Chapter Twenty
The safe house smells like ozone and old concrete.
The kind of scent that lingers, like in a father’s garage.
I watch her from the doorway, shoulder braced against the jamb, arms crossed over my chest as I can physically hold myself back from going to her.
She’s been typing for three hours straight, her fingers a blur over the keyboard, her eyes reflecting the blue glow of the screen.
She hasn’t moved except to sip the water I set beside her.
Hasn’t eaten. Has barely blinked. She’s beautiful like this.
Terrifying. A blade sharpened down to nothing but edge.
I should be planning the extraction. Checking weapons.
Scouting the industrial district. Calling in favors from people I swore I’d never contact again.
Instead, I’m standing here memorizing the way her jaw tightens when she finds something, the slight flare of her nostrils when she’s angry, the absolute stillness that settles over her when she’s plotting violence.
The girl I watched on camera—crying in her shower, hanging dead flowers over her bed—is gone.
In her place is the woman who whispered threats to her dying mother at eight years old.
The one who’s been planning a fucking war while the world thought she was planning parties.
My phone vibrates against my thigh. I pull it out, glancing at the screen.
Cam: Tell Kiera I’ve been waiting
for her to come home.
I stare at the message until the words blur.
Then I look up at Kiera. She’s still lost in the code, fingers flying, completely unaware that the game has already changed.
Fuck. I step into the room, boots loud against the concrete floor.
She doesn’t look up, but her fingers pause mid-keystroke. “What?”
“We have a problem,” I say.
Her head snaps toward me, grey eyes narrowing.
“Define problem.” I turn the phone so she can see the screen.
Her face goes parchment-white, then flushed with rage.
She stands so fast the chair topples backward, crashing against the concrete.
“He’s playing us,” she says, her voice dangerously soft.
“He’s been playing us since we left the apartment. ”
“Looks like it,” I say quietly.
She snatches the phone from my hand, fingers shaking as she scrolls through the message history. “This came through five minutes ago,” she says, voice sharp. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were busy being a shadow,” I snap, the frustration I’ve been swallowing for hours finally breaking free.
“Because you’ve been sitting there calculating variables and probabilities while I’ve been watching you disappear into your own head.
I wasn’t sure if dragging you back out was going to help…
or hurt when we’re twenty minutes from walking into a kill box. ”
She goes still. Not the predatory stillness from before. Something else. Something younger. More fragile. “You should have told me,” she says quietly.
“I know.” I step closer, close enough to catch the faint scent of lavender shampoo she used at my place yesterday—before everything went to hell.
“But Kiera, if we’re going to do this, if we’re really going to get them back, you need to remember that you’re not alone in this anymore.
You don’t have to carry the weight of every decision by yourself.
You can let someone else watch your back without it making you weak. ”
Kiera’s eyes search mine, looking for any trace of deceit.
I’ve spent ten years being a weapon for men like her father.
Ten years of being empty. But standing here, watching her hold herself together with nothing but rage and duct tape, something dangerous flickers to life in my chest. Hope.
Or maybe just hunger. “I don’t know how,” she admits.
The confession costs her. I can see it in the way her shoulders drop, just a fraction.
I reach out, my hand hovering near her cheek. I don’t touch her. Not yet. “Then I’ll teach you,” I say, voice low. “But first, we need to get our friends back.
She nods, stepping back and shaking off the vulnerability like water from her skin. “Okay. Let’s check the location again.”
I pull up the map on my phone and zoom in on the industrial district. After memorizing the layout, I pocket the phone, my hand lingering near hers for a beat too long. “Gear up. If Asher thinks we’re playing checkers while he’s playing chess, we’re about to flip the board.”
Her smile turns small, sharp, and dangerous. “I need a gun.”
“You need three,” I reply, already moving toward the go-bag I dropped by the door. I unzip it, pulling out the Glock 19 I keep for emergencies, plus a smaller Ruger LC9 that fits her hand better. I check the magazines, rack the slides, and turn. She’s already right beside me.
She takes the Glock, testing its weight and balance with practiced ease. She moves like she was born holding steel. “You’re not going to tell me to stay in the car, are you?”
“Would you listen?” I ask.
Kiera huffs a soft laugh. “No.”
“Then I’m not going to waste my breath.” I hand her the extra magazines, our fingers tangling together around the metal.
“But I am going to tell you something, and I need you to hear it.” She looks up at me, her grey eyes wide and unguarded for just a second.
The shadow is gone. The girl is gone. What’s left is something between a woman made of smoke and gunpowder, and I’m suddenly terrified that when this is over, there won’t be anything left to hold.
“I’m not Wade,” I say, my voice rough. “I’m not Asher.
When this ends. When we get Cam and Lila back and burn the rest of this fucking world down, you don’t get to push me away and pretend I was just another tool you used.
You don’t get to pretend this,” I gesture between us, the air thick with unspoken things, “didn’t happen. ”
She stares at me, the gun heavy between us like a loaded promise. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking for,” I say, stepping fully into her space until the back meets the cold concrete wall. “I’m asking for the truth. Even if it cuts.”
