Page 40 of Requiem
The house feels quieter tonight. After everything happened with Jude this morning, Micah and Heather went to nap, and I’ve been reading one of Adela’s romance books she finished yesterday. Well, romance is an understatement. I just read a scene where the guy chased her through the woods and had wild, crazy sex right on the ground.
Adela, you animal.
Dinner had come and gone without much conversation. It doesn’t help that it’s been super cloudy today, and everyone seems pretty tired because of it. Now we’ve drifted into the living room and dining area, close enough to each other to feel connected.
Rafe leans back against the couch, one arm stretched along the back, his posture relaxed as he drinks his honey whiskey. Heather is beside him, her attention shifting between the room and her phone. Micah stands behind where I’m sitting at the table with a drink in his hand that he hasn’t touched, his focus locked in the same place as mine.
Adela.
She and Nico sit side by side at the dining table as they work. The glow of the screen lights their faces, and the quiet, steady rhythm of typing is the only sound aside from a video from someone’s phone.
I don’t realize how tightly my hands are clasped in my lap until my fingers start to ache, my entire focus fixed on that stupid fucking screen.
Adela exhales slowly, leaning in just a little closer. “There’s something here,” she murmurs quietly.
Nico shifts beside her immediately. “What kind of something?”
“I’m not sure yet. It’s buried under another partition, but it’s not as heavily encrypted as the others.” Her fingers move faster now. “If I can just get through this layer…” She trails off, her hand stilling on the keyboard.
The shift is immediate.
“What?” I ask, already halfway out of my seat without realizing it.
Adela doesn’t answer right away. Her eyes scan the screen, sharp and focused. Then, quietly, almost disbelieving, “I’m in.”
A sudden weight lifts from my chest.
Micah straightens. “In what?”
“Alexei’s system. Nico is working on Nolan’s. But I’m in a subfolder. It’s connected to the main archive, just…not as protected.” Her voice tightens slightly, that flicker of hope threading through it despite her effort to stay controlled. “There are timestamps. Organized files…”
Nico leans in closer, his attention sharpening. “Open it.”
Adela hesitates for the briefest second, like she understands exactly what she might be about to uncover. Then she clicks. The screen shifts, and rows of files populate the folder, neat and structured. They’re labeled with dates, times, and names.
“Jude,” I whisper, the word barely making it out of my throat.
Everyone is suddenly behind Adela and Nico, staring at the screen. The only exception is Adriana, who remains staring out the glass doors like a ghost haunting the cabin.
Adela scrolls slowly, her expression tightening as the reality of what she’s looking at settles in. “They’re segmented,” she says under her breath. “Different sessions, maybe.”
Rafe’s voice cuts through the tense silence. “Can you open one?”
She moves her hand, the cursor hovering for just a moment before she clicks. For a second, nothing happens. Then the image loads. It’s grainy and dim, but the subject is clear as day. Jude, chained,bloody.
The air leaves my lungs in a rush.
His head is slightly bowed, his hair falling forward, his body tense like he’s bracing for something that hasn’t happened yet. Or something that already has…
A soft, broken sound comes from somewhere to my right. I think it’s Heather, but I can’t look away long enough to be sure. I lean forward, my body drawn toward the screen, towardhim.
Adela scrolls again, and another image replaces the first. The same room, but a different angle.
“Stop,” Nico says quietly, his voice tightening. “That’s enough.”
But Adela’s focus has shifted. “There’s metadata,” she says quickly, her tone sharpening with urgency. “Tags, cross-references…if I can isolate this, it might help us separate his files from Alexei’s.”
Hope sparks again, and I’m chewing my lip.
