Page 93 of Carrick
I looked up.
“You’ve earned that,” he said simply. “The right to know. The right to help.”
“Really?” My voice cracked. “No more secrets?”
He shook his head. “No more shielding. No more treating you like you’re glass.”
“We’ll catch you up tonight,” Sully said. “Everything we know. Everything we’re still working on.”
“And if I want to help?” I asked carefully.
Jax raised a brow. “Do you want to clean up two hundred gigs of misfiled camera footage and cross-reference timestamps by hand?”
“God, no.”
He cracked a weak smile. “Then I’ll give you the short list.”
“What do you need?” I asked him, turning to face him fully.
His eyes sharpened like a switch had flipped. “Honestly? I need another brain. Someone who knows the sound of his voice. His rhythms. I’ve been running voice-rec on two intercepted clips—low-quality, background noise only. It’s possible he’s in them, but I need confirmation.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Great.” He slid his laptop toward me without hesitation. “One’s labeled NoxOne, the other StaticTwo. Headphones are plugged in. Volume’s sensitive, so go slow. You’ll need to loop it a few times.”
I took the headphones. “You’ve had this for how long?”
“Three days. Didn’t want to show you until I cleaned it up more.”
I looked at him sharply. “Why?”
Jax hesitated. “Because if it’s not him... I didn’t want to be the one who gave you hope for nothing.”
Carrick rose then, slow and steady, and offered me a hand. I took it. Not as a submissive. Not as a woman giving in. Just... a human. Reaching for something real. He pulled me to my feet.
His voice was low. “We’re not perfect. We don’t always handle things the way we should. But we’re here. For you. For him. We’re not giving up.”
I looked around the room—at the scars in their eyes, the cracks in their facades—and nodded.
“Okay,” I said softly. “Then let me be a part of this.”
And this time, they let me in.
It was nearly midnight when the house finally settled again.
No laughter. No banter. No soft music playing in the kitchen. Just the quiet hum of the ventilation system and the low whirr of Jax’s laptop as he pulled up the files.
We sat at the dining table, both of us hunched over the screen like it held salvation.
“I looped the noise floor three times,” he murmured. “Cleaned out the static, but it’s still rough.”
He tapped a few keys, then pushed the laptop toward me. “This one’s labeledStaticTwo. Headphones on. Let it play. Just... tell me what you hear.”
I slipped the headphones on. Static roared at first—harsh and jagged, like teeth—then dipped into a hum. A car passed. Someone laughed faintly in the background.
And then, a voice. Muffled, buried under the noise. But there.
I sat up straighter.
