Page 22 of Wrecker

As Blade passed Reid on his way out, he muttered under his breath, “Keep takin’ good care of her.”

Reid dropped his arms to his sides. “Don’t need you to remind me.”

The door shut behind Blade with a solid click.

We just got settled back in bed when Reid’s phone buzzed from the nightstand, vibrating hard enough to rattle against the wood. He glanced at the screen, his expression darkening as he picked it up.

Turning slightly away from me, he muttered, “What do you need, Deviant?”

His tone was all business—low, rough, and clipped.

I couldn’t hear what Deviant said, but I watched Reid’s shoulders tense. His hand flexed around his phone.

“Send it to me,” he said after a moment. “We’ll take a look.”

He ended the call and stared at the screen for a beat. “Deviant found security footage from a couple of different sites.”

My stomach tightened. “What kind?”

His jaw clenched. “Of someone tampering with the foundation supports. No doubt it was intentional damage. More fucking sabotage.”

I sat up straighter, adrenaline kicking in fast. “How many sites?”

“More than one. That’s all he said so far.”

There was a beat of silence before Reid grabbed the laptop off his desk and opened his email. Tapping on the first video, he sat down next to me so we could both watch. The quality wasn’t great—grainy nighttime footage from a motion-activated camera. A man moved through the shadows, crouching near oneof the load-bearing beams. His face never turned fully toward the camera.

“Something is familiar about his profile,” Reid muttered, sounding frustrated.

We watched another clip. Different site, same figure. Same gait—moving with purpose, knowing exactly where to go and what to do.

“Do you recognize him?” I asked.

Reid exhaled slowly, shaking his head. “Feels like I should. Can’t place from where, though. The connection is right fucking there, but I can’t quite grab it.”

He shook his head, then watched me for a long second, then settled the computer on my lap. “There’s more. Deviant sent over everything he’s got—video, permits, site maps. We want you to go through it all.”

My eyes widened. “Me?”

“You’re the one who’s been studyin’ this shit,” he explained gruffly. “You have the instincts, and you already found patterns everyone else missed.”

I felt the weight of what he was asking but not in a bad way. It was heavy but also meant he trusted me. That I wasn’t just some girl who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was part of this now.

I nodded. “Okay. Let’s figure this out.”

I’d been reviewing the files for at least an hour, combing through site maps and inspection reports Deviant had dug up when a familiar name stopped me cold.

Little Horizons Children’s Library.

I clicked into the linked file with growing dread. It was a small, nonprofit renovation project to retrofit an old firehouse into a neighborhood library. It had been part of the same construction initiative I’d flagged in my thesis research after theback portion of the building collapsed a week after the final walkthrough.

I opened the corresponding footage.

The man we still couldn’t identify crouched beside the rear foundation wall, moving with the same quiet precision we’d seen before. A few minutes later, he vanished into the shadows.

Nobody had been in that building when it fell, but there could easily have been kids there.

My breath hitched. “Reid.”

---