Everything with you

Part 66

Justin

I must've dozed off for a bit because the next time I looked at the clock, it was past 2 a.m. The room had quieted. Joel was still snoring on the couch, sprawled half-off with his hoodie tugged over his face. Ash was wide awake, his eyes flicking across the screen with that hyper-focused look he always got when he was deep in code or research. Emma hadn't moved. She was curled slightly toward him now, resting her chin on her palm, eyes glassy but determined. Her other hand absentmindedly clutched a pillow, fingers twitching every time Ash clicked into a new file or report.

I rubbed my eyes, sat forward, and asked, "You guys found anything new?"

Ash gave a slight nod, kept typing, and then tilted the screen toward me. "Not exactly evidence—but patterns. All the kids Henry's taken in over the last ten years? A bunch of them vanish once they hit sixteen. No school records, no hospital data, no legal reports. It's like they just... disappear."

Emma looked up at me then. "That's not just fostering. He's trafficking them, or worse." Her voice cracked on the last part.

My jaw clenched. "He's building an army that'll follow him blindly. No families. No protection. Just kids with nowhere to go, who think they owe him their lives."

Ash leaned back and muttered, "Some of them do. I found a statement buried in an old community report—one kid literally said Henry saved him from the streets. Another called him their 'only family.'"

I stood up, pacing the room. "We've got to bring this forward. Not just to the DA—this needs to go public. School boards, media, whoever will listen. But first we need solid evidence. A trail. Documents. Video. Something."

Emma sat up straighter. "We don't just take Henry down for the game. We take him down for them. Those kids."

I looked at her—really looked. She was tired, and she'd been through more than she'd let on these past weeks. But in that moment, she was the fiercest person in the room.

"Alright," I said, grabbing a chair and sliding it over next to them. "Then let's not waste any more time."

And just like that, we were back at it—three of us, half-awake, half-broken, digging into the dark to drag out whatever truth we could find before sunrise.

We'd been at it for hours. Ash was pulling files from hidden links, and Emma was cataloging everything into folders as I helped track down connections. The more we found, the worse it got. It wasn't just a few kids—there were dozens. Photos, reports, and scraps of paperwork that had somehow slipped through the cracks. We backed up everything—on USBs, on a secure cloud folder Ash set up, and on two hard drives, just to be sure. I made Joel double-check encryption. We couldn't risk anything getting wiped or traced.

It was nearly 5 AM by the time I looked at the clock again. My body ached from sitting too long. Emma's eyes were rimmed red, and Ash hadn't blinked in twenty minutes.

"Alright," I finally said, putting my hand on Ash's shoulder. "That's enough for tonight. We got what we needed. Backups are done. We're running on fumes, and the game's tomorrow. We need rest."

Ash grunted, still scrolling. "Just give me five more minutes—"

"Nope." I cut him off, standing between him and the laptop. "Sleep. Now."

Ash looked up at me, blinked once, then reclined back into the couch with a sigh. I pointed toward Joanna's room, but before I could get the full sentence out, he was already snoring softly. I shook my head, grabbed a blanket off the recliner, and tossed it over him.

Turning to Emma, I found her still sitting on the floor, staring at the laptop like it had personally betrayed her. I reached for her hand and pulled her up. "Come on. Upstairs. Before I have to carry you."