"Fine."
"That didn't look fine. That looked personal."
"It was."
He holds my gaze for a second, then nods once. Doesn't push.
Jax appears from the direction of the medical van, moving carefully, one arm braced across his ribs.
He looks at Walsh gasping on the ground. Then at me. "That was center-mass. You're not getting soft."
"Shouldn't you be lying down?"
"Probably. Want to tell Mira that? Because I'd rather take another two rounds to the plate."
I don't laugh. But the knot behind my sternum loosens at the sound of his voice, raspy and pained buthis, and I let myself look at him for a real second. Upright, breathing, color wrong, posture wrong, but alive and bitching, and that's enough for now.
"Come on," I say. "Damian's got something."
Damian has set up under the work lights near the loading dock. Laptops, phones, and whatever Walsh didn't manage to shred spread across folding tables in labeled rows. He's logging items with the same unhurried care he brings to everything, like a man filing taxes instead of processing evidence from a trafficking warehouse.
He sees me coming. Sees Jax behind me, moving slowly. Doesn't comment on either of us.
"Third box," he says, pushing a cardboard box across the table. "Bottom folder. I flagged it."
"Flagged how?"
He just looks at me. "Open it."
Manila folders. I open the first one and the faces are familiar. Judges from Kade's briefings, the ones who died. Surveillance photos, professional work. Telephoto lenses, patient observation. Courthouse steps, coffee shops, parking garages. Each judge documented before they were killed.
My fingers slow down. I know what's coming before I turn the page, and there's a tab divider after the dead judges that I can't read from this angle.
Second folder.
Angelina. Courthouse steps on a Tuesday, mid-stride, briefcase in her right hand. The coffee shop on Fourth Street where she goes during lunch recess, sitting alone at the window table she always picks because it's closest to the exit. Her car in the federal parking structure, third level, the spot she parks in every morning because it's nearest the elevator.
Each photo dated, recent, within the last month.
Third set, same folder.
Chesca. School entrance, backpack with the origami crane stickers she put on herself. Playground, hanging upside down from the monkey bars with her hair flying. Walking toward Xander's truck, smiling up at him like he hung the moon, completely unaware that someone with a long lens was sitting in a parked car capturing every frame.
My daughter. My daughter smiling in a surveillance photo taken by someone who chains people to floors.
The folder trembles in my hands.
My hands don't shake. They never shake.
My hands are shaking.
"Blade." Damian's voice. Close. He's moved beside me without my noticing, and the fact that Damian got that close means I'm not tracking anything right now. "Breathe."
Seven years I watched her. And I missed this. Someone else had a camera on my family, and I missed it.
Everything I built has a hole in it.
"When were these taken?"