Chapter 3: The Search Expands
The crash was absolute. For six hours, the world ceased to exist. No dreams, no storm, no bulletin board of ghosts. Just a thick, velvety nothing that claimed her the moment her head hit the pillow, still in her clothes from the day before.
She woke with a jolt, disoriented, the fading afternoon light slicing through the blinds. For a blessed second, there was only the calm of emptiness. Then memory rebooted, faster than any computer. The presentation. The lead. The disconnected number.
She scrambled for her phone, her heart a frantic bird against her ribs. The screen lit up with notifications. One was an email reply from the Rockford case aide, Carol: “Can talk tomorrow, 10 a.m. Brief call only.” It was professional, curt. A maybe.
The other was a missed call. A Peoria area code, unknown. A voicemail, seventeen seconds long.
Her thumb hovered. The room felt airless. She tapped play and put it on speaker, the phone resting on her chest as she stared at the water-stained ceiling.
Static first. The hollow sound of a bad connection, or a great distance. Then a man’s voice, raspy, weathered by things she could only imagine. “Yeah, uh, got a message from a friend of a friend. You’re askin’ about a Ben. Knew a Ben, back in ‘12, maybe ‘13. At the Haven on Western. Skinny kid, quiet. Good with fixing things. That’s all. Don’t call this number back, it’s—” A sharp electronic warble cut him off, then a dial tone. The message ended.
Leia was already sitting up, replaying it. She listened four times. She wasn’t hearing the words anymore; she was hearing the texture. The pause before “quiet.” The slight emphasis on “fixing things.” It was a detail a fabricated story wouldn’t include. Ben had always taken apart broken radios, old clocks, anything he could find. He’d promised to fix her music box.
She called the number back. It went straight to a recorded message: “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”
Dead end. A ghost whispering from a disconnected line.
The frustration was a hot, sour taste in her mouth. But beneath it, thrumming louder, was a fierce, electric validation. He was out there. The system had records, memories, echoes. He had been a real boy who fixed things. He had left a trace.
She didn’t feel tired anymore. The six-hour coma had been a reset. Now her mind was a clean, sharp blade. She made tea, the mechanical routine of boiling water and steeping leaves a useful anchor. She sat at her desk, the bulletin board a tapestry of failure and hope. With a red thread from her sewing kit, she connected the new Peoria pin to the old shelter address. She wrote the date ‘2012’ and the phrase “Good with fixing things” on a neon green sticky note. The board was no longer just a search; it was a biography in fragments.
She lost herself in cross-referencing. Malik’s hacked data sets hummed on her screen—spreadsheets of discharges, shelter logs, GED records under alternate spellings. She ran the voice message’s background noise through a basic audio cleaner on her laptop, isolating a faint, rhythmic clanging. Maybe industrial. Maybe a radiator in a flophouse. A data point.
Her stomach growled, a distant annoyance. She ignored it. The sun dipped, painting the room in deep oranges and long shadows. The fairy lights over her desk clicked on automatically, a string of tiny, indifferent stars.
Her phone buzzed, skittering on the wooden desk. A text. Not Malik. Not her dad.
JB: Did you sleep? Prove it.
A laugh, dry and sudden, escaped her. She looked at the chaotic desk, the glowing screens, the half-eaten apple core. She picked up the phone, aimed it at the bed she hadn’t bothered to make, the blankets still flattened in the shape of her exhausted collapse. She sent the photo.
Thirty seconds later, a reply.
JB: Forensic evidence suggests a six-hour crash. Jury accepts it. Verdict: not totally reckless.
Leia: Recklessness is scheduled for after dinner.
JB: What’s for dinner?
She glanced at the empty mug, the apple core. Leia: A meticulously balanced diet of lukewarm tea and existential dread.
JB: That’s a campaign slogan waiting to happen. Hang on.
She stared at the “hang on,” unsure what it meant. She went back to the audio, filtering out another layer of static. Was that a voice in the background? A TV?
Ten minutes later, a new text. JB: Check outside your door.
A prickle of alarm raced up her neck. She walked to the apartment door, peering through the peephole at the empty hallway. Unhooking the chain, she opened it.
