Chapter 3
The first question that people in Cason’s situation ask usually tells me something about them.
Who are you?
What do you want?
Why am I here?
Cason’s question caught me off guard.
I’ve heard “Are you going to kill me?” plenty of times—to which the answer varies—but I’ve never been asked that the way Cason did.
Am I going to die here?
Like he didn’t care if it was going to be me who kills him. Like he’s spent so much of his life believing the best in people that he can’t break the habit even for the man who’s abducted him. He doesn’t want to believe anyone is capable of the kind of fate he’s scared awaits him.
I’m usually pretty good at reading people. I have to be.
This time, I’m actually a little stumped.
I shake it off easily as I head away from the locked door toward my desk I have set up in the corner of the basement.
It’s just a metal desk bolted to the concrete floor, a rolling chair that squeaks if I lean too far back, and a bank of monitors mounted on the wall above it. Functional and disposable, just like everything else down here.
The feed from Cason’s room fills one of the screens.
He’s asleep now, sprawled comfortably across the bed like he owns it.
One arm is draped off the side, fingers slack.
His straight blond hair is a little messy, hanging over his eyes.
He looks peaceful, like in his subconscious mind, he’s not here.
He looks like he shouldn’t be here.
But, then again, he’s not the first person I’ve had that thought about. And it’s not the first time it would be true.
Victims of circumstance.
Taking a seat in the chair, I drag my attention to the laptop and open the encrypted email client. There’s one unread message waiting for me. No name attached, no address that means anything. Just a string of characters that could belong to anyone. Or no one.
Status?
Concise. Impatient.
I crack my knuckles and type back.
Subject secure. Disoriented but stable. No complications.
I hesitate, then add:
Attempted escape risk low. Monitoring.
That part’s an assumption. I’ve already determined that Cason Bellrose is a bit harder to pin down than other targets.
The reply comes fast.
Good. Maintain schedule. Do not deviate.
I let out a sharp exhale and close the laptop without responding. Whoever’s on the other end doesn’t want commentary, just results. And that’s fine by me. I wasn’t hired to ask questions.
I lean back in the chair, ignoring its whine of protest, and peer back up at Cason’s monitor. He shifts in his sleep, brow furrowing like he’s arguing with someone in his dreams.
Maintain schedule.
That means I’ll be giving Cason’s dear old uncle a phone call first thing in the morning.
Because of course this is about money. It almost always is with the people who hire me.
It’s usually money or a grudge or a combination of the two.
That’s probably the case here because the demands could have just as easily been made to Cason’s mother instead of Malcolm Bellrose.
However, if I don’t need to know in order to do the job, then I don’t ask questions.
But I think back to Cason’s.
Am I going to die here?
The truth is, I couldn’t answer it. That’s not the plan, no. But plans can change.
And I don’t like to lie.
I settle in to get some work done for the rest of the evening.
Even when I’m on one job, I have several others that need extensive planning.
I watched Cason for nearly a month before taking him from the parking garage outside Bellrose Institute.
After hacking the security cameras to loop, it was easy because I knew what to expect.
From him, that means to not expect anything.
He has a schedule at the Institute, but he deviates from it often. He never goes to the same coffee shop twice in one week. He takes most of his classes online, and he has several different spots where he does his schoolwork.
However, with all of those, there are little tells for which path he’s going to take.
Cason is chaos theory.
Not the romanticized version people like to quote when they want to sound clever. Not butterflies and inevitability. Real chaos. Systems that look random until you watch them long enough to understand the rules hiding underneath.
He doesn’t repeat patterns, but he rhymes.
The coffee shops change, but he always picks one with two exits. He studies better with noise than silence. But not music. Ambient sound, overlapping conversations, the low hum of other lives continuing around him. He chooses seats with his back to walls as though he hates being cornered.
I can only imagine what will happen to him in that room if he has to stay too long.
He walks fast when he’s anxious, slower when he’s thinking. He’s easily distracted, and that makes him vulnerable. He hums under his breath like he needs something louder than his thoughts.
