Connie didn't approach from the front. She circled wide, heels swapped for boots earlier, her steps quiet on cracked pavement. This wasn't a meeting — it was a test. One she had to pass.
Sticks had already moved from the streetlamp to the alley beside the rec center, where light barely reached and shadows clung to the chain-link fences like cobwebs.
She stopped just outside the alley and let her voice cut through the dark.
"You're always this jumpy, or just when someone mentions Aiden?"
Sticks didn't flinch when she said Aiden's name.
He didn't smile. Didn't blink.
Just leaned his back against the graffitied wall and looked at her like he was reading a warning label.
"You got the wrong guy," he said flatly.
Connie didn't move. Her hands stayed in her coat pockets, but her voice pressed in a little tighter.
"I don't think I do. You're Sticks. You ran with him back in Chicago — the boys' home. You two were like—"
"You read a file. Congrats."
He cut her off with a dry scoff.
"Doesn't mean you know anything."
She stepped closer, boots splashing through a shallow puddle. "I know you were the last one seen with him before he disappeared."
"A lot of people disappeared back then." His tone was ice.
"Some of us stayed gone for a reason."
She studied him — the faint scar under his eye, the permanent twitch in his jaw like he chewed tension for breakfast.
"I'm not a threat," she said. "I just need to find him. Talk to him. That's all."
"That's never all," he muttered, half-turning like he might leave.
"I was there too, Sticks." Her voice cracked just slightly. "I know what it was like."
He turned back, slowly.
And now the heat rose in his voice.
"No. You left." A bitter smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "He, and I... You don't get to pretend you understand."
Connie swallowed, her chest tight.
"I didn't have a choice."
"Bullshit. We all had choices. We all paid for 'em, too." He leaned closer, voice low and venomous.
"Whatever you're looking for, lady — you're better off burying it. 'Cause if Shade's out there… he ain't looking for you."
Connie tried to steady her breathing. The silence pressed in.
"I just need a direction. A name. A place."
Sticks stared at her for a long moment, then looked past her, toward the street.
"You need to stop asking around." He stepped out of the alley, his shadow stretching like a ghost.
"Before someone less patient hears you."
And then he was gone.
No answer. No thread to pull.
Just silence.
And somewhere inside it, Connie knew she wasn't the only one looking for Aiden.
Not anymore.