They moved slow, Ryn leading like he owned every backdoor and broken stair in the block. Xavier followed tight, watching where Ryn's boots touched the ground, how he checked shadows and the spaces between buildings like reading a page. The alleyways were a mess of rust, puddles, spray paint, and metal scraps — the perfect maze for someone who knew how to vanish.
Ryn pointed without talking: a scuff on the wall where someone had hooked a shoe to vault a ledge, fresh rubber on a drainpipe, a strip of torn fabric snagged on a rusty bolt. Kael had been sloppy in his hurry; he'd been fast, but he'd left a trail. A crushed energy bar wrapper, the faint smell of the cologne Kael always wore, a smear of mud on a railing — small things that meant movement, direction, and time.
They followed the thread through a service yard, under a half-collapsed loading dock, past a shuttered repair shop where a rack had been knocked over but not quite cleared.