Online, he’s harder to map but just as consistent in his inconsistencies.
He doesn’t overshare, but he leaves fingerprints everywhere.
Metadata. Timestamps. Abandoned threads where he typed three paragraphs and deleted two.
His interests spike and vanish—philosophy forums one week, obscure programming repositories the next, art archives at three in the morning when he can’t sleep.
Grief does that. Loss carves grooves they keep falling into.
He searches his father’s name often. Cross-references old papers. Rereads interviews. Tries to find meaning in decisions that have already been made. He chases answers he knows he won’t get.
I learned early that Cason Bellrose believes the world is fundamentally understandable, even when it’s cruel. That if you gather enough data, trace enough variables, you can eventually make sense of what happened.
That belief is going to hurt him.
On the monitor, he shifts again, breath hitching briefly before evening out. I lean back and watch the feed longer than necessary. He rolls onto his side, curls slightly inward, like he’s trying to fold himself smaller.
By the time I grabbed him, I knew the way he takes his coffee, the cadence of his walk, the single rhythm every time he hums. Not a song, not any that I could name.
Like it’s the very music his body makes, coming from somewhere so deep inside him that it’s not even a conscious beat. Like his very own custom pulse.
Cason doesn’t fit cleanly into any category of target I’ve been hired to capture or kill. He’s not reckless. Not na?ve or desperate. He doesn’t have the sharp edges of someone who expects the worst, or the blind spots of someone who’s never been afraid.
He’s…hopeful.
That might be the most dangerous trait of all.
I check the time.
Maintain schedule.
I should probably feed him.
Like a damn dog.
I stand and head upstairs, unlocking the door at the top of the steps with my thumb pressed to a scanner.
Everything on the ground floor appears normal compared to the basement.
This place is one of several safehouses I own, tucked into a remote corner of Washington.
I built the basement myself. In a few months, I’ll gut the place and rent it out for a year.
Real estate is the best cover for owning several houses.
In the kitchen, I quickly make two sandwiches, adding a little extra mustard on Cason’s since I know he likes it.
Little things can provide just enough comfort that makes people less of a headache to deal with.
Heading back downstairs with the food, I make sure the door locks behind me before descending the steps. I set my plate on the desk and peer at the monitor. Cason is in the same position he was when I left.
Moving to his door, I unlock it with both a code and my thumbprint. There’s a beep, then a hydraulic hum as the latch retreats. I push the door open and freeze.
Cason isn’t in his bed.
For half a second, instinct tells me to look back at the monitor, but I already know exactly what happened. The little shit was already awake and heard the lock disengage before launching himself out of bed.
There’s only one place he could be.
Just as that realization hits, I’m caught off guard by the door swinging back at me. The force and shock cause me to stumble backward, the paper plate falling from my grip, the sandwich tumbling and spilling its contents onto the floor.
Cason bolts around the door from where he was hiding and shoves me harder than I expect, his shoulder slamming straight into my chest and knocking the breath from my lungs.
His socks slip against the floor as he slides around me.
I don’t make a move to grab him, instead taking the time to catch my breath and calm the rage that’s flaring hot from being taken by surprise.
Tomorrow, I’m handcuffing him to the bed so I can flip this fucking door around.
I turn in the doorway in time to see Cason clumsily climbing the stairs, tripping and swaying and having to use his hands to right himself. Taking a slow, deep inhale, I watch him crash into the door at the top of the steps.
Blowing all the air out through my nose, I take my gun out of its holster. I hold it loosely at my side as I continue staring at him while he attempts to open the door.
It doesn’t budge.
It won’t.
When he realizes that, he starts banging on it instead, screaming for somebody. Anybody. Help.
Someone else who does what I do for a living might find some sick satisfaction from his panic and desperation. Right now, I’m not the slightest bit amused.
Right now, he’s an inconvenience.
I raise my gun and rack the slide, the sound echoing around the concrete basement.
Now it’s Cason’s turn to freeze.
Even though I’m staring at the back of his head, I can practically see him running through all his options in his mind. And then there’s that moment where he realizes he has only one.
