Page 67 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

She recounted to Quinn the same story that she had told me and the rest of the guys.

About being alone in the interrogation room.

About the voice coming over the PA system.

Being told that Violet had been taken, and what they expected her to do; how they expected her to betray the sanctity of our compound of misfits and found family.

To her credit, her voice never wavered. I unconsciously kept track of her heart rate and breathing cycle, so I could tell how much stress she was under, reliving this memory again.

I didn’t interrupt, just slid my hand over heres, slow and steady.

Let her feel my presence like an anchor.

She gave me a silent squeeze, but didn’t stop until she was done.

When she had finished her story, Quinn exhaled through his nose, the sound low and grim. “That’s why the recording was deleted,” he said.

Stella blinked. “What?”

“The automatic audio and video recording in the interrogation rooms. The portion of the recording during your time there was gone when I checked. It was an oddity, but I had no reason to suspect foul play at that point. Turns out I was dead wrong.” He said, voice scraping like metal dragged across stone.

“They were protecting him. Whoever spoke to you. They wiped the file so no one could trace his voice.”

My jaw tightened. I knew what erasure like that meant. It wasn’t about data. It was about dominance. Visibility. Power. They didn’t want her just scared; they wanted her erased. Her trauma rewritten as silence. Her memory was treated like a bug in the code. Something easy to delete.

Carrick leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “So we’re not talking about a beat cop.”

“No,” Quinn said, clipped and bitter. “This came from inside. Someone with system access. Someone protecting the wrong side.”

Bellamy sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Jesus.”

And Stella—God, Stella—looked around like she wasn’t seeing any of us. Her hands shook barely, but I caught it. The flutter at her throat. The unraveling. One nerve at a time.

“It’s been weeks,” she whispered. “He said I had time. But not forever. I don’t know how much longer she has.”

Quinn’s voice held steely resolve. “Then we'd better make that time count. Now, I know we’ve gone over this before, but if you’re willing, I need you to tell us again about your time in captivity. Try to give us every detail you can; don’t leave anything out.”

She nodded and started speaking again. Her cadence shifted, slipping into survival mode.

Mechanical. Detached. Exact. Each clipped word solidified the nauseating mix of sorrow and vengeful rage twisting through my gut, the kind of ache you get when someone you care for lays out horrors you can’t undo.

And when she reached the end of that moment, she didn’t stop.

She kept talking, rewinding, letting the memory drag her further back whether she wanted it to or not.

The sour reek of mildew laced with oil.

The low, constant hum, like industrial power lines vibrating through the walls.

The roar of planes overhead, rattling the ceiling often enough to count.

She never faltered. Not once. But I tracked the tremors she couldn’t hide, the shallow spike of her pulse, the clipped rhythm of her breath.

I slid my hand over hers, slow and steady.

She didn’t look at me, didn’t pause. Just squeezed once, hard and defiant, and kept going until she ran out of words.

The room went still.

Quinn dragged a hand across his phone, scrolling fast. “That narrows it down some,” he said. “But warehouses near flight paths? KC Metro has plenty. Industrial parks. Private strips. Even half-abandoned hangars. I’ll have to do some digging to narrow it down.”

Carrick cut Quinn a sharp look. “But why her? Why take her sister? Why hit her studio of all places?”

The silence tightened, humming with thought instead of emptiness.

Quinn’s gaze sharpened, scanning nothing, words catching up to the pieces falling into place.

“It’s not about the fact that it’s Stella’s studio.

” His jaw flexed. “It’s about location. The Northeast Industrial District is stacked with warehouses no one checks unless they have to.

There is very little foot traffic. No neighbors. Easy to hide in plain sight.”

My pulse spiked, logic colliding with the files burned into my memory from Rayden’s flash drive.

“Those shell companies,” I said, voice steady but tight.

“The ones Rayden flagged. Half a dozen properties tied to Dom Krovi fronts, all sitting in that district. On paper, they’re clean. In practice, they probably reek.”

Carrick swore under his breath, fists braced against his knees. “So that’s why the studio mattered. Not her art. Not her name. Where it was planted.”

Niko leaned forward, clipped and certain. “If Violet’s alive, she’s close. They wouldn’t risk moving her far when they already have infrastructure in place.”

Quinn nodded sharply, pulling his phone from his pocket, voice iron.

“Then that’s our grid. The studio. Every warehouse in the district that is tied to those shell companies.

I’ve already got alerts flagged across the metro set to alert me if property transfers shift too fast, businesses collapse overnight, or owners disappear without a trace.

If something trips, it hits my desk first.”

Beside me, Stella’s grip crushed my hand, the tendons in her wrist straining under the force of it.

Her chin lifted, tears streaking fast, but her voice carried through the room anyway—raw, cracked, desperate.

