Page 42 of Carrick
My stomach twisted. It was always strange, hearing his name spoken out loud. It felt like handing over something intimate. Something still bleeding. “Okay,” I said. Voice flat. Measured.
He didn’t press. Just waited. I hated that—the way these men, his men, used silence like a scalpel. It was more effective than any interrogation technique I could imagine.
I took a breath.
“So… what do you want to know?” I said finally. “He’s my little brother. We had a rough childhood, growing up together. Foster homes. Some good. Some... not.”
I didn’t look at Niko.
I didn’t need to see the pity on his face. If it was there.
“He looked out for me. Even when it cost him. And I looked out for him. He got caught stealing food once when I was nine, and took the fall for both of us. Broke his wrist getting thrown down by some rent-a-cop. Still gave me half his sandwich after.”
My voice cracked a little, but I pushed through.
“We stuck together. In and out of group homes. Then he got into some trouble when he was seventeen—something stupid, something loud—and got flagged. A couple years later, he moved here and went into… he called it ‘private security’. Said he was done being powerless.”
Niko shifted slightly, his weight moving to the balls of his feet. Listening closely now.
“I figured out pretty quickly that he’d gotten involved with the criminal underground here. We stayed in touch, and he let things slip now and then. I put two and two together, you know? But something changed,” I said. “Six months ago, he stopped answering my calls. Two months after that, I got a message from a burner phone. No return number. Just: ‘Trust no one. Get out of Kansas City’.”
“And you stayed here, anyway.”
I looked up at him. “I’m not going to abandon him.”
Niko nodded once. “No, you’re not.”
He pulled a small notebook from his back pocket and flipped it open.
“I got a call from Quinn last night. We don’t have any new information, not exactly, but we think we might know why Rayden is in trouble.”
My throat tightened.
Niko continued. “A few weeks ago, the KCPD interrupted a shakedown in progress. Some Dom Krovi thugs were beating up on a business owner who had been late on his protection payment, apparently. It seems the guy had installed a panic button in his office, and managed to hit it before they jumped him.”
I groaned and put my head in my hand. Rayden wouldn’t be involved in something like that, would he? Hurting an innocent old man?
“The police showed up, the thugs scattered, and one of them dropped a duffel bag in the scuffle. Turns out it had the old guy’s payment in it. Just yesterday Quinn finally got ahold of some CCTV footage of the incident, and we got a match on your brother’s face. He was one of the guys that fled the scene.”
Niko stepped away from the wall he’d been leaning on and moved closer. He squatted down to eye level and spoke quieter, voice full of concern. “The way we figure, if it was Rayden’s job to carry the money and he dropped it, that would’ve landed him in deep shit. The Dom Krovi would want their money, and it would be on him to pay it back. Apparently he couldn’t, and that’s when?—”
“I know when,” I snapped, cutting him off. “That’s when they cut off his fucking finger and sent it to me. That’s why the note said I was on the hook now.”
He nodded grimly. “It’s a hypothesis, but one that makes sense, given the circumstances.”
I felt my pulse quicken. My breath turned shallow, like I couldn’t get enough air. “And I just ran. I didn’t even try to help him. I just left—” My voice cracked. Panic tightened in my chest as I looked up at Niko, desperation rising hot and sharp. “We have to find him, Niko. We have to get him out. You have to save him.”
He gave a single nod. “We’ll keep digging,” he muttered, then walked out, shutting the door behind him. He didn’t even say goodbye.
I didn’t move. Just sat there, frozen, while my thoughts spiraled—panic, memory, fear—all of it circling like vultures.
Rayden.
The name hurt like a bruise I couldn’t stop pressing. Hearing it out loud cracked something open. Like someone had broken into a locked drawer in my chest and started pawing through everything I’d shoved down—every memory, every fear, every night I’d whispered his name like a prayer before sleep, hoping he was still breathing somewhere in the dark.
I tightened the blanket around my shoulders and sank into the armchair near the bed. It creaked beneath me. Or maybe I did.
Rayden was my blood. My little brother. Born eighteen months after me and wild from the start. When our mom nodded off with a needle one too many times and set the kitchen on fire, the state stepped in. Took us. Split us. I was seven. He was five. They put us in different homes, different cities. Two years of silence. Two years of not knowing if he was safe, or scared, or even remembered me.
