Page 25 of Riggs (The Maddox BRAVO Team #2)
Jaxson
“Find my sister.”
That’s all Seth says before the voicemail catches on a breath and ends in three seconds of road noise. The man can bench a snowmobile and throttle a six-wheeler through a blizzard without blinking, but the sound in his throat on the word sister has more weight than ice.
I play it again because I like data—tone, air, the click of a turn signal when he pulls to the shoulder so he can ask me to do the thing he hates asking anyone to do. Then I stand, shut down three monitors, and stuff the fourth into a pelican case because this one is coming with me.
Dean’s already in the doorway like chess with legs. “You’re going,” he says. Not a question.
“Valor Springs,” I answer, popping the latches. “She went quiet there. Cash gas, cash groceries, kid in tow, patterns that want to be invisible without the practice to succeed.”
“What’s the ex?”
“Name on record is Trent Hale. Charming, rich enough to hire problems, dumb enough to leave a scent. He’s backed by a private ‘reputation consultancy’ that sells itself as crisis PR and moonlights as a pressure shop.
They want something she took.” I hold up a manila folder thick with printouts I don’t need to read to know.
“She has it. He knows she has it. He wants ownership, not custody.”
Dean’s mouth tightens; that’s as close as he gets to disgust. He tosses a key fob. “Take the gray Tacoma. I want you on the road in twenty. Keep this off the wire. You get jammed, you call me, not the sheriff.”
“I like sheriffs who nap through my day,” I say, slinging the case. “Rae?”
“On your shoulder,” Rae sings from the bullpen, not looking up from a laptop she appears to be arguing with.
“I spun up a sandbox that mimics Maya’s old phone environment.
If her new burner is lazy enough to probe for familiar SSIDs—coffee shops, apartment routers, her own nickname network—I’ll hear it when you drive within a block.
Also, I have the ex’s calendar. He’s in Houston at a benefit tonight, which means his hired idiots are bored and ambitious. ”
Hayes pads in from somewhere that smells like coffee and solvent, sets a small black pouch on my bag. “Sat puck,” he says. “Your Faraday. The tiny cutter for zip ties you pretend you never need.” His gaze flicks up, dry. “You will text when you eat.”
“Define ‘text’,” I say, just to watch his eyebrow climb.
“Words. About food. Not a photo of a gas pump.”
Riggs leans on the doorjamb behind Dean. He doesn’t smile, but his eyes say it for him. “You got this,” he says. “Wedge doors. Don’t make me drive out there to bail you for an assault charge because some rent-a-goon thinks he’s in a movie.”
Gunner and Hayes laugh at Riggs’ joke.
“Please,” I say. “If anyone’s getting arrested for assault, it’s you, and you’ll look noble doing it.”
Sawyer ghosts by, drops a canvas roll into my palm. Lock picks, tension wrench, a thing that looks like a dental tool and opens feelings in deadbolts. “Bring her home,” he says. Simple. Heavy.
“Working on it,” I say, and mean it.
I stop once more in my office, stare at the corkboard because it helps.
MAYA brOOKS in the middle, three names scrawled with arrows—aliases that fit her like shoes from a thrift store.
Single mother. One kid. The pixels I’ve assembled say: former admin at a med-tech company that suddenly remembered NDAs, a woman who learned to be small in rooms so a certain kind of man could be big, a survivor who decided to be a ghost and is good at it on Tuesdays, less good on Thursdays at dusk when the kid wants fries and the light in fast food places feels like safety.
“Alright,” I tell the board. “Let’s go find you.”
Jaxson is coming soon.