All Chapters of Divorced by the Hockey Captain: Chapter 71 - Chapter 78

Bradley's POV"It wasn't a freak coincidence on a Tuesday afternoon, Brad. The metadata on those files has GPS tagging stripped, but the focal length and frame bursts prove it."Marcus paced the perimeter of my facility office, waving a log of the photo uploads like a weapon."Three distinct staging locations over forty-eight hours," Marcus continued, his jaw tight. "The bakery alley, the corner of St. Jude, and the municipal park. Tabitha didn't just stumble into a freelance photographer looking for a quick five hundred bucks. Somebody mapped her schedule, timed the school dismissal bell, and set up a perimeter to track her every step.""Then double the perimeter guards around the brownstone," I growled, resting my palms flat against the desk, leaning forward until my shoulders burned. "Hire an off-duty precinct detail if you have to. If another unmarked car idles within two blocks of that house, I want the driver pulled out by his collar and face-down on the asphalt.""And charge th

Bradley's POV"I'm sending six tactical units to that brownstone right fucking now."I slammed my palms onto the desk, knocking over a stack of scouting reports. The wood groaned under my weight, my knuckles white, the adrenaline roaring so loud in my skull I could barely hear my own voice."Brad, shut up and sit down," Marcus snapped, stepping directly between me and the office door. He didn't flinch, even with my two-hundred-pound frame practically breathing down his throat. "You do that, and you torpedo every single inch of progress you've made with her over the last month.""Did you not hear what Ava just said?!" I roared, gesturing violently at my phone on the blotter. "Some ghost from her childhood just ambushed her on the street! Frank Miller was sniffing around her gate forty-eight hours ago, and now some random girl named Maya shows up out of thin air? How do we know this isn't another setup? How do we know she isn't wired, or working for Rachelle, or leading another pack of

Tabitha's POVI stared at the ceiling of the second-floor bedroom until the white plaster blurred into static.Whoever took me twelve years ago... they are still hunting down every single kid who was in Oakridge.Maya's hoarse, terrified whisper from yesterday felt like cold water dripping on the back of my neck. Over and over, my brain clawed at the gaps. Why us? Why that moldy, miserable brick building on the edge of town? We were just throwaway state kids sleeping two to a cot, wearing hand-me-down sneakers with holes in the soles. What the hell did anyone want with a bunch of orphans?Before she slipped out into the gray evening yesterday, I had grabbed Maya by both arms in the foyer, begging her for names, dates, anything solid.She had just shaken her head, pulling her jacket tight around herself like armor."Not yet, Tabby," she had warned, her eyes darting toward the street like she expected sniper sights on the doorframe. "I have to check two addresses first. I need to make s

Tabitha's POVI stood by the coat rack in Classroom 2B with my forehead pressed against the cold drywall, just trying to breathe without my ribs aching.Every single nerve in my body was frayed.Feral and criminally adjacent.That was the exact phrase the tabloid had used. Over and over, those four words bounced around in my skull like ping-pong balls. It didn't matter that I had graduated top of my class in college. It didn't matter that I had spent three years scrubbing Bradley's spotless floors, keeping my mouth shut, and playing the quiet, obedient little wallflower while his family treated me like an inconvenient stain on their pedigree.To the rest of the world, I was always going to be the dirty, starving orphan girl from Oakridge who stole apples and slept on a stained cot.At morning drop-off, I had to walk past three mothers huddled by the front double doors, whispering behind their designer iced coffees. Two of them looked away the second I made eye contact, but Mrs. Gable—