Her breath hitches. She doesn’t look away. “And if the truth is that I’m so broken that there’s nothing left but revenge?”
“Then I’ll take the pieces,” I say, my mouth hovering inches from hers. “Let me carry your sins with you. But I’m not going anywhere, Kiera. Not unless you look me in the eye and tell me to leave.” I pause, letting the words settle between us like a vow. “And probably not even then.”
The moment stretches, thin as wire. Outside, the sun sets, painting the room in bruised purples and blood reds.
She’s trembling—just barely. The rage is still there, burning hot beneath the surface, but underneath it, finally fear.
For Cam and Lila. For herself. Maybe even for me.
“I don’t know how to ask you to stay,” she whispers.
“Then don’t say anything,” I breathe. I kiss her like she’s the only air I’ll ever need.
It’s not soft. It’s not gentle. It’s two people drowning and choosing to burn instead—all teeth and tongue and the metallic taste of redemption.
She gasps into my mouth. Her free hand fists in my shirt, yanking me closer, anchoring herself to me.
The gun presses cold and hard between our bodies, a brutal reminder of what comes next.
But for this one stolen second, we’re nothing but heat and hunger and the desperate, stupid need to feel alive before we walk into the dark.
When I finally pull back, her lips are swollen, her eyes glazed.
She touches her mouth with trembling fingers, staring at me as if I’ve just rewritten every rule she thought she knew.
“Sterling,” she whimpers. The single word comes out fractured—half warning, half desperate prayer, like she’s fighting herself even as she says it.
“We’ll get them back,” I promise, voice low and unwavering. “And then we’ll finish this. Together. You and me.”
She nods, once, sharply. The mask slides back into place, but her hand finds mine, threading our fingers together as we walk toward the door. The night is waiting. So is Asher. But he doesn’t know we’re coming for him hand in hand. And that makes all the difference.
I slide into the driver’s seat, the leather cold against my back, and the truck rumbles to life with a low growl that vibrates through the floorboards.
In the passenger seat, Kiera checks the Ruger's magazine one last time.
Her movements are economical now; no wasted motion, no hesitation.
She catches me staring. “Eyes on the road, Sterling,” she says, a faint, dangerous smile tugging at her lips.
“I need you alive for at least another hour.”
I grunt, shifting into drive. “Your concern is touching. Really warms my heart.”
“It’s self-preservation,” she says, but her hand claims my thigh, fingers pressing hard enough to bruise. “If you die, I have to drive the getaway vehicle. And I really don’t want to do that.”
The safe house disappears behind us, swallowed by darkness and pine trees.
I keep the headlights off until we hit the main road, navigating by memory and the faint glow of the dashboard.
The industrial district is twenty miles out—past the city limits, where the streetlights thin and the darkness starts to feel hungry.
My phone buzzes in the center console. We both look at it.
Cam: You’re late.
Kiera picks it up, her thumb hovering over the screen. “He’s getting impatient.”
“Or he’s tracking the phone’s location,” I say.
“Leave it. Let him wonder if we’re coming...
” She nods, setting it face down on the console.
But she doesn’t let go of her weapon. Her other hand stays on my leg.
A steady point of heat that anchors us both, keeping us from drifting too far into the bloodshed waiting ahead.
We drive in silence for ten minutes. The city gradually gives way to warehouses, then to nothing but skeletal buildings and rusted chain-link fences.
I kill the engine two blocks from the coordinates, coasting the last few yards on momentum alone, tucking the truck behind a derelict shipping container.
The industrial district looms ahead—a maze of corrugated metal and shattered windows, black against the slightly less black sky.
No lights. No movement. Just the wind whistling through broken glass, singing a warning.
Kiera is out of the truck before I’ve even pocketed the keys, pressing her back against the container, weapon low and ready.
I follow, moving to her six, covering our rear.
We’ve done this before—in different lives, for different reasons—but the choreography is the same: trust, space, violence held in careful reserve.
She signals with two fingers…move up. We cross the open ground in a low sprint, boots crunching on gravel that sounds like gunshots in the silence.
We flatten against the wall of the main building.
I test the door. Locked. The frame is rusted out.
One sharp kick and it swings inward, screaming on hinges that haven’t seen oil in years.
Darkness swallows us whole. I flip on the tac-light mounted under my Glock, sweeping the beam across stained concrete floors and oil-slick stains.
The air reeks of iron and mildew. Kiera moves ahead of me, a shadow within the shadow, her own light off, navigating by memory or pure instinct.
Then I hear it. A cough. Muffled. Male. Kiera freezes, head tilting like a predator catching scent.
She points left, toward a stairwell descending into the basement.
The sound came from below. We move toward it in perfect sync, stepping over debris that could betray us with a single crunch.
My heart hammers against my ribs, but my hands stay steady.
I’ve done this a hundred times. Never with this much riding on the outcome.
The stairwell is a pitch-black mouth. Kiera pauses on the top step and glances back at me.
In the faint spill of my light, her eyes are wild, luminous, and utterly fearless.
She mouths the words: Ready? I nod. Together, we descend into the dark.