Page 71 of Carrick
“You don’t need permission to fall apart,” Maddy said again, softer now but no less fierce. “You’re already surviving more than most of us could.”
I swallowed hard, but the pressure in my throat didn’t budge. My pulse thudded behind my eyes, the room too hot, too still. I wanted to speak—to thank her, to scream, to sob—but nothing came. What could I even say? That I hadn’t really slept in two nights? That every hour without a word from Rayden felt like a screw twisting deeper into my chest? That I was done pretending to be part of this team when the silence made me feel like I didn’t belong? That I was scared in a way that didn’t have language?
I couldn’t say it. Not with all of them watching. Not with that pain pressing behind my ribs like a loaded weapon.
Then Carrick spoke—quiet, measured, inevitable. “She doesn’t feel like she matters.”
No anger. No accusation. Just truth. And somehow, that hit harder than shouting ever could.
Every head turned. Even mine. Not because I wanted to, but because something in me had been waiting for someone to say it out loud. To name the ache I couldn’t articulate. But Carrick wasn’t looking at me.
His eyes were locked on Niko, calm and unreadable, his voice low but clear. “She doesn’t feel like she matters,” he repeated. “And that’s not on her.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Not vibrating or tense—just heavy, like a breath the room didn’t know how to release.
“That’s on us.”
And there it was.
My breaking point didn’t arrive in a dramatic collapse or some kind of cinematic spiral. It came in silence. Quiet. Slow. Like a seam giving way, like a final thread snapping under the weight of too much held in too long. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just…buckled. Inside. Where no one could see. Where it hurt the most.
The energy in the room shifted, not in pity, but in acknowledgment. Something reverent. Like everyone had finally stopped pretending there wasn’t a body bleeding out on the floor.
Carrick didn’t flinch. Didn’t offer apologies or elaboration. He simply sat there, grounded, steady, the first person to speak what no one else had dared to.
And for the first time since this started, I didn’t feel like I was losing my mind. I wasn’t dramatic. Or difficult. Or overly emotional. I was someone who mattered enough for someone to finally say: this is not okay.
Carrick stood, slow and deliberate. He didn’t look at me. His eyes stayed locked on Niko.
“You keep telling her we’re working it,” he said, calm but sharp, “but you’re not showing her anything.”
“We’re in a holding pattern,” Niko replied, voice clipped and clinical. A phrase polished with military restraint—but underneath, it cracked. Strained. Like he’d swallowed barbed wire and couldn’t quite keep it down. He hated saying it. Hated naming the helplessness.
Carrick didn’t blink. Didn’t shift. His expression held, but the air around him hardened. “Then let her hear that from Quinn,” he said, low and edged with defiance.
The silence that followed could have split steel. One of those taut, loaded pauses stretched between men trained for war but trapped in limbo. Niko’s jaw ticked once. His fingers curled against the table like they were deciding whether to obey or defy. I thought—just for a breath—he might remind Carrick who ran this team.
But then he exhaled, slow and sharp, and reached for his phone like it might draw blood. He set it on the table with a soft thud that landed like a grenade. One tap. Then nothing. No explanation. No defense.
Just that.
“Quinn,” he said when the line picked up, his voice as tight as his spine. “You’re on speaker.”
The line crackled once before Quinn’s voice drifted in—cool, composed, the same unbearable calm he wore like armor. “Yeah?”
“It’s Niko. We need an update.”
There was a pause. Not long. Just enough to feel deliberate. “Nothing new,” Quinn said at last. “Still quiet.”
The words landed like a hollow echo in a deep, empty cave. I blinked once, slow and heavy, as if the weight of that silencecould press down my eyelids too. No movement. No signal. No signs of life. Just a flatline where a heartbeat should be.
Carrick’s arms folded across his chest, the motion controlled, but there was a blade buried in the steel of his voice when he said, “So we’re still blind.”
“For now,” Quinn said, his cadence steady. “We’re watching places he might surface. Monitoring digital channels. But there’ve been no pings. No flagged activity. Nothing unusual.”
And that was the worst part. Nothing meant absence. Void. The screen stayed black, the data clean, the world moving on like he’d never existed. Suspicion would’ve meant motion—a breadcrumb, a shadow, a sign. But this? This was silence wearing a mask.
I didn’t realize my fists had clenched until my nails bit into my palms. My breath was shallow, barely registering. I sat still, spine rigid, but inside, I was unraveling—coiled so tight something in me felt ready to snap.
