Chapter Seventy-Three
Raine
Garages are funnels designed for surveillance.
Cameras sit at license plate height, waiting for clean captures, so I stick to the street, and find a spot three blocks away from Tacoma Memorial, easing the dark blue Toyota between a delivery van and a sleek gray SUV.
For several minutes, I sit behind the wheel, scanning my surroundings in the mirrors—the cadence of the passing headlights, when cars slow and speed up, anyone out walking…
A cold wind seeps through my thin leggings when I get out of the car.
I pull the baseball cap a little lower and adjust the oversized glasses.
Facial recognition is nothing more than geometry.
It reduces a person to the distance between the eyes, the length of the jawline, the curve of the forehead.
Disrupt it enough, and you can hide in plain sight.
Asher’s jacket obscures the slope of my shoulders. The fabric smells like him—woodsy soap and fresh air and his skin. For a moment, I breathe it in, reminding myself that he’s real and counting on me.
It’s late enough that the street is almost deserted. I shorten my stride—another trick to fool the cameras—as I approach the hospital entrance, and slip in behind an older man pushing a woman in a wheelchair.
The fluorescent lights are too bright, the air harsh with the scent of disinfectant and burnt coffee.
A television blares in the waiting room, and it’s all too much for my battered nervous system to take in.
A teenage boy lets out a roaring laugh next to the vending machines. My shoulders hike up instantly.
Halfway down the first hall, a woman in a pair of scrubs stands next to a supply cart, tablet tucked under her arm.
She’s gorgeous. Warm, tawny skin, black hair cut into an angled bob, and dark eyes that never stop moving.
A pink teardrop pendant hangs at the hollow of her throat, and around her right wrist is a bright green silicone bracelet—the signal we’d agreed on when we talked earlier.
I adjust the baseball cap as I approach, and she immediately turns and leads me down the hall into a room marked “Consult.”
The overwhelming cacophony fades away as she locks the door and lowers the blinds.
I pull off the cap, and my hair tumbles free. “If you’re not who I think you are, we’re going to have a problem.”
One corner of her mouth lifts in a half smile. “I solve problems. I don’t create them. And you look just like your driver’s license. Except for those ridiculously large glasses and what appears to be Asher’s coat.”
“Inara.” The noise and the lights and the weight of everything that’s happened since they took me fade away. The absence of it leaves me utterly defenseless. I lower my head to remove the glasses and give myself a moment to feel everything before I lock it away again.
“I’ve been here for almost an hour,” she says, sinking down onto a stool next to the door. “Tessa’s secure. No movement on her house as far as I could tell. No surveillance either. I left one of the guys to keep an eye on her place for the night.”
“And Ellen?”
Inara’s brows lift. “A couple of intense-looking dudes showed up at eleven on the dot. Wheeled her in, said something to the charge nurse, and walked right out again. She’s stable. Severely dehydrated, exhausted, bruising consistent with restraints. Nothing physical that won’t heal in a few days.”
An intense wave of relief clogs my throat until I force it away. “Is she under her own name?”
“I’ve been in this business a long time,” Inara says, giving me the side-eye. “No way I was going to let that happen. The computer system’s been updated. She’s Lisa Jones from Tumwater, and she was injured when she got a little overenthusiastic during a Shibari session.”
“As in BDSM?” I choke back a laugh. “That…if you knew Ellen…”
Inara shrugs. “It was the only explanation that didn’t require the hospital to call Tacoma PD.”
“You’re good. In another life, we might have been friends.”
Inara leans forward, elbows on her thighs. “Might still happen in this one. Never say never.”
I don’t know what to do with that. Friendship has always felt conditional. Temporary. Something that expired when I was suddenly too intense, too analytical, or too inconvenient.
The sound I make isn’t quite a laugh, but it tries. “You don’t know anything about me.”
She doesn’t flinch. “I know enough.”
Staring down at my hands, at the faint tremor I’m trying to ignore, I file that away for later. Friendship implies time. Time implies survival. And I’m still not sure of either.
“We should go see Ellen,” Inara says gently. “I know how it feels when you’re racing against a clock that could take someone you love. You need to borrow some time from me, you just say the word.”
My eyes start to burn, and I nod. Every minute Asher’s in GSD custody reduces the chances I’ll get him back whole. Or…at all.
Inara leads me to the end of the corridor, to a private room with the blinds down. “I’ll be right outside.”
Ellen’s eyes are closed when I step inside.
My brain glitches, unable to reconcile the woman I last saw six years ago with the one in front of me now.
She’s so much smaller. Not just thinner—smaller.
As if her entire body has collapsed inward.
And she’s so very still, despite the steady rise and fall of her chest.
“You are not to move without permission.”
I know that kind of stillness. It hasn’t left me, even now.
“Ellen.” I keep my voice soft. Gentle. Something she’s had too little of lately.
She jerks awake with a small, pained sound. Relief flickers in her pale hazel eyes, but fear quickly takes its place. “You shouldn’t have come. Raine, if they find you—”
“They won’t. Not here. Not anywhere until I want them to.”
