Page 153 of Flint’s Strike

I disconnect without saying a word.

Maybe I misdialed. Maybe there’s a version of this where he answers the second time and explains this all away.

Four rings. Voicemail. Again.

My hands shake as I switch to text.

Need to talk to you tonight. It’s important.

I stare at it for a full minute, watching the screen like I can force the three little dots to appear.

The message stays unread.

I set the phone face down. What the fuck am I supposed to do now?

The office has gone quiet around me, and I’m alone with a building’s worth of bare steel and a stairwell that ate Zack alive because someone decided fire-resistant coating was too expensive to bother with.

I press the heels of my hands against my eyelids until color blooms behind them. Red. Orange. White.

For a second, I’m back there. The heat against my face shield. Flames eating through my gear. Through layers and layers of skin.

Not real. It’s not real.

I don’t remember standing up, but I’m halfway across the office with no memory of getting there.

I should have gotten to him.

For seven years, that was my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night.

I pace back and forth for several minutes, replaying every moment of that day. My knee aches, and eventually, I limp back to my desk.

I was too slow. Too far away. I should have protected him. Should have gotten to him.

I couldn’t. I made it as far as the building let me.

My knees go weak. I land in my chair, and it rolls until it slams against my file cabinet.

The words on the page blur. Breathing takes work now. I drag in a shallow breath. Then another. And another.

I don’t know how long I sit here. Or what I’m supposed to do with seven years of guilt that was never mine to carry.

Scrolling, I stop on the photo of the stairwell again.

Zack is still there. He’ll always be there.

Parker

Judge Nesbitt doesn’t give us any trouble with the warrants. A call from AJ didn’t hurt there. Nate’s already on the phone with the first developer before I’ve even had a chance to thank her clerk.

Seven sets of financial records.

By the time we’re back at the station, we have most of them. Four arrive electronically. Small miracle there. Then the bankers boxes start coming in. No one balked. But I reckon burying us in paper is the next best thing.

Nate speed walks into the conference room with two mugs of coffee and sets them both down next to his laptop.

“Gee, thanks for thinking of me, partner.” I reach for my water bottle, side-eyeing the first box open on the chair next to me. Eliot’s chair.

He glances down at the coffee, then over at me. With a sheepish smile, he slides one of the mugs across the table. “In my defense, I saw all the boxes and panicked.”