Page 90 of Iced Up Love: Part Two
There when I look at the table in front of me and realize I’ve been staring at the same line of text for long enough that the words have started to blur without actually changing.
Jackson’s voice cuts through from the living room, sharp enough that it pulls at the edge of my focus without breaking it completely.
“I don’t care,” he says. “Then fine me. Suspend me. I’m not playing.”
There’s a pause, whoever is on the other end of the call trying to reason with him.
“No,” Jackson says again, quieter now, but it isn’t softer. It’s settled. “Family emergency. That’s all you’re getting.”
Another pause.
“And Zach’s not playing either.”
The call ends.
Silence fills in behind it, heavier than before, like something in the apartment has shifted without actually moving.
I don’t turn toward it.
I don’t acknowledge it.
Because it doesn’t matter.
Not compared to this.
Paul.
His name sits in the center of everything we have, surrounded by fragments that should add up to something useful and don’t. His address is marked, crossed out, already cleared. His workplace is the same. IT. Capable. Skilled enough to disappear if he needed to, to wipe his own traces, to reroute anything that could lead back to him.
Too clean.
Not luck.
Not coincidence.
My hand presses flat against the table, my fingers spreading slightly against the surface as I go over the same information again, even though I already know what it says.
He didn’t just vanish.
He planned it.
Or someone planned it for him.
“He didn’t do this alone,” Christian says from across the table, his voice low, steady.
Zach shifts slightly beside him, his attention still on the same documents.
“He could cover his tracks,” Zach says. “If he knew what he was doing, he could stay off anything obvious long enough to move.”
“Not like this,” Christian replies.
I don’t look at either of them.
Because the part that matters isn’t whether he could.
It’s why.
Why Vargas.