A brown paper bag sat on the worn hallway carpet. No note. She brought it inside, placing it on the kitchen counter. The aroma hit her first: garlic, ginger, sesame oil. She opened it. Two rectangular black containers, still warm. One held Korean braised short ribs, the other vibrant stir-fried vegetables. A side of rice. A single pair of wooden chopsticks. And beneath it all, tucked like a secret, a small, flat box of high-quality colored gel pens—the kind she’d once mentioned offhand were perfect for flowcharts in her journal.
She stood there, her hand over her mouth. It wasn’t the food, though her stomach clenched with sudden, ravenous need. It was the terrifying thoughtfulness of it. The governor of Illinois had, in the middle of whatever his evening held, apparently ordered her dinner and a specific set of pens, and had it delivered to her doorstep. It was a gesture so wildly outside the bounds of their professional world that it made the room tilt.
Her phone buzzed again.
JB: Eat. The pens are a bribe. I want a color-coded analysis of the downstate caucus on my desk by Monday.
The tone was back to business, giving her an out, a framework to understand the insanity. She let out a shaky breath and typed back.
Leia: The short ribs are an acceptable retainer. I’ll expect my usual consultant’s rate.
JB: Your usual rate is astronomical and paid in access. Eat.
She did. She sat at her tiny table and ate every bit, the flavors vivid and grounding. The food was a kind of warmth that spread outward from her center, softening the sharp edges of the day. After, clean containers in the trash, she picked up the box of pens. She slid one out—a deep emerald green. She uncapped it and drew a single, smooth line on a fresh index card. Perfect ink flow.
She taped the card to the bulletin board, right at the center. On it, with the green pen, she wrote: “The Haven, 2012. He fixed things.”
It was a fact. It was a prayer.
She returned to her laptop, but the obsessive edge had dulled, replaced by a more sustainable, focused determination. She worked for another hour, methodically now, not frantically. She drafted an email to Carol, the Rockford aide, with clear, concise questions. She saved the cleaned audio file in a folder named “Echoes.”
Finally, she allowed herself to look at the other tab open on her browser—the half-finished fanfic, a silly story about a snarky, fictional governor with a heart of gold and a mysterious intern who spoke in riddles. It felt absurd now, embarrassingly naïve. The real man sent Korean food and understood the strategic value of colored pens. The real girl was hunting for her brother’s ghost with legal waivers and hacked databases.
She closed the tab. The real story was enough. More than enough.
She crawled into bed, this time changing into soft sweats, brushing her teeth. The apartment was quiet, just the hum of her laptop fan winding down. The fairy lights glowed. The bulletin board, with its new green anchor, stood sentinel in the dark.
Her phone, charging on the nightstand, lit up once more. A final text.
JB: Get another six. The chase continues tomorrow.
She didn’t reply. She just held the phone, the screen’s light fading until it was just a mirror reflecting her own tired, resolute face. She placed it down and turned onto her side, facing the board. The pins and threads were a blur in the darkness, a constellation of maybes. But for the first time in a long time, the darkness felt like a blanket, not a void. The chase would continue. But she wouldn’t be running on wires. She would be running on short ribs and emerald ink, and the silent, formidable backup of a man who knew the difference between a shark and someone about to shatter, and worried about both.
She did run on that fuel for two days, the emerald ink charting coalitions in the policy working group, the memory of the meal a steadying warmth in her gut when the old-guard legislators tried to talk over her. She held her ground, her voice cool, her citations precise. The sharks, as JB called them, began to look at her with wary respect.
The call with the Rockford aide, Carol, yielded little. A confirmation of procedures, a dry recitation of turnover rates. “Kids come and go,” the woman had said, her voice tired. “You stop learning names after a while.” Leia had thanked her, hung up, and added another pin to the board: a black one, for dead ends.
On the second evening, as a soft twilight bled into the Capitol’s corridors, her phone buzzed with a direct line. “My study. Now.” JB’s voice offered no context, just a quiet command that brooked no delay.
The grand halls were deserted, her footsteps the only sound. The door to his private study was slightly ajar, glowing with a low, warm light that spilled onto the marble. She pushed it open.
The room was transformed. The overhead lights were off. The space was lit only by a single brass lamp on the desk and the fire, which had burned down to a nest of pulsating embers and whispering flames. It painted the bookshelves in long, dancing shadows, and the vintage maps on the walls looked like ancient, forgotten lands. The air was thick with the scent of woodsmoke and a lingering trace of his cologne.
