Page 130 of Fallen Empire

I closed my eyes, not because I was tired, but to focus. To sharpen my hearing. To soak in every word and pretend I had the strength to be useful.

"Did you find anything at the café?" Jaxson’s voice was low, clipped.

"Not really," Ben answered. "Outside of it, there was coffee stains on the sidewalk. Spilled like someone dropped it mid-step. But that was it. Nothing else obvious. No witnesses."

"I showed the girls behind the counter her photo," Nic added. "They remembered her. Said she wasn’t there long."

"And then?"

"Nothing. Said she left kind of in a rush. But there’s no exterior camera on that block. We’re blind until she hits the crosswalk."

I cracked one eye open, gaze sliding to Jaxson. Even through the reflection, I could see his jaw was clenched tight as his hand gripped the edge of the countertop.

"Then we trace the intersections one by one," he said. "Somebody picked her up. A van. Car. Anything. There has to be something."

Ben nodded. "We’ll find it. We’ve done it before."

“This is why I wanted trackers. We could’ve avoided this,” Nic said, but nobody responded. By the sound of it, she meant putting something into our bodies. But no one ever mentioned trackers.

I’d seen what happened on the other side of danger. Not a front row seat, but the main character. If they wanted to make sure finding us was easier if something happened, I would’ve done it. I would’ve convinced Millie to also. But nobody ever asked.

The silence that foll owed was razor-sharp and charged with determination. No fear. No failure.

Just a plan.

And if Millie could hear them, I knew she’d be doing the same thing I was.

Holding on.

Because they weren’t going to stop. Not until they got her back.

“Goddamn it,” Ben muttered, breaking the silence that had stretched for what felt like hours. “It’s like they’re invisible. I’ve scanned everything. Every fucking angle we have, and I can’t find a fucking thing.”

His nerves were fraying. I could hear it in his voice, the edge of desperation creeping in.

“Jax,” Nic said, her tone calm but resolute. “I need to go under. Just for a bit.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but Jaxson did.

“You can’t,” he snapped. “If they even suspect you’re there, if you’re caught, CIA will be knocking down that door in seconds.” He pointed toward the door in front of me. The only entrance.

“Do you want to find her or not?” Nic asked, unfazed. “It’s a risk we have to take.”

Silence followed, heavy with tension. This wasn’t a simple decision. This was a line they weren’t supposed to cross.

“Do it,” Ben said, before Jaxson could respond. “If Gunner shows, I’ll handle it. Just fucking get her back.”

Nic’s fingers flew across the keyboard. The monitors flickered, the screen layouts shifting. A girl taking a selfie. A couple laughing in front of a street sign. A phone pointed at the pavement, walking somewhere.

She’d tapped into cellphone cameras.

“Her phone last pinged here?” Ben asked, pointing to a location on the map—about two blocks from where we were.

“Yeah,” Nic confirmed. “Corner of Broome and West Broadway.”

“I’m rescanning all visual models from that area,” she said. “And I’m pulling from transportation nodes. Traffic cams. Crosswalk feeds. Anything with a lens.”

The screens expanded—four feeds turned to eight, then sixteen. One after another, image after image flickered in and out. I sat up, my body finally moving as I turned toward the wall of monitors.