Radio Silence

Chapter 14: Radio Silence

Three days passed. Kael didn’t call back.

Julian tried twice more, at hours he told himself were reasonable and knew weren’t. Both times the same four rings, the same voicemail, the same flat recorded voice that used to belong to a man who’d promised nobody would ever get through a door he was standing in front of. Every time the recording ended, the silence that followed felt heavier than the last.

On the third day, Marcus showed up in person, which never meant anything good.

“We need to talk about the statement,” Marcus said, dropping a folder onto the kitchen island. Diaz stood by the window, pretending not to listen, which was its own kind of insult. “Legal wants you to go public before the tabloids run their own version. Get ahead of it.”

“Tell them whatever you want.” Julian didn’t look up from the folder. “I don’t care anymore.”

“You should care. This is your career, Julian.”

“I hired a woman to fake a death threat against myself because I didn’t know how else to talk to a man I liked.” Julian’s voice came out flatter than he meant it to. “Say that on a podcast and see how my career does.”

Marcus went quiet, which was rare enough that Julian almost looked up just to check it was really him.

“You could soften it,” Marcus finally said. “Frame it as a security test. A publicity stunt that got out of hand—”

“It’s not a story, Marcus. It’s what happened.” Julian closed the folder. “I’m not spinning it. I did something stupid and someone almost died because of it. I’m not going to lie about that too.”

Marcus left without the answer he wanted. Julian sat at the counter a long time after the door shut, listening to the building settle around him, feeling every bit as alone as the silence sounded. The kitchen still felt wrong without Kael in it — without the quiet competence of him moving through the space like he belonged there.

---

Across the city, Kael sat in a gym that Apex kept for off-duty operatives, hitting a heavy bag with the kind of focus that had nothing to do with training.

His new assignment started Monday — a tech executive with an ex-business partner problem, straightforward, low-risk, exactly the kind of job he used to prefer. He hadn’t been able to look at the file for more than ten minutes without his mind sliding sideways, back to a penthouse that smelled like whiskey and a voice on a podcast saying He makes me feel safe.

He hit the bag again, hard enough that the chain rattled against the ceiling mount.

“You’re going to break your hand before you break that thing,” said a voice behind him. Reyes, his old CO from a life before Apex, now running ops out of the same gym on weekends out of habit more than necessity.

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve been coming here every day for three days straight and you’re not fine, you’re avoiding your phone.” Reyes nodded at the duffel bag on the bench, where Julian’s number sat unread on Kael’s screen, twice now, both times unanswered. “You want to tell me what happened, or you want to keep pretending that bag insulted your mother?”

Kael stopped, breathing hard, sweat dripping onto the mat. “The principal I was assigned to lied to me. Staged a threat to get me assigned. Everything after that got real, and I almost got him killed protecting him from a lie he built himself.”

“And?”

“And I quit.”

“That’s not the part you’re upset about.” Reyes crossed his arms. “You’ve walked off jobs before. You’ve never come in here to hit something over a work dispute.”

Kael didn’t answer. He pulled his gloves off, one strap at a time, staring at nothing. The memory of Julian’s voice — raw, desperate, saying I have always wanted you — kept cutting through the anger like it had a right to be there.

“He called,” Kael said finally. “Twice. I haven’t picked up.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I pick up, I’ll go back.” Kael’s jaw tightened. “And I don’t know if that makes me an idiot or if it just makes me right about why I was so angry in the first place.”

Reyes didn’t have an answer for that. Neither did Kael. He grabbed his bag and left before the silence could ask him anything else.

---

Back at the penthouse, Julian sat cross-legged on the bedroom floor with the old, battered guitar in his lap, the one with the missing tuning peg, the one he hadn’t touched since the night everything started to change. He didn’t play anything. He just held it, running his thumb along the worn edge of the soundhole, the way he used to when he was sixteen and scared and certain nobody was ever going to want the version of him underneath the noise.

Diaz knocked twice and let himself in without waiting. “Sir, we have a situation.”

Julian looked up. “What kind of situation?”

“Detective on the case called. They want you to come in tomorrow, in person. New evidence.” Diaz hesitated, which he never did. “They flagged a second individual connected to Ms. Hayes. Someone who may have had contact with her before she approached you for the arrangement.”

Julian’s chest went tight. The line from the envelope came back to him whole: possible additional undisclosed contact.

“Do they have a name?”

“Not yet. They’re asking you to review some financial records tomorrow. See if anything looks familiar.”

Julian set the guitar down carefully, like it might still break if he wasn’t gentle with it. The absence of Kael felt sharper now — not just personal, but practical. Whoever had started this wasn’t finished, and the one person who would have already been three steps ahead of them was still refusing his calls.

“Get the car ready,” he said. “I’ll go in the morning.”

Diaz left. Julian sat alone in the quiet room, the missing tuning peg staring back at him like a small, permanent reminder of everything he hadn’t finished fixing, and thought, for the first time since Kael walked out the door, that he might actually need him back — not for his own sake, but because whoever had really started this wasn’t finished yet.