is still warm, and he has dragged two blankets over himself despiteleaving one bare foot resting against Callie’s thigh. Idris moves his fingers slowly through Theo’s hair while Dash sits in the armchair with a book open across his knee, close enough that Callie could reach him without getting up.

My phone vibrates beside me. I ignore it long enough to kiss the top of Callie’s head, but the second message comes less than a minute later.

Found the access point. Need you here. Not safe to send over the house network.

Kade would not ask me to come in unless the information mattered. After Garrett’s campus stunt, anything he refuses to transmit needs to be seen before another part of the trail disappears.

I glance toward Idris, but his attention is on Theo, who has begun shifting restlessly beneath the blankets. Dash looks up from his book when I move, his eyes dropping to Callie’s sleeping face before returning to mine.

“Kade found something,” I tell him quietly. “He wants me at the office.”

Dash closes the book around one finger. “Are you waking her?”

Callie makes a small sound when I slide my arm from behind her. Her fingers tighten in my shirt, and I pause until the tension leaves them again.

“She barely slept after yesterday and Theo’s spike,” I say. “I will be back before she wakes.”

Dash’s gaze holds mine for another second. He does not tell me what to do, and I let that make the decision feel safer than it is.

I ease a pillow into the space I leave and pull the blanket over Callie’s hip. Before I stand, I press my mouth to her hair and touch the band paired with her bracelet.

The light will tell her I am thinking about her. I convince myself that it is enough because I only intend to be gone for half an hour.

Kade is waiting in the conference room when I reach the temporary Rourke office. A laptop sits open beside printed access logs, and he turns the screen toward me before I finish removing my coat.

“Garrett did not find out about Zana’s meeting by watching the campus,” he says. “He used an old Crane and Vale client-notification system to pull Callie’s calendar.”

The screen shows the time of the request, the meeting location, and the names attached to the invitation. The login came from an assistant’s account, but the network address beneath it belongs to Garrett’s house.

“He used someone else’s credentials,” I say, leaning closer to read the log.

“Either they gave them to him or he took them.” Kade slides a second page across the table. “The same account accessed three old pack-transition files. Zana already flagged two of them because the Betas disappeared from the records after an Omega joined.”

The names mean nothing to me, but the pattern does. Garrett did not invent what he did to Callie in one desperate moment. He had used the same systems before, testing how much authority people would accept if he placed the right seal above it.

Kade opens another file and shows me the preserved source information. “We can tie the campus access to his home network, and Zana can use the older files to show this was not an isolated act.”

My phone vibrates against the table at the same moment the bond tightens beneath my ribs. The first change is small enough that I nearly dismiss it as Callie waking, but the pressure sharpens while Dash’s name appears on my screen.

I answer with my eyes still on the login record. “What happened?”

“Where are you?” Dash asks.

His voice is too controlled. I straighten and look toward the conference-room door, suddenly aware of how far away from the house I am.

“With Kade. I told you I was coming here.” I gather the printed pages even though I no longer care about taking them myself. “He found the account Garrett used to access Callie’s calendar.”

“Callie woke up,” Dash says. I hear movement behind him, followed by Theo’s quieter voice somewhere nearby. “She knows you touched the band. She does not know where you went.”

The bond opens enough for her fear to reach me.

It isn't loud. Callie is trying to contain it, holding herself still while her body searches for the moment everything changed without her. That effort hurts worse than panic would have because I know she is already wondering whether reacting makes her unfair.