Chapter 34
DANE
I move down the corridor like I've done in a thousand combat scenarios—gun drawn, senses elevated to that hyper-aware state where everything slows down but my mind speeds up. The weight of the Glock feels right in my hand. Familiar. Ready.
Empty offices line both sides. Too empty. The whole floor has that artificial stillness, the kind that screams 'trap.'
A door opens ahead, the sound slicing through the silence. A woman steps out, heels clicking against the polished floor. She hasn't seen me yet, focused on something in her hands—papers, maybe. When she glances up, catching my movement in her peripheral vision, her head snaps toward me.
My blood turns to ice. Claire Langford.
For a split second, we lock eyes. Her expression shifts from surprise to something darker—recognition, fear, calculation—all in an instant. The perfect society wife mask drops completely.
"What the fuck," I mutter, as pieces fall into place with sickening clarity.
Before I can move, she bolts back into the room she came from. The door slams shut with a metallic clang that echoes down the hallway. I sprint forward, but hear the distinct click of a lock engaging.
My fucking client. The supposed jilted wife.
I'm a goddamn fool. I'd been playing detective while these sick fucks have been running a goddamn slaughterhouse.
I reach the door, testing the handle. Locked tight. I'm about to shoot the lock when I hear it.
Lila's scream.
Muffled but unmistakable. My entire body reorients toward the sound like a compass finding north.
I sprint down the corridor, following the scream, my boots pounding against the floor.
Gianna's ghost runs beside me, urging me to be faster this time, to not fail again.
Each step hammers home what an idiot I've been.
Every instinct I had about Langford was right, but I missed something bigger.
Something worse. The Langfords are two sides of the same rotten coin.
The hallway stretches before me, doors on either side. Which one? Where is she? I slow, listening for any sound that might guide me. The silence is oppressive now, crushing in on me with the weight of my failure.
Not Lila. Please, not Lila.
Another scream. Closer now. Third door on the right.
I don't waste time on the handle. Locked doors are just obstacles, and obstacles exist to be destroyed. My boot connects with the wood near the lock, the impact jarring up my leg. Not enough. The door holds. I don't want to shoot the lock for fear of hurting Lila.
"Fuck this." I rear back and put everything behind the second kick—all my rage, my fear for Lila, my disgust at being played. The door explodes inward, wood splintering around the lock as it tears free from the frame.
I rush inside and then I freeze.
LILA
I take one more breath, feeling time slow as Brian's weight shifts forward. The metal pen is solid in my grip, my fingers wrapped around it so tight they've gone numb.
When Brian put his mouth to my shoulder, I don't hesitate. I thrust upward with all my strength, driving the pen deep into the side of his neck.
The sound it makes is wet. Awful. Nothing like in movies.
Brian's eyes go wide, shocked, confused, like he can't comprehend that I've actually hurt him. His hand flies to his neck, fingers wrapping around the pen, holding it in place. Blood seeps between his knuckles, first a trickle, then a pulsing stream that soaks his shirt.
He staggers backward, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. No clever words now. No threats. Just gurgling sounds as his perfect, predatory face contorts with pain.
"You—" he tries to speak, but only manages to spray blood droplets across the conference table.
I'm frozen, watching him stumble against the wall, leaving a smeared red handprint as he slides down to one knee. I did that. I put a pen in a man's neck. The thought should horrify me, but all I feel is a cold, hard satisfaction.
A loud bang from the door snaps me out of my trance. My heart—which had been eerily calm during the attack—suddenly kicks into overdrive, hammering against my ribs like it wants to escape.
Another bang, louder this time. The door frame splinters and crashes inward, wood fragments flying.
Dane rushes through the opening, gun raised in a shooter's stance, his massive frame filling the doorway.
His eyes scan the room, taking in everything in an instant: me pressed against the wall, shirt torn.
Brian on his knees, blood pumping between his fingers; the scattered contents of my purse across the floor.
"Lila." Just my name, but loaded with a thousand questions.
