CHAPTER 57
Jameson
Olsztyn, Poland
Day Forty-Four Off Grid
The photograph had begun to soften at the edges.
I noticed it on the fourth day.
The corner beneath my thumb no longer held its original angle. The surface had dulled where I kept touching the same three words.
I’m sorry.
I will always love you.
Always.
I read them again.
The meaning didn’t change.
Neither did the result.
Brynn was gone.
The rental remained stripped around me, every useful thing taken exactly as she intended.
Only the small London bag, a few shirts, socks, spare glasses, the photograph, and me.
The ring box lay where it had landed against the far wall.
I hadn’t picked it up.
I hadn’t left the house either.
On the first day, I told myself I was recovering enough strength to move.
On the second, I told myself I needed to understand where she had gone before I chose a direction.
By the third, the lies became inefficient.
I stayed because every route away from the rental required a destination, and I had none.
Whitaker had taken my trust and used it to pull me from the house.
Brynn had taken every tool I might have used to find her.
The wound in my shoulder had stopped bleeding through the dressing sometime during the first night.
It had started again the next morning.
Whatever had been done before they moved me had not survived the restraints, the struggle, or the drive back. The stitches pulled whenever I moved my arm. The skin around them had become hot and swollen, and the bruising across my chest had deepened from purple to nearly black.
I had no antibiotics.
No clean dressings beyond what I could tear from a shirt.
No pain medication.
No way to know whether the heat under my skin came from infection or the radiator failing to regulate the room.
I catalogued each symptom because they were measurable.
The rest wasn’t.
I had slept in fragments.
Twenty-seven minutes on the first night. Forty-three the next. An hour and twelve minutes after my body finally stopped treating every sound outside as an approach.
Each time I woke, I reached for her before consciousness caught up.
Each time, the bed remained empty.
I sat on the floor beside it now, my back against the frame, the photograph balanced between my fingers.
The house had grown colder.
Not physically. The radiator still worked. The pipes still ticked through the walls. Morning light still pushed through the narrow gap between the curtains.
But Brynn had taken the warmth with her.
The thought was imprecise.
I let it remain.
A vehicle turned onto the road.
My body reacted before the sound fully registered.
I set the photograph on the mattress, reached for the gun beside my thigh, and stood.
Pain tore through my shoulder.
The room shifted sideways.
I caught the bedframe with my free hand and waited for the floor to stop moving.
The engine slowed as it approached the property.
There should have been no local traffic.
Tires rolled over gravel behind the house.
I moved toward the window beside the mudroom, keeping close to the wall as I looked through the narrow edge of the curtain.
A dark sedan had stopped behind the hatchback I’d stolen from the men.
Whitaker stood beside it.
He studied the damaged rear panel first, then the blood dried along the driver’s door. His attention moved to the house.
The car had told him I was inside.
It had also told him what condition I’d been in when I drove it there.
One vehicle.
Whitaker and at least one driver.
The rear windows were tinted. More could still be inside.
He crossed the gravel at an even pace. No hesitation. No attempt at concealment.
I moved into the hallway and positioned myself where the mudroom entrance remained visible without exposing my full body.
The effort pulled at my shoulder again.
Something warm spread beneath the dressing.
I raised the gun.
The handle turned.
Locked.
A pause followed.
Then three measured knocks.
“Mercer,” Whitaker called from the other side. “Open the door.”
I said nothing.
He waited.
“I know you’re inside,” he added.
His voice sounded unchanged. Calm. Polished. Mildly inconvenienced.
My finger settled along the trigger guard.
He knocked again. “I would prefer not to damage the property.”
I moved closer without lowering the gun.
“Your concern for property is touching.”
Silence.
Then Whitaker said, “You made the vehicle remarkably easy to trace.”
“I was occupied.”
“The blood would suggest as much,” he said.
I stayed clear of the door.
“How did you find it?”
“The hatchback had a tracker,” Whitaker said. “I would have arrived sooner, but you left a considerable mess at the holding site.”
