Chapter 33
MACKENZIE
Istumbled out of the woods, lungs burning, ribs aching, the cabins glowing in the distance like dying stars. My knees gave out, and I collapsed into the dirt, clutching the earth like it could anchor me to Max, to life, to anything except this fucking game.
“Mackenzie!”
The voice hit me like a jolt. Deep. Calm. Midwestern. Not at all what I expected.
I dragged my head up. The world tilted and slid, then snapped back into place around a single face.
He looked tired, shadows carved under his eyes, but it was him.
Jeremy. West’s son. FBI, like his dad. He was supposed to be in Chicago. I hadn’t seen him in five years, not since he went into the academy.
His dark skin and sharp Italian features contrasted with the black shirt clinging to his broader frame. New tattoos crawled up his neck. I saw black swirls and a spider, its legs stretching behind his ear like they were trying to burrow into his brain.
“Kenzie,” he breathed, relief flickering across his face as he closed the distance.
Before I understood what was happening, I was on him, crashing into his chest. My fingers knotted in his shirt, clawing like I could peel him open and find Max underneath. My body shook so hard my teeth rattled.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, arms wrapping around me, strong and steady. “You’re okay. You’re out.”
“Jackson… my dad…. they’re—”
“I know,” he cut in a low voice. “I’ve been… watching you. The cameras cut out and—” He stopped dead, jaw clenching, eyes skittering away for a second. “I need to get you out of here. Now.” His tone snapped tight. “Where the fuck is Max?”
Max.
The name tore straight through me like a live wire.
I jerked back just enough to see his face, fingers still fisted in his shirt. “You don’t know?” My voice came out shredded. “You said you were watching—tell me where he is. Jeremy, tell me. Is he in the woods? Is he still hurt? I have to get to him. I have to—”
“Mackenzie…” His voice was low.
A warning.
“I’m not leaving him!” The words exploded out of me. Everything else vanished. There was only the space between me and the trees. “He’s still out there, isn’t he? He wouldn’t just disappear. He wouldn’t leave me. He needs me. I know he needs me. He’s hurt.”
I tried to twist out of Jeremy’s hold and turn back toward the woods, but Jeremy’s arms locked around me like iron.
“Let me go!” I thrashed, nails digging into his chest, his arms, whatever I could reach. “Jere, let me go, I’m serious. I have to go back. I have to find him. You don’t understand, he’s not like them, he’s not—”
“Kenzie, stop.” His voice sharpened, grip tightening, dragging me closer when I tried to lunge past him. “You’re not going back in there.”
“You can’t keep me here!” The words came out in a half-sob, half-scream. My lungs burned; my vision tunneled. “If you’ve seen anything, you have to tell me. You owe me that. Did he go deeper into the woods? Did he go to the cabins? Is he okay?”
He just stared at me, with a look on his face like he hated seeing me like this, but I could see the secrets behind his eyes. He was lying to me.
“I don’t care what they told you to do. I don’t care about your orders. Take me to him, Jere. Right now.”
His expression sharpened. The guilt there was fast, sharp, and then gone.
“I can’t,” he said.
My hands shook so badly I could barely keep hold of him.
“What are you hiding from me? What happened to him? Tell me what the fuck happened, or I swear to God I will walk back in there myself—”
He caught my wrists as I tried to wrench free, pinning them gently but firmly between us.
“Mackenzie. Listen to me.” His eyes locked onto mine. “You can’t go back to Max.”
The world went quiet for a second as I absorbed what he said.
“That’s not funny,” I said, but it came out thin, detached. “Don’t say that to me. Don’t you ever say that to me.”
“I’m not joking.” His voice dropped even lower. “You can’t go back to him. It’s not safe. Not for you.”
“I don’t care if it’s safe.” My laugh was too sharp.
I felt wild, enraged, psychotic even. “Do you hear yourself? You think I care about being safe? He’s my husband.
Get out of my way.” I shoved at him, tried to duck under his arm.
He just shifted, blocking me, his body a wall between me and the tree line.
He wasn’t as big as Max and not nearly as tall, but he was still about 6’1” with lean muscle.
“Move, Jere! I swear to God, I will scream this entire place down and shoot you with your own fucking gun. Move out of my fucking way!”
“We don’t have time for this,” he snapped, for the first time sounding like he might actually lose his grip. “You’re in shock. You’re not thinking clearly. I need to get you to med.”
“I’m thinking fine.” I could still taste dirt and blood and something dry that might’ve been panic. “Max is out there. He’s alone. He thinks I’m dead or gone or—” My voice broke.
His jaw flexed. For a heartbeat, I thought I saw something like agreement flash in his eyes.
