Chapter 183
Chapter 182: No New Leads
DANTE POV
A week of nothing.
That was the summary of the past seven days no gray cars, no blue cars, no man with the specific sitting posture that Drew had described with the accuracy of a child who noticed things correctly. The undercover officers Cameron had arranged had been in position around the school, around the facility, around the street outside our rental-and they’d reported nothing unusual. No vehicles matching Drew’s descriptions. No one paying sustained attention to the wrong things.
I’d been watching too.
That was the part I didn’t report to Cameron in full detail, the extent of my own watching-the specific heightened attention I’d been running since Drew had come into the kitchen on that Sunday and told me about the pattern. I’d been clocking cars on the school street. I’d been arriving at the facility slightly earlier and staying slightly later, checking who was in the parking area. I’d been doing the walk with Sedona on the neighborhood route with a different kind of awareness than before, the peripheral scanning of someone who’d been told to expect something and had been waiting for it.
Nothing.
Either the man had stopped, or the man had never been what I’d started to make him in my head, or the man had noticed the changed quality of attention and had pulled back.
I didn’t know which.
That was the part that sat with me. Not knowing was harder than knowing something bad. Knowing bad things was workable-you responded, you took action, you managed the situation. Not knowing meant the situation might be over and might not be, and the not-knowing required you to keep the heightened attention running at a cost, the cost of being somewhere partially else whenever you were supposed to be fully present.
Cameron called on Friday morning.
I was at the facility, not on court yet, just dealing with some scheduling things in the small office area. Drew was at school. The morning was regular and mundane, just like it always was.
“I want to call them off,” Cameron said, after we’d gone through the status update. “The officers. It’s been a week with nothing. I’ve had Reeve checking Logan’s activity and he’s in Chicago, he’s at the office, he’s at home. There’s nothing that suggests anything is running from his end p>
“Okay,” I said.
“You agree?” He sounded slightly surprised, which told me he’d been preparing for more resistance from me, considering it was me and my son that was being followed.
“A week of nothing is a week of nothing,” I said. “Either it was a coincidence-a parent from school who happened to park in multiple locations for reasons that had nothing to do with us-or whoever it was
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No New Leade
Claim
pulled back when the attention changed.” I paused. “Either way, keeping undercover officers in position Indefinitely isn’t-It’s not sustainable. Drew’s noticed the cars. He hasn’t said anything, but he notices things p>
“He’d notice undercover cops,” Cameron said.
“He asked me yesterday why the dark blue car parks on the same spot every morning,” I said. “He said it never parks there on weekends, only school days p>
A pause. “Four years old,” Cameron said.
“Four years old,” I confirmed.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll make the call today. We step down the surveillance but we keep Reeve active. If Logan moves, if anything shifts in his pattern, Reeve flags it immediately p>
“Agreed,” I said.
We were quiet for a moment on the line, the quiet of two men who’d been running a specific kind of vigilance and were now releasing it and weren’t entirely sure how to do that without the vigilance immediately converting itself into worry.
“How’s Drew?” Cameron said. Not the professional version of asking-the personal one.
“He’s fine,” I said. “He hasn’t mentioned the shadow again. He reported once, he handed it over, and he’s moved on.” I paused. “That’s how he works. He does his part and then he trusts the people he’s given the
information to p>
“He’s very-” Cameron stopped.
“I know,” I said.
“The bird,” Cameron said. “The chickadee he correctly identified. Sedona told me about that p>
“He keeps the corrections in a notebook,” I said. “Any time someone misidentifies a bird in his presence, he records the error and the correct identification. He says it’s for reference p>
Cameron made a sound that was either amusement or something adjacent to it. “For future reference, in case they misidentify again p>
“Exactly,” I said.
“He should meet Nick,” Cameron said, and then seemed to catch himself, as if he’d said something he hadn’t fully decided to say.
“What do you know about Nick?” I asked.
A pause. “Sedona talks to him,” Cameron said carefully. “She tells me things. He sounds like-” Another pause. “He sounds like someone who pays attention. Like Drew p>
“She doesn’t talk to me much about him,” I said. “She talks about him, but not-she keeps that separate.
Protected p>
“She keeps everything that matters protected until she’s sure about it,” Cameron said. “It’s how she
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(No New Lead
manages the things she can’t afford to lose p>
+thought about that.
Clam
Thought about the walk on Wednesday, that they took, sometimes holding hands, when alone or sometimes with Drew watching him or listening to him talk, sometimes Lake would join in, when Lucian was not coming early from work and he needed a place to keep Lake busy.
She hadn’t said much about Nick on those walks, not even with the kids, she kept it seperate and focused on them, aside from her telling them she had a son and he existed and one ay she might bring him for a visit, there was nothing else.
But the things she had said had been the truest things she had.
“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” I said to Cameron. “About Sedona p>
“The tennis,” Cameron said.
I stopped. “You know p>
“I’ve seen her,” he said. “She doesn’t know I’ve driven past the facility a couple of times. I wasn’t checking up-I was in the area and I was curious.” A pause. “She’s good, Dante p>
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Florence
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.