He rubs his palms together, eyes darting between us like a frightened animal. “I’m a cleaner,” he says, voice steadier now that he’s reciting what he knows like a script. “I get hired to wipe servers, erase logs, scrub metadata. Mostly I write scripts that automate the deletions. I don’t touch physical drives unless they hand them to me in a bin. I use proxies, throwaway VPN access, and sometimes a rented relay. They pay well if you can make the trail vanish clean. These two guys—Dean Carver and Bryce Blackthorne—those were the ones I was told to erase. I never met the clients. They contacted me through a middleman. Cash, no questions, and a warning that if I kept copies, I’d regret it.”
“Did they give you anything else?” Rowan asks, tone clipped. “Access keys, devices, locations?”
Micah shakes his head. “A username and password for a corporate FTP. A list of folder paths. One IP to route through. That’s it. I ran scripts, cleaned timestamps, and pushed backups in three places. Sometimes I’d get paranoid and keep a small, encrypted mirror on a throwaway drive, but not often. I try not to keep physical copies. Too risky.”
I lean forward, listening to the cadence of his answers, trying to pick the lies from the truth. He’s nervous, but his story is tidy enough to be believable. A professional cleaner, not a mastermind. He doesn’t know about Kimber; he doesn’t know who the clients really are, and as far as he’s telling it, he doesn’t know where anything ends up after he’s done.
“Any pressure to keep quiet?” I ask, “or threats that made you nervous?”
He blinks hard and nods. “Threats. Saying they knew where my family lived, messages on the burner with pictures of my apartment. Cash in an envelope with a note. I walked into the wrong neighborhood once, and someone followed me for a few blocks. They all said the same thing—don’t ask, don’t keep backups, don’t come looking. I thought it was gonna be just code and cash. I didn’t know… I didn’t know they were doing what you’re talking about.”
His voice breaks on the last word, genuine fear finally cutting through. He keeps repeating the parts about cash and usernames like a mantra that makes him sane. He’s not our enemy in the way Bryce and Dean are. More of a tool, scared and small and smart enough to make money and stupid enough to think that was a career he could walk away from.
I lean back and let the weight sit in the room. The reactions ripple fast—Ronan’s muscles lock, Rowan’s mouth cuts into a hard line, Emerson’s jaw works like he’s grinding something down. Hurt shows first. Then the anger follows, hot and contained. Micah is a pivot, a way in—but he’s also a kid who took a terrible job and believed he could manage it.
“All right, Micah,” I say. “You helped them bury things. You don’t need the full picture to be useful.” I lean forward just enough to hold his focus. “But if you want to make it through tonight, you’ll tell us everything about how they fed you orders. Names. Burner numbers. Drop points. Backups. Anyone they may have contacted.” I pause. “Start with the middleman. Who handled the payments?”
His hands are trembling now in earnest. He rubs them together as if trying to warm himself. “A guy named Jory,” he says finally. “Short, shaved head, tattoos on his neck, has a scar on his knuckle. He met me three times near the docks and leftenvelopes under the third bench on the pier. He used prepaid SIMs. I swear, that’s all I know.”
I watch his face while he talks. Micah’s eyes are raw and honest. He’s terrified, and that makes the details he offers sharper. It’s not the entire skeleton we wanted, but it’s a rib. It’s something to pull at.
“Rowan,” I say, my voice steady as the plan clicks into place, “pull Jory’s routes. Check the pier cameras and track his movement.” I turn slightly. “Emerson, trace SIM purchases and any cash drops around the marina.” Then my gaze settles on Ronan. “Stay on Micah. Make sure he doesn’t disappear.”
They move quickly, efficiently and brutally in their focus. I keep my eyes on Micah a beat longer, because even though he’s clean, he’s also a frightened kid who just handed us a thread. We have to follow it, gently at first, then with force, until it leads to the ugly truth.
I don’t want to make him quieter. He’s scared enough, and whatever he knows could help us get Kimber back. Quieting him now would be cowardice. I take a breath and lean in, keeping my voice low but sharp—a tone that makes people decide between honesty and self-destruction.