“Kenzie,” he said quietly. “He’s in the game now.”
I stared at him. The words didn’t land. They just hung there between us.
“What? How do you know about that?”
Jeremy swallowed, eyes flicking briefly toward the cabins, the trees, somewhere I couldn’t see. When he looked back at me, his gaze was colder, more controlled.
“Max is in the game,” he repeated. “He went all the way in.”
I shook my head, hard, like I could rattle his voice out of my ears. “No. No, he wouldn’t. He wants to protect me, but he would be looking for me first… he would.”
“You saw what he did,” Jeremy cut in, softer but somehow worse. “You saw what he chose.”
“He didn’t choose it!” My scream tore my throat raw. “They made him, or they tricked him, or they did something to him. He wasn’t himself. He didn’t choose this. You don’t know him like I do. He wouldn’t just—he wouldn’t leave me. They attacked him. He wouldn’t stay in there without me.”
I tried again to twist free, to throw myself back toward the trees, and again Jeremy hauled me back, his grip unyielding.
“You’re hurting me,” I gasped, not sure if it was true or if everything just hurt.
“I’d rather you hate me than die,” he said, voice flat. “You go back in after him, you don’t come out. That’s not a theory, Mackenzie. That’s a fact.”
“How do you know that?” My eyes burned; I blinked hard, tears smearing the world. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
His mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Jeremy,” I pleaded, the fight in my body turning frantic. “If you know something—if you’ve seen something—you have to tell me. Is he hurt? Is he alive? Is he—”
“Stop.” His voice cut clean through my spiral. “There are things I can’t tell you.”
“No. No, you don’t get to do that.” I jerked against his hold until my muscles screamed. “You don’t get to stand here and talk about ‘the game’ like it’s some rulebook and then tell me there are things you can’t say. That’s Max. That’s my…” The word caught in my throat, choking me. “That’s Max.”
His eyes flicked away again, for just a second.
“All I can tell you,” he said carefully, “is that he’s in too deep. And if you go after him, you’ll be pulled in with him. And then we lose you both.”
“Then lose us both,” I shot back, instantly. The thought didn’t even have to form. It was just there. Solid. True. “I don’t care. I don’t want to live without him. Do you get that? I don’t want to live if he’s still in there.”
His hands tightened on my arms like he could physically hold that sentence back.
“That’s not your call to make,” he said.
“The hell it isn’t.”
“Mackenzie.” My name sounded like a warning now. “This isn’t just about you. Or him.”
“Then who the hell is it about?” I demanded. “Your case? Your fucking operation? Is that it? Is he just evidence now? A piece on your board?”
His face went still, the muscle in his jaw ticking.
“There’s more going on than you know,” he said finally. “More than I’m allowed to say. If I tell you, I put you in more danger than you already are, and you are already—” He broke off, biting the words back.
“I don’t care about danger,” I hissed. “I care about Max.”
“I know.” His voice softened for a fraction of a second. “That’s why I can’t let you go back to him.”
I stared at him, chest heaving, everything inside me shaking apart. My mind raced, clawing for an angle, a weakness in his grip, a lie in his eyes, any way to get past him and into the dark where Max was.
“Let me go,” I whispered. Then louder. “Let me go. Please. Jeremy, please. I’m begging you. I can’t just leave him there. I can’t.”
His answer was final, brutal in its certainty.
“You’re not going back to Max,” he said. “Not tonight. Not like this. Not at all, if I can help it.”
The words hit like a physical blow. The world dimmed around the edges, sound rushing back in a distorted roar. My body sagged against him even as my mind clawed and clawed, searching for a way to undo what he’d just said.
“When can I see him?” I rasped automatically. My thoughts raced in circles. I needed to figure out how to enter the game with Max.
Jeremy didn’t flinch, didn’t loosen his hold.
“I don’t know. They don’t tell us. If Max survives, he’ll come for you.”
I stopped breathing.
He’d said too much. I saw it in the way his eyes shuttered, the way his mouth snapped shut.
There was more. So much more. And he wasn’t going to tell me.
Fine.
If he wouldn’t take me to Max, I’d find my own way back to him.
Jeremy half-dragged, half-guided me toward the gravel road. Someone’s SUV idled there, headlights cutting through the trees like interrogation lamps. Red and blue strobes from a distant cruiser painted the cabins.
Hands reached for me. They were all over the place—paramedics, uniforms, I didn’t know. They talked over me, not to me.
“BP’s elevated.”
“Shock—”
“Get her seated…”
“I’m fine,” I snapped, even though I couldn’t feel my fingers. “Where’s Max? Did anyone see him leave the woods? Did he—”