“They objected to me leaving.”
“So I gathered.” His tone remained dry. “Removing the bodies, weapons, and evidence of your escape required time.”
A faint sound came from behind the house.
Metal settling.
A second vehicle door.
Whitaker hadn’t come alone.
I shifted my stance.
“How many?”
“Enough to extract you without damaging what remains,” Whitaker said.
“You should have brought more.”
“That would be more convincing if you weren’t likely using the wall to remain upright,” he said.
I looked down.
Blood had spread beneath the bandage near my collarbone and reached the edge of my shirt.
The wound had opened farther.
I tightened my grip around the gun until the tremor in my hand stopped.
“It’s time you came with me,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
He released an impatient sigh. “You have no viable alternative.”
“I have a gun.”
He huffed a laugh. “Unless my count is wrong, you have one magazine, an unstable firing arm, and enough blood on the floor to make locating you inside the house unnecessary.”
I looked down again.
Three dark drops marked the wood beneath me.
He couldn’t see them through the door, but he likely had inferred them from the blood on the car, the delay in my movements, and the way my voice had changed.
“Open the door,” he said.
“No.”
“You require medical attention,” he said.
“You are not a doctor.”
“No,” Whitaker agreed. “I am, however, the man who brought one.”
I looked toward the window.
The sedan remained behind the stolen hatchback.
“You expect gratitude?”
“I’ve known you long enough not to expect anything reasonable,” he said.
That sounded more like him.
I unlocked the door.
Not because I trusted him.
Because the barrier no longer gave me a tactical advantage, and I needed to see what he had brought.
I stepped back and raised the gun as the door opened.
Whitaker stood on the other side in a dark coat, rain caught across the shoulders. His hair was damp at the temples.
He looked tired in a way I had never seen on him before.
His gaze moved over me once, taking in the gun, the bruising, and the blood running from beneath the dressing.
His expression changed by less than a degree.
“You look terrible,” he said.
“You look inconvenienced.”
“I am,” he said.
At least that was honest.
Movement shifted behind him.
Two men.
Both carried weapons beneath their coats.
Whitaker didn’t look away. “You’re in no condition to fight your way through this.”
I raised the gun higher.
Whitaker stepped forward.
The two men behind him moved.
He lifted one hand without looking back, and they stopped.
“Do not,” he told them.
Both men held position.
His attention returned to me.
Then his gaze dropped to the blood spreading across my shirt.
“Last opportunity, Mercer.”
I kept the gun centered on his chest. “You first.”
Whitaker moved before I finished the words.
He caught my gun wrist with one hand and drove two fingers hard into the swollen tissue beneath my dressing.
Pain flashed white behind my eyes.
My shoulder struck the wall before I could correct my balance. My grip failed for half a second, and the barrel dropped.
Whitaker forced the gun away from his body as I twisted against him.
The torn muscle in my shoulder gave.
Something inside the wound pulled apart.
My knees hit the floor.
The gun discharged into the baseboard.
The sound detonated through the hallway.
Whitaker wrenched the weapon from my hand.
The two men rushed the doorway.
“Stay back,” Whitaker ordered.
One of them stopped.
The other dropped beside me with the medical bag.
I reached for the knife at my ankle.
My fingers closed around the handle.
Whitaker caught my wrist again. “Enough, Mercer.”
I drove my elbow toward his knee.
The movement barely connected.
My body had stopped translating intention into force.
The medic reached for my shoulder.
I turned hard enough to tear the wound farther and nearly blacked out.
“Touch me and I’ll break your hand.”
The medic looked at Whitaker.
“He means it,” Whitaker said. “Wait.”
Blood ran down my arm and gathered at my fingertips.
My pulse had become erratic.
Too fast.
Then slow enough that I could feel the space between beats.
Then my vision narrowed to a dark tunnel.
I felt myself falling forward.
Whitaker caught most of my weight.
The medic swore.
My body had reached its limit before the argument did.