“I want to help.” The words spilled out, jagged and unpolished, like she’d been holding them too long.

“No. I need to help. I can’t just sit here while you map and plan and wait for news that’s already too late.

This is my sister. And if I don’t fight like hell to get her back…

” Her breath hitched, breaking into silence before she forced it out anyway, quiet but lethal. “I won’t be able to live with myself.”

The words hung there. Sharp, shattering, undeniable.

I turned to her. Not the table, not the team. Just her. “You are already helping.” My voice was low, certain, anchored only to her. “You gave us the grid. You gave us the lead. And we’re going to follow it. You don’t have to bleed to be in this fight, Stella. You just have to keep holding on.”

She leaned in close to me, her head falling to my shoulder as she took in a shuddering breath.

For weeks, Violet had been a ghost carried in Stella’s silence.

Now, for the first time, she was a direction.

And we wouldn’t stop until we reached her.

The room fell still, and I could see everyone taking a moment to process.

Maddy pulled Niko aside, whispering something to him while her fingers traced his forearm like a map she knew by heart.

Deacon backed into the shadows, scanning the room like he was solving a threat no one else could see.

Carrick had Bellamy curled in his lap, mouth pressed to her temple, whatever he said low and final.

Sully paced, jaw tight, silence stretched sharp across his shoulders.

I didn’t move. Stella didn’t either, but something had changed. Not her posture. Not her breath. It lived deeper. That kind of resolve you only build from collapse, or forged armor. I wasn’t sure which one this was.

I studied her the way I used to study targets; deliberate, focused, unflinching. Her fists were clenched, wrists twitching like static had replaced her pulse.

I kept my voice low. “You’re winding up,” I said.

She didn’t look at me. “No, I’m fine.”

“You’re never fine when you say ‘fine’ like that. I’ve been keeping a logbook.”

That earned me a sideways glance and the ghost of an annoyed smile, just a twitch of the lips. Then a sigh, small and sharp.

“I just... I keep thinking about her. What if she’s in the dark right now, wondering if I gave up? Wondering if I traded her safety for my comfort?”

My chest ached in that tight, raw way I still didn’t have good words for. I’d spent most of my life not feeling things the same way other people did. But Stella? She bypassed all of that. Found the glitch in my system, and programmed herself into it.

“She wouldn’t think that,” I said. “Not for a second.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve seen you fight your way out of trauma, and I’ve seen you hold it like armor. You would never leave someone behind. And if Violet is anything at all like you, then she has reserves of strength that should make the Dom Krovi tremble in their boots.”

Her eyes began to fill with tears. Just a bare glimmer. But it didn’t fall.

“But what if I did leave her behind?” she whispered. “What if we’re too late?”

I turned toward her fully, bringing one hand to the back of her neck, warm, steady, anchoring. My voice dropped into the cadence I used when she needed to believe it wasn’t just comfort. It was math . Truth, mapped in patterns.

“Then we still fight. Every second we wait, they think we’re folding. But we’re not. We’re collecting variables. Gathering data. Preparing to strike with precision instead of panic. That’s how we win, Stella.”

She let out a long breath, like the air itself had been scraped raw inside her lungs.

“I want to help,” she said. “But I don’t want to be another liability.”

“You’re not a liability,” I said. “You’re the catalyst. The repeated word that cracked the Enigma code.”

She blinked slowly, like she wasn’t sure she believed me, but she wanted to.

“I keep thinking about that voice,” she said at last. “The one behind the glass. It wasn’t just cold. It was deliberate. Measured. Like they’d done it before.”

“Which means they’ve made mistakes before, too,” I said. “Patterns don’t just show behavior. They show vulnerability. If I can trace that voice, if Quinn can pinpoint the location… we’ll find Violet. And we’ll dismantle whatever web they built to hide her.”

Her breath caught, but she nodded. “Do you really think she’s still alive?”

I didn’t answer right away. Not because I didn’t believe it, but because she deserved something real. Not comfort dressed up as truth.

“I think she’s holding on,” I said at last. “Because she believes you’ll come for her.”

She turned then, her gaze catching mine with that same brittle, burning force I’d learned to recognize not as fragility, but as refusal. Fierce. Total. It wasn’t the kind of fire that begged for air. It was the kind that made it.

“Then we'd better find her before she lets go.”

I stepped closer, brushing my fingers along the back of her neck. My forehead tipped to hers, not for comfort. A vow.

“We will,” I said. “No matter what it takes.”

She didn’t speak, but the way she leaned into me said enough. Not collapse. Not surrender. Just a decision made in stillness. A shift. She didn’t need to believe it would be easy. Only that she wouldn’t face it alone.

Because she wouldn’t. Not now. Not ever.