His head drops in defeat, and I can just barely make out the whispered, “Fuck.”
Slowly, he turns. His eyes fall to the gun in my hand, held low and casually but pointed directly up at him. His chin trembles the faintest bit before he sets his jaw, swallows hard, and makes his way cautiously back down the stairs. He comes to stand a few feet in front of me and swallows again.
“Sorry?” He says it like a question, a small, shaky grin on his lips.
Unfortunately, I know I need to teach him a lesson so this shit doesn’t happen again.
I close the distance in two strides.
Cason barely has time to flinch before my hand catches the back of his neck. I twist him around, using his own momentum against him as he stumbles, and slam him forward into the wall beside his open door. His palms hit first, then his cheek.
“Keep your hands on the wall,” I say, calm and even.
He’s shaking, but he does what I say.
I press my forearm between his shoulder blades, pinning him there. His breath comes fast and shallow, and the moment I have the barrel of my gun pressed against the back of his head, it ceases completely.
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t blow your fucking head off,” I growl in his ear.
“The blood would be a bitch to clean up.”
I clench my jaw and press the gun a little harder.
He whimpers, “I said I was sorry!”
“This is what happens when you fucking test me.”
What he does next is just about the last thing I expect. No, it is the last thing I expect.
He shoves his ass back, rubbing it against my crotch.
I am not okay with how much this fucking kid is catching me off guard.
I press my arm harder into his back and my gun harder against his head. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Giving you a reason,” he says breathlessly.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m not gay.”
“Neither am I. I don’t have a preference.”
“I do have a preference.”
“Yeah?” That snarky tone of his I heard earlier creeps back into his voice. “Tell that to your dick.”
He’s still rubbing his ass against me, rolling his hips in a shaky but incessant rhythm, no longer seeming to care that I’m literally holding a gun to his head. I definitely should stop him, but…yeah, apparently my cock likes it. It’s currently filling with blood in my jeans.
“You’re grinding your ass against it,” I rationalize.
There are probably a dozen reasons I should absolutely put a fucking stop to this, least of which is because I’m really not gay.
I’m fourteen years older than him.
When this is all over, he’ll never see me again.
If his uncle doesn’t pay, I might have to put a bullet in his head anyway.
Leaning forward, I whisper roughly in his ear, “But maybe I’m actually just hard from the thought of shooting you.”
I push off of his back, causing his breath to punch out of him.
Grabbing his shirt, I pull him away from the wall, then shove him into his room.
He just barely manages to stay on his feet and turn around to face me.
His face is flushed, eyes bright with unshed panic despite just grinding his ass against my dick, jaw clenched tight like he’s holding himself together by sheer force of will.
Returning my gun to its holster, I peer down at the deconstructed sandwich littering the floor before turning my gaze on Cason and narrowing my eyes.
“Enjoy your fucking dinner.”
With that, I exit the room and close the door behind me. The lock seals with a heavy, mechanical finality. I stand there for a moment longer than necessary, staring at the solid metal like it might say something back. Like maybe an explanation as to why my dick got fucking hard.
It doesn’t give me an answer.
I force myself to move, to walk back to the desk, to sit. The chair whines under my weight. I welcome the irritation, something mundane to anchor me. My pulse is still too loud in my ears as blood rushes back to the rest of my body. My hands feel tight, restless, like they don’t quite belong to me.
I thought I had Cason figured out.
I think now I was wrong.
He’s not stupid. I got that right, at least. He’s also not broken, not a typical victim who’s going to plead and beg for his life.
Right now, he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his shoulders hunched.
His hands are curled tight into fists between his knees as he stares at the floor like it’s a puzzle he’s trying to solve, like he believes there’s a pattern here if he just looks hard enough.
We’re just two men on opposite sides of the same wall, both convinced the answers are trapped inside them.
I lean back and exhale slowly, controlled, counting it out like I always do when something threatens to slip.
This job just got a lot more complicated.
And I don’t like complications.
I shut off the monitor.