The rain tapped a steady rhythm on the roof of the car as Connie slipped behind the wheel. She didn't start the engine. Just sat there, gripping the steering wheel like it might hold her together.
Her phone buzzed again. Same number. No name.
She exhaled through her teeth and hit accept.
"Yeah?"
The voice on the other end was smooth. Cold. Like someone used to giving orders that got followed, or else.
"You were supposed to update me an hour ago."
"I was talking to someone."
"And?"
She hesitated. The echo of Sticks' warning still hummed in her skull.
"It's a dead end. He won't talk."
A pause. No breathing. Just dead air.
"Did he recognize you?"
"No. But he recognized the questions."
Another pause. Then the voice darkened.
"You're slipping, Connie. You used to be sharper than this."
Her jaw tightened. "He's not hiding in Chicago anymore. He's ghosted, hard. If he doesn't want to be found—"
"Everyone wants to be found." The voice sliced through her doubt like glass. "Especially him. You just have to push in the right place."
Connie closed her eyes. Rain streaked down the windshield like veins.
"I'll find him," she said quietly. "I just need more time."
"You have one month."
That was all. Then the line went dead.
She dropped the phone onto the passenger seat and leaned back, staring at the cracked ceiling of the garage like it might give her a sign.
One month.
One month to do what the rest of the city couldn't: pull a ghost out of hiding… and hope it didn't pull her under with it.
[Two days later…]
Connie's grip was a steel trap, cold and merciless, dragging Sticks out of the shadows and into the flickering, jaundiced light of his cramped apartment. The air was thick with the stench of stale sweat, burnt circuits from his rig, and raw fear — raw enough to taste.
His protests choked off as a savage fist slammed into his ribs, the sick crack echoing like a death knell in the silent room. Pain tore through him in fiery shards, stealing breath and dropping him to his knees. Each ragged cough was a jagged blade cutting deeper, blood tasting like rust on his tongue.
She loomed over him, eyes sharp and unblinking — a predator savoring the hunt. Her voice slithered low and venomous, coiling around his broken spirit. "You think your silence can save you? Your mind's a locked vault. Fine. But bodies… bodies don't lie. They fracture. They scream. And when they do, the truth spills out like blood."
His whole body trembled, fragile as cracked glass teetering on the edge of shattering. He clenched fists, desperate to hold together the shards of himself — but it was hopeless. Her hands tore through his defenses like ravenous wolves, ripping away every piece he tried to hide.
Another brutal blow slammed into his gut, folding the world in on itself. Darkness pressed in, suffocating and absolute. The floor rose to meet his knees with a sickening thud, breath ripping from his lungs in ragged gasps. The metallic tang of blood filled his mouth, thick and choking.
Connie bent close, her breath hot with madness, eyes glinting like sharpened knives that cut deeper than any fist. "This isn't pain. It's salvation. You're going to see everything you buried deep — every secret, every lie, every shadow. I'm not stopping until Shade's trail is burning bright and you're nothing but ash beneath it."
His mind screamed for escape, clawing at the walls of his consciousness — but his body was a cage breaking apart, a fortress crumbling under siege.
There was no mercy here. Only the slow, methodical dismantling of a man whose silence was the final barrier between her and the boy she wanted.
And Connie was a storm — dark, endless, unstoppable.