He wasn’t at the desk. He stood by the fireplace, one arm resting on the mantle, staring into the coals. He’d discarded his suit jacket and tie, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. He looked older in this light, the lines on his face deepened, but his presence was somehow more immediate, more real.
“Sit,” he said, not turning. His voice was quieter than she’d ever heard it in this room.
She moved to the familiar leather chair, but didn’t sink into it. She perched on the edge, her portfolio forgotten in her lap. The silence stretched, filled only by the fire’s soft crackle. It wasn’t a comfortable silence. It was a held breath.
“I have a friend,” he began, finally turning to face her. The firelight played across his grave expression. “A detective in the Illinois State Police. Cold cases. He owes me a favor. A big one.”
Leia’s body went perfectly still. Her fingers froze against the leather of her portfolio.
“I could ask him to look. Unofficially. Off the books. He has access to databases, ways of poking around that don’t trigger alerts.” He took a step closer, his hands finding his pockets. “He could cross-reference the details you have. The aliases, the shelters, the physical description. The…” He paused, searching for the phrase. “…the kid who was good at fixing things.”
Her breath caught, a sharp, shallow inhale that burned in her chest. Hope, a dangerous and fragile thing, spiked through her with a physical intensity. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
JB closed the distance until he was standing before her chair, looking down at her. The dim light carved his features into something stark and solemn. “I need you to understand something. This offer isn’t coming from the Governor. That title stays outside this door tonight.” He leaned forward slightly, his eyes locked on hers, and the air between them seemed to crystallize. “This is from a man who can’t stop thinking about a nine-year-old boy who might still be out there, carrying a music box he promised to fix. And about the fiercely brilliant woman who has spent half her life refusing to forget him.”
The confession hung in the space between them, raw and undeniable. It wasn’t pity. It was a profound, shared recognition of a specific, enduring ache. Leia felt her eyes sting, a hot pressure building behind them. She could only nod, a quick, desperate motion, her vision blurring.
He saw it. Something in his own composure softened, fractured. He reached out, his movement slow and deliberate. His fingers, warm from the fire, brushed a stray auburn curl from her cheek, tucking it gently behind her ear. The touch was a whisper against her skin, so tender and personal it stole the remaining air from her lungs.
The fire popped, sending a small shower of sparks up the flue.
The moment held, fragile and electric, a current humming in the space where his fingers had been.
Then he straightened, clearing his throat, the mask of practical action settling back into place. “I’ll need everything. Every note, every pin on your board, every audio file. Can you get it to me tonight?”
“Yes,” she managed, her voice a rough scrape.
“Good.” He nodded, turning back toward the fire, giving her back the space to breathe. “Go. Compile it. Send it to my personal server. The one for the bullet journal fan mail.”
A weak, watery laugh escaped her. She stood, her legs unsteady. She didn’t thank him. Words were inadequate for the seismic shift he had just offered. She just looked at his profile, outlined against the fire, and felt the world tilt on a new, precarious, and astonishing axis.
She all but ran to her apartment. For hours, she worked with a focused, silent intensity. She photographed the bulletin board from every angle. She compiled digital files, labeled folders with military precision: “Audio_Recordings,” “Shelter_Log_Excerpts,” “Physical_Descriptors.” She wrote a concise, devastating summary narrative, using the green pen for key connections. Just after midnight, she encrypted it all and sent it to the absurd, private email address he’d once given her for sending political memes she’d doodled in the margins.
Then, she waited.
The next thirty-six hours were an exercise in surreal normality. She attended meetings, debated waiver language, and pretended her entire nervous system wasn’t wired to the phone in her pocket. She jumped every time it buzzed, but it was only Malik, or her dad, or a work email. JB was professional, distant, giving nothing away during a brief budget briefing. His eyes would meet hers across the table, though, holding for a second longer than necessary—a silent promise, an anchor.
He called her into his study again late on the following afternoon. This time, the lights were on, the fire unlit. He stood behind his desk, but he wasn’t working. He was just waiting, his face a carefully controlled blank.
“Sit down, Leia.” His voice was gentle, which terrified her.
She sat, her heart hammering against her sternum. The room was too bright, too quiet.
