Chapter 53
I edge farther inside Jag’s computer lair, squeezing between racks of servers and stepping over thick, veiny cables. The blinking lights and hum of processors vibrate with the power of an electronic brain.
The amount of tech in here? It’s way beyond me.
I know enough to boot up a system and browse the Internet. This is something else. Black computer boxes stack two and three high, flashing with multicolor LEDs. I don’t touch a damn thing.
Instead, I scan the monitors.
Most of them are live camera feeds of familiar streets and buildings. Every screen tracks a different piece of Sitka, following a clear path from the harbor to the mechanic shop.
One feed locks on the front door of the garage, a different angle than the busted camera Taaq had installed. That one died the day Dove disappeared. But this one is hidden.
The video is clear, streaming in full res and showing the mechanic shop open again.
Taaq is there, face pinched and hands busy under the hood of a car. Chester moves across the frame with a coil of hoses over one shoulder.
No Dove.
If she were there, she’d be everywhere.
I drag a chair in front of the screen and sit down hard. My hands shake, so I ball them into fists on my lap.
This camera shouldn’t exist. Not from this angle. Not from that wall. Not even Taaq knows it’s there.
“Is this video stream saving somewhere?” I point at the screen. “How do we see the footage of the day she disappeared?”
Theo and Ross push in, eyes wide as they take in Jag’s systems.
“Jesus.” Theo whistles under his breath. “This is a fortress. Looks like he built a government-grade network out of spare parts and paranoia.”
Ross makes a beeline to the nearest tower, slipping on gloves as he surveys the setup.
Monty and Carl step back, letting the techs take over. I stay planted in front of the monitor, eyes fixed on that front-door feed as if she’ll appear.
“Yeah, it’s recording.” Theo taps a few keys, leaning in and scanning fast. “Custom loop system on the shop camera and the one he installed on the street.” He glances over his shoulder at Ross.
“Encrypted video retention protocol. He’s storing everything.
Days, weeks, months of footage in compressed bursts. ”
“Can you access it?” My pulse races.
“Not easily.” Ross scowls at the screen. “He layered this thing like a psychopath. We’re talking multi-tier AES encryption, with AI-scrambled keys that rotate every sixty seconds. He basically turned a DVR into a CIA asset.”
“But you can crack it?” I grind my molars.
“Give me twenty minutes and a Red Bull.” Theo accepts the energy drink from Carl and cracks it open. “This guy is ten steps ahead of anything I’ve seen.”
“He didn’t just lock the system.” Ross moves from one keyboard to the next, fingers flying. “If we mess up the decryption order, it’ll overwrite the sector with garbage data.”
“So don’t fuck it up.” My insides clench.
Somewhere, buried deep in this digital labyrinth, is the moment Dove vanished.
They settle into the controls, mumbling about Jag’s code, how it’s obsessively written, beautifully structured, and elegant in the most terrifying way. They scroll through camera IDs, file logs, and encrypted directories labeled with nothing but symbols and rotating characters.
“This isn’t hacking,” Ross mutters. “It’s breaking into someone’s mind.”
Thirty minutes later, Theo exhales a triumphant whoop.
“I got it!” His fingers hover over the keyboard. “This is the log for the mechanic shop, inside and on the street.”
Everyone crowds in behind him as he pulls up the time stamp.
The footage rolls.
I see myself on the screen, standing out on the street, voice carrying as I shout I love her to the world.
Jag’s camera angle is higher than the streetlight, angled just right. I look younger somehow. Hopeful and happy. Fucking stupid.
Monty’s hand clamps onto my shoulder, and it stays there, anchoring me to the chair, as Theo fast-forwards.
The footage jumps. Skips over the blur of people dispersing. Over the moment I left. Over the empty street.
Then the decoy appears.
She slips around the corner of the building, casual, unhurried, right into the line of sight of the two guards stationed near the garage bays.
She looks like Dove, walks like her, same blue hair. With her head down, I can’t see her face.
“She came from the back.” Carl leans in, eyes narrowing. “She said she felt sick and went outside to puke. I didn’t question it. Didn’t think about how we never saw her come out of the building.”
On the screen, the guards react immediately. One steps forward, radio already up, body language shifting into escort mode.
They route her fast. Away from the garage. Toward the harbor, efficient and professional.
Monty’s grip tightens on my shoulder. I can’t look away, knowing Dove was still inside that shop as her protection left.