I take a couple steps closer to the bed. If I thought I could handle it—if I thought Ellen could handle it—I’d hug her.
“You can’t know that,” she whispers.
“I’ve been careful.” My gaze settles on Ellen’s hands.
On the bruises circling her wrists. The faint tremor in her fingers.
“I need you to do something for me.” I reach into my bag and pull out a digital recorder I found in the cabinet with all of Asher’s burner phones.
“Document everything you remember. What they did six years ago. How they forced you to retire. The monitoring. Re-intake. All of it. Tonight, if you can.”
Ellen’s throat works once, and she squeezes her eyes shut. “Okay. But you can’t come back here. It’s too dangerous.”
“There’s a nurse outside. You talked to her when they brought you in?”
“She said you’d sent her. Gave me that ridiculous story about playing with ropes to tell the doctors.” Her cheeks turn bright red, and the heart rate monitor ticks up slightly.
“When you’re done, she’ll get it to me. You can trust her.” I hope I sound reassuring. Ellen needs that right now.
She shifts in the bed, every movement as small as she can make it, and reaches under the pillow. That simple effort exhausts her. She drops a flash drive onto the blanket. “He told me you’d need this. One of the men who brought me here. He said you’d know what it was.”
I pick up the drive and leave the recorder in its place. “I do. This is proof.”
The door closes softly behind me as I step back out into the hall. Inara’s exactly where she was when I went in, alert and sharp even this close to midnight. “Send me what’s on the recorder’s memory card as soon as Ellen’s done with it.”
“I will.” She studies me for a moment, a tiny frown curving her lips, then lowers her voice. “You’re not alone, Raine.” Her tone is so matter-of-fact, there’s no room for argument. “I have people. Good ones. You need us, we’ll show up.”
Inara’s words shatter something in my chest I can’t think about now. Help, offered without conditions.
I nod, because that’s all I trust myself to do.
As if she understands how close I am to spiraling, she gestures toward the hospital doors. “Go on. Get out of here. If anything changes here, I’ll call.”
The noise builds with every step I take toward the reception desk. The blare of a TV, nurses calling to one another, the squeak of a gurney wheel against the tile. My pulse climbs higher, but I reach into my pocket and rub my thumb against Asher’s challenge coin.
The security camera over the double doors is angled to capture faces as they cross the threshold.
I step into range and lift my chin, staring straight into the lens for a full five seconds.
My thumb drifts to my left index finger, but this time, on purpose.
I want them to see me. And if they’re as predictable as I think they are, I want Asher to see me.
If they do find out Ellen’s here, I want them to know I’m the one who got her out.
I want them to understand killing her now would be a liability they don’t need. Not while they have Asher.
A man cradling his bloody hand clips my shoulder on his way in. My body reacts before my mind catches up, bracing for pain that never comes. He mutters an apology before staggering over to the desk.
I force myself to breathe, and escape into the cold night air.
Ducking into the alley next to the hospital, I put the baseball cap and sunglasses back on before heading in the opposite direction of the car. Halfway down the block, I duck into a twenty-four hour convenience store and beeline for the bathrooms.
Once I’m locked inside a stall, I swap Asher’s coat for one of his gray sweatshirts, the baseball cap for a black knit hat with a ridiculous pom pom on top, and the oversized sunglasses for a thinner pair that still hide the contours of my cheeks before folding Asher’s coat carefully and tucking it into my bag.
I sneak out the back door and force myself to maintain a normal, ordinary pace all the way to the car.
Twenty minutes later, Lake Washington stretches out before me, glassy under the thin wash of moonlight. The bridge is empty at this hour. My headlights carve a narrow path across I-90, the city behind me reduced to a scatter of distant lights.
My phone vibrates against the center console.
I press the hands-free button on the steering wheel and the dull hum of the radio fades. “Yes?”
“Ms. Calder, the site has been emptied,” Latham says, his voice calm. “We cut the power before we breached, so there is no evidence of the raid. The lone detainee in Coherent Path’s custody was transported to Tacoma Memorial. In less than five minutes, there will be nothing left of the facility.”
The water to my left flashes silver as I pass beneath one of the tall lights.
“Nothing?”
A dry chuckle reverberates through the car’s speakers. “A controlled explosion will render the structure unsalvageable. Kovacs moved their people an hour ago. They now owe me a favor.”
“And the flash drive has everything?” It’s lighter than Asher’s challenge coin, but I can still feel the weight of it in my pocket.
“Yes. Video recordings. Session logs. Internal communications. Financial transfers. And Personnel rosters. Every file tied to Coherent Path. We have a cyber expert on our payroll.”
The Bellevue skyline sharpens in front of me. “You’re absolutely sure?”
“We ran several integrity checks. I trust this concludes our transaction?” he asks.
“It does. Thank you, Mr. Latham. I hope we never have to speak again.”
Latham hangs up, and the soft sounds of conversation from the radio fill the silence. Northbridge is done. But I’m just getting started.