“My detective friend,” JB said, clasping his hands on the desk. “He’s very good. And very discreet.” He took a slow breath. “He found a hit. A strong one.”
The world narrowed to the sound of his voice.
“A man, twenty-six. Several old addresses matching your timeline. He’s had some troubles—minor, mostly survival stuff. He’s clean now. Works at the Starbucks on South Sixth. He’s been filing informal inquiries with various missing persons charities for years. Looking for his little sister. They were separated when he was nine. She was two. Their parents…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
Leia made a small, broken sound, her hand flying to her mouth. Every piece of data, every whispered memory, coalesced into a single, screaming point of reality. South Sixth. Right here.
“His name is Ben,” JB said softly, definitively. “Ben Tate.”
A sob ripped out of her, harsh and ugly. She folded forward, elbows on her knees, as years of disciplined hope shattered into a million pieces of raw, unfiltered feeling. She cried for the boy in the car that turned left. She cried for the ghost on the bulletin board. She cried for the sheer, impossible fact of a Starbucks on South Sixth Street.
She felt his hand, heavy and warm, on her back. He didn’t say it would be okay. He just waited, his presence a solid wall beside her unraveling.
When the storm passed, leaving her hollowed out and trembling, she looked up. Her face was blotchy, her eyes swollen. “Now?”
“If you want to.”
“Will you…” Her voice was shredded. “I can’t go alone.”
“I’m already there,” he said. He grabbed his coat from the back of his chair. “Let’s go.”
The drive was a blur of muted streetlights and her own ragged breathing. JB parked a block away from the brightly lit café. “Do you want me to come in?” he asked, his hands resting on the steering wheel.
She stared at the green mermaid logo through the window. Her whole body was vibrating. She shook her head. “Wait here. Please. Just… be here.”
He nodded. “I’m not moving.”
She pushed the car door open, the cold evening air hitting her face. She walked on legs that felt disconnected from her body. The automatic doors hissed open.
The smell of coffee grounds and steamed milk enveloped her. The place was half-full, students with laptops, an elderly couple sharing a scone. Soft indie music played. Normalcy, everywhere.
Her eyes scanned the counter. A young woman taking an order. A barista with a beard frothing milk.
Then she saw him.
He was at the espresso machine, his back to her, focused on stacking cups. He was taller than she’d imagined, lanky. His hair was dark, cut short. He wore the standard green apron. As he turned to hand the drinks to the cashier, his profile was illuminated.
Her breath vanished.
It was the slope of his nose. The specific way his brow furrowed in concentration. It was a echo of a face she’d seen only in the blurred, water-damaged photo from the file. It was the bone-deep, cellular knowledge that comes before memory.
He looked up, sensing her stare. Their eyes met across the counter.
His were brown, deep-set. They held a polite, customer-service readiness that instantly faltered. His head tilted, just slightly. His gaze swept over her face, her auburn hair, and something in his expression shifted, cracked open. It was a dawning recognition, slow and disbelieving, as if he was seeing a photograph come to life.
Leia took a step forward. She couldn’t speak. She just looked at him, her whole history in her eyes.
His mouth opened, then closed. He looked down, shaking his head as if clearing a fog, then looked back at her. He took off his apron, slowly, deliberately, and placed it on the counter. He said something to his coworker, never breaking eye contact with Leia.
He came around the end of the counter. He stopped a few feet from her, his hands hanging at his sides. His eyes were wide, shining. He searched her face, and in his, she saw the same desperate, hopeful chase that had lived on her bulletin board.
“Leia?” The name was a whisper, rough with disbelief. It wasn’t a question from the file. It was a name pulled from a deep, guarded place.
She nodded, a tear tracing a hot path down her cheek. “You fix things,” she whispered back, the words from the voicemail their only shared scripture.
A shudder ran through his entire frame. His face crumpled, and a single, silent sob shook his shoulders. He reached out a hand, tentative, as if she might be a mirage.
She took it. His fingers closed around hers, strong, callused. Real.
Outside in the idling car, JB watched the scene through the glass. He saw the young man come from behind the counter. He saw them stand, frozen in the space between lost and found. He saw their hands clasp. He leaned back in his seat, his own eyes burning with an unexpected relief, and turned the key, killing the engine. He would wait as long as it took.