The footage keeps rolling. Seconds tick by. Too many of them.
Then movement.
Dove appears in the doorway of the shop, wearing her skates.
That alone tells me everything. She didn’t plan to go anywhere.
She rolls over the threshold, slow and reactive, her instinct screaming that something isn’t right. Her posture changes, shoulders tensing, chin lifting, subtle, but I know her.
She looks down the street, where the guards went. The wrong direction.
Someone moves behind her.
He slips into frame as if he’s been there the whole time, hiding outside the camera’s edge. He’s masked, average height, average build, wearing street clothes. Nothing remarkable about him.
My breath leaves me in a broken sound as he clamps a hand over her mouth.
She doesn’t even get a second to fight. He lifts her and drags her backward, out of the camera’s view. Gone in a blur of motion and blue hair.
“That’s not Jag.” I lurch forward, hands braced on the desk. “Jag’s bigger. Taller. Broader through the shoulders.”
“Whoever it is took her to the service road behind the shop.” Carl scans the screen, his voice thick with guilt and failure. “There’s a blind stretch there. No cameras. He must’ve known that.”
Theo freezes the frame, zooming in on the empty edge where she disappeared.
“He probably had a car waiting,” Carl says. “Engine running. In and out in under ten seconds.”
Monty exhales through his nose.
“Which means while we were chasing the decoy through the harbor, Dove was already leaving town.” I sit back, sick to my soul.
The room feels too small, the hum too loud. My heartbeat is everywhere, in my ears, my throat, my teeth.
“By the time the roads locked down, she was probably already outside city limits.” Monty gives my shoulder another squeeze and lets go. “Could’ve been driven straight to a private airstrip or transferred to a boat offshore.”
She was gone before we realized we fucked up.
I squeeze my eyes shut for half a second, just enough to survive it.
Jag didn’t orchestrate this.
“Pull the log of the tattoo parlor.” I meet Theo’s gaze behind his glasses.
Theo nods and turns back to the wall of monitors, fingers flying across the keys. The screen flashes, loads a grid of feeds, and centers on one. The hidden camera from the tattoo shop.
Since Jag concealed it near the ceiling, the overhead angle shows every corner of the main room.
The time stamp rolls back to ten minutes before I walked in, when the Strakh guards were still alive.
Everyone quiets.
The screen goes black. Not dim or shadowed. Gone.
“What the fuck?” My heart pounds.
“The lights in the shop,” Ross says. “Someone shut them off.”
There isn’t a drop of natural light or street bleed because the only window in the shop sits inside the room Jag built for me. Sealed off.
“Fuck!” I shove my hands in my hair, panic rising.
Theo hits a key, and the feed snaps to night vision.
Green washes over the screen, and my stomach drops.
The door opens, letting in a blast of blinding light and a rush of men dressed in black. In a blink, they’re inside with the door shut, trapping the Strakh guards in the pitch-black.
Each of them wears low-profile goggles as they fan out, already knowing where everything is. No hesitation. No whispered orders.
The Strakh guards freeze, confused, hands out, blinking into nothing. They can’t see a damn thing. They spin, backs to each other, trying to orientate, trying to figure out why the lights went out and who just entered the shop.
My throat closes as I count six goggled men. Military haircuts. Lean builds with zero wasted movement.
“Night vision goggles.” Monty exhales sharply.
“Yes.” Carl nods. “Lightweight tactical vests with holsters and blades mounted at their thighs. Coms in their ears. Matching gear, right down to the boots.”
Each one knows exactly where he’s going.
The guards don’t.
It’s a slaughter.
A hand clamps down. A blade flashes, and the first guard goes slack without a sound. Another drops near the counter, taken from the side before he can even turn his head.
Six against four.
Unfair doesn’t begin to cover it.
The remaining guards reach for their guns, fingers scrabbling at holsters, but the men in goggles are already on them. One disarms. Another strikes low. A third steps in and finishes it.
No gunshots. No yelling. Just bodies folding to the floor in the quiet hum of night-vision static.
It’s over in seconds.
I can’t breathe.
They didn’t come for a fight. They came to clear the room.
“These aren’t street thugs or local muscle.” Monty rubs his nape.
“This was funded and rehearsed,” Carl says. “High-end gear. Military spec.”
I’m going to be sick. The room spins, needles fill my gut, and pain grabs in my chest.
The feed keeps rolling.