“Listen,” I say, steady, “I have a couple more questions. Do you have any family? You said they threatened you and your family.”
Micah’s face goes pale. He shakes his head so fast it looks like his neck will snap. “No,” he says, voice thin. “It’s just me. I’m… I’m a foster kid. Been on my own for a long time. They said stuff about my family because it scares people. It was obvious they didn’t actually know anything.” He runs a hand through his hair, fingers coming away trembling.
“Okay,” I murmur, letting the word sit. “Did you back any of those files up? I need you to be honest with me. Don’t. Lie.”
His eyes flare with panic as he swallows. A thin, brittle “No” slips out, and the sound fractures the room. He looks as if he expects the world to end by admitting it.
I keep the pity out of my voice—pity won’t save anyone right now. “You need to think,” I tell him. “If there’s even a scrap—an email, a filename, a server name—anything that points us to where they are, you say it.”
He nods, breath quick, as if forcing himself to dig through memory. “I… I erased what they told me to erase. Most of it was corporate folders, financial logs, transfer records. They gave me access through a relay, and I ran scripts that overwrote metadata and pushed deletions. Sometimes I’d mirror a folder to check my script worked, but I deleted the mirror afterward like they told me.” His hands fidget, twisting a tear in the corner of a napkin on the table.
“Did you ever save anything off-site? A drive, a thumb, an email you thought you could access later?” Emerson asks, voice blunt.
Micah pauses, staring at the floor like answers might be taped there. “Once,” he admits finally. “There was one job where they made me stop and wait while they confirmed a transfer,” he says. “I got paranoid, so I mirrored the data onto a disposable drive and encrypted it. I meant to wipe it later, but I didn’t move fast enough. They sent a warning.” His breath stutters. “I panicked and dumped the drive in a dumpster behind a diner near the docks. I didn’t go back. I was scared.” His voice drops. “They said if I kept anything, they’d find me—and make it ugly.” His hands shake as he talks, and the anger that surges through me is hot and immediate. “It was only a couple of days ago, so it may still be there.”
“That’s a start,” Rowan says quietly. “Give us the diner’s name—the dumpster, the exact spot—anything you remember.”
Micah rattles off a name and a block, his words tumbling now that the dam has broken. He tells us about the scripts he used, the relay IDs, a couple of burner numbers the middleman had him contact for payments. It’s not a treasure chest. It’s a handful of pebbles. But pebbles become a path if you walk far enough.
I press a finger to my temple, sorting the crumbs into maps. “Who is Jory?” I question, keeping my tone even. “You said that name earlier. What does he look like? Where did you meet him?”
Micah describes a short man with a shaved head and a crooked knuckle scar. He mentions meeting spots, bench numbers, and a pattern of leaving envelopes under specific planks on certain nights. It’s small, stupid, and perfect for tracing if our guys can dig into local cameras.
“Anything else?” I push. “Names, drop points, any accounts they asked you to hit repeatedly?”
He chews the inside of his cheek, searching. “There was a corporate handle they kept handing me—‘Horizon Logistics’—but it was a shell. It pinged to a VPN farm before disappearing. I think they mixed transactions through some cleaning houses in three different states. I never got past that. They were paranoid. They would scrub and then route through a relay in the city, then a satellite node, then a burner relay.” He looks up at me, eyes hollow with guilt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what they were doing—thought I was just making a living.”
“Good,” I say, though the word tastes thin. “This is better than nothing. It gives us places to start.” I stand, the motion deliberate. The guys are already moving, parsing what Micah has given us into action items. Rowan’s thumbs fly over his phone, quick and instinctive. Emerson’s face is taut, already mapping the forensic angles. Ronan keeps his eyes locked on Micah, unblinking.
I remain with Micah for a moment longer, watching his shoulders shake with adrenaline and fear. He’s not the monster behind any of this. He’s a scared kid who thought he could buy safety with cash. We squeeze what we can from him, careful not to bruise the thread we’re handed. The lead is thin, but it’s warm.