I try to speak, but my voice comes out as a rasp. "He... he tried to?—"
Dane strides toward me. When he's only a step away, movement at the door in the back of the conference room makes him stop.
The secretary appears in the doorway behind us—tall, thin, with her hair pulled into a severe ponytail. Her face goes deathly pale at the sight of Brian twitching on the floor, blood pooling beneath him.
"Brian," she whispers, her voice cracking.
Dane swings his gun toward her.
Her eyes lock on Brian's, and something passes over her face—not shock or horror, but a complex pain that seems to physically age her. Slowly, she kneels beside him. Her hands hover over him, trembling, never actually touching him.
"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," she tells him.
Brian's eyes plead silently, his mouth opening and closing, blood trickling at the corners.
"How was it supposed to be, Claire?" Dane demands, his voice cutting through the room like a blade.
Claire? I look between them, confusion momentarily overpowering my shock. How does Dane know the secretary?
"You know her?" My voice sounds strange in my ears, detached.
Dane's eyes never leave the woman, his gun steady. "Claire Langford. Brian's wife." His mouth twists into something that's not quite a smile. "My client."
Client?
"She hired you?" I ask, looking at Claire, whose elegant hands are now stained red from where she's finally touched her husband's arm.
"She wanted to knows if he was cheating," Dane says, "but you already knew, didn't you?
Brian makes a wet choking sound, his eyes rolling back.
"He needs an ambulance," I say, surprising myself with how calm I sound.
"Does he?" Dane asks quietly, and there's something in his tone that makes my skin crawl. A question that isn't really a question.
"Yes," I say firmly, though part of me screams otherwise. "I'm not becoming what he is."
Claire rises to her feet, blood on her suit and not a hair out of place. She looks at her dying husband with the same expression someone might use looking at a wet spot on their carpet.
"An ambulance won't get here in time." Her voice is ice-cold, matter-of-fact. Like she's discussing the weather, not watching her husband bleed out from a pen I stuck in his neck.
My stomach lurches. How is she so… detached? I've been in shock before, but this isn't shock. This is... something else entirely.
"You're a monster," Dane tells her, his gun still trained on her face. "Just like your husband. Where is Sarah Keller?" he demands.
Claire just shrugs like we're debating pizza toppings, not death.
Something turns behind her eyes, probably calculating how many zeroes on the check to her legal team to make sure I go down for killing her perverted husband.
My torn clothes aren't just evidence of attempted assault…
they're what I'll be wearing in my mugshot if I don't get out of here.
"Where. Is. Sarah. Keller?" Dane's voice has gone flat, dangerous.
Claire says nothing.
"How many others?" Dane demands. "How many women has he killed? And how long have you been helping him?"
My stomach drops through the floor. Women. Plural. I look at Brian's blood spreading across the expensive carpet. The pen… Tessa's gift. The way Claire seems like a robot.
She's done this before.
I'm not just standing in a room with a dying predator, I'm trapped with his accomplice. And judging by how casually she's handling her husband bleeding out, she isn't the reluctant, terrified wife I'd expect. She's... experienced.
Claire's perfectly manicured nails tap against her blood-stained suit. The sight makes me want to vomit. Less than an hour ago, I was worried about journalism ethics and proper interview attire. Now I'm standing in a crime scene.
Dane's expression shifts, wheels turning behind his eyes, before he asks, "Why me? Why did you hire me?" His voice drops to that scary-quiet tone. "Lila being here isn't a coincidence. Is it?"
My brain clicks into gear, the fog of adrenaline clearing just enough to catch up. Holy shit. This wasn't random. Brian pick me because I'm with Dane.
Brian makes another gurgling sound on the floor, his expensive shirt now a Rorschach test of crimson. Part of me—the part that still has nightmares about Mr. Colton—wants to kick him while he's down. The journalism student in me wants answers before he checks out.
Claire's face remains impassive as she answers, "You're right," she finally says, glancing at me with the casual interest of someone examining a mildly interesting bug. "Nothing is coincidental."
Fuck. Was I bait?