Night vision holds steady as the green-hued bodies shift. The six attackers no longer move like predators. They sweep the room, checking pulses and confirming kills.
“They waited until you dropped Dove at the mechanic shop.” Theo pauses the video and compares the time stamps. “See? They timed it to the second, attacking the tattoo parlor right as you were leaving the garage.”
“They knew I would be distracted by what I found at the tattoo shop and moved in on Dove.” I grind my molars. “Organized confusion.”
Theo restarts the recording, and a moment later, Jag bursts into frame with a metal chair in his hands. Shirtless and barefoot, he wears sweatpants that hang lopsided on his hips.
“We put a lock on that break room door.” Carl moves closer. “How did he get out?”
“He would’ve known something was wrong when the power shut off. Probably threw himself through that door.” My breathing quickens. “And we took all his weapons.”
Jag holds the chair like a weapon, his legs braced, head cocked and listening, but the pitch-black gives him nothing.
My stomach buckles with dread.
One of the attackers tears the chair from his grip. Another tries to pin his arm. But Jag fights back, dropping the man with a brutal elbow to the throat. Then he spins and catches another in the face.
It’s chaos. Six against one and still, still, they struggle to take him down.
I bend toward the screen, my hands white-knuckled on the desk.
“Jesus Christ,” Carl mutters. “He’s holding his own.”
“No.” My voice strangles. “He’s losing.”
They swarm him.
Blows land hard, driving the air from his lungs. His knees hit the ground, but he leaps back up, blood streaking his temple, one arm limp, dislocated or broken.
Still, he fights.
As he pivots, his foot hits something. Someone. One of the dead guards. His body jerks in recognition. He can’t see, but he knows. I can tell by the way he drops, fast and desperate, hands feeling for a weapon in the dark.
He finds it, pulling a pistol off the guard’s belt in one smooth motion.
When he raises the gun, it’s not toward his attackers, but to his own temple.
My heart stops.
“I’ll do it!” he bellows into the dark, his voice guttural and soaked in rage. “Swear to God, I’ll fucking do it! You want me alive? Tell that cunt Adrian Crowe he should’ve come himself!”
“Adrian Crowe?” Monty stiffens. “The tech billionaire?”
I’ve heard of him, nothing more. He floats through headlines often enough to be a household name, one associated with politicians, royalty, elite social access, all the celebrated infamy of the untouchable upper crust.
How the hell does he know Jag Rath?
On the screen, the attackers freeze.
Even in night vision, I feel the hesitation. None of them expected that.
Jag doesn’t shake or flinch. He holds the gun like it’s a promise. Like his life is worth more to them than to himself.
I can’t look away.
He’s bleeding out, one arm dangling uselessly, barely able to stand, and still, he’s the one in control.
For some reason, they need him breathing, and he knows it.
Until one of the men says, “We have Dove Rath.”
Fire scorches my lungs and chars my airway.
“I don’t believe you.” Jag wildly casts his gaze around in the dark, his body broken in half a dozen places.
The lights come on.
He flinches, blinking hard, swaying, and disoriented. Blood drips from his mouth as he squints at them.
One of the attackers steps forward, holding a phone. Jag looks at the screen, and his face crumples.
I can’t see what it shows, but I can guess.
He falls to his knees, drops the gun, and his agonized roar rips through the audio feed, savage and raw.
I feel his pain to the depths of my soul.
“Don’t you hurt her!” He doubles over at the waist and releases an agonizing, bone-chilling sound. “Don’t fucking touch her!”
Heat seethes through my throat and into my eyes. I blink rapidly, forcing it down. But the pressure bites back, burning, swelling, overwhelming. My fists clench so hard my knuckles crack as I try to keep the tears from spilling over.
Monty’s breath grows shallow beside me, his body frozen like mine, as we watch a man we all feared become something else entirely.
“You want her alive?” The man pockets the phone. “Then come quietly.”
Jag lowers his head, his jaw flexing like he’s swallowing a sob. His whole posture slumps. Not in surrender. In devastation.
One of the attackers comes out of the break room with Jag’s duffel bag. Another one enters the shop, wiping a bloody knife on his pants.
“Side alley’s clear.” The newcomer sheathes the blade. “Took down the shop employee. Dumped the body. We’re done here. Move out.”
Declan’s killer.
Jag stays on his knees, silent and crushed.
His last act wasn’t escape.
It was sacrifice.