Chapter 43
He’s loaded onto a tarp.
Not a body bag. Not yet. Just a heavy sheet grabbed in a hurry, corners clenched in gloved fists as the medics lift together, awkward and strained, like they didn’t expect him to weigh this much now that life has left him.
The tarp bows in the middle as they raise him, the shape of his body obscene and wrong, fluids soaking through in dark, uneven patches.
For a split second, I think of Skippy.
The train.
The way Skippy burped corpse-breath straight into Alejandro’s face, the sound almost comical if it hadn’t been so wrong. So rancid it made his eyes water.
They maneuver Hartley onto the stretcher and wheel him away. The tarp goes with him, folded over what’s left of his dignity.
Two staff members remain behind on the stage.
They just stand there, staring at the mess he left. Blood. Bile. Something darker. The air still holds it, a sickly-sweet stench hanging low and stubborn, coating the back of my throat.
And then I remember something else Alejandro said. A different night. A different body.
Sweet. Sickeningly so.
He told me that smell never leaves you. That it brands itself into your soul whether you want it to or not. That years later, it still crawls out of nowhere and reminds you exactly how close death really was.
Standing here now, breathing it in, I understand exactly what he meant.
“Okay,” Grim says in my ear. “I’ve got it.”
His voice shifts and he starts narrating what he sees, describing camera angles, timestamps, crowd movement. Then Hartley convulses on the feed, and Grim yelps.
“Oh—oh, Jesus, he’s—he’s vomiting. That’s bad. That’s really bad.”
“Focus, Grim,” I murmur. “Move past that.”
“Okay. Okay,” he says, a little breathless. Another crunch follows, loud in my ear, and I briefly consider committing a secondary murder just to make it stop.
Then, “Okay,” he says again. “I’ve got it.”
There’s a pause.
Then a single, startled laugh.
“What a loser,” Grim says. “He missed.”
I shake my head slowly, scanning the floor around the stage. “No,” I say. “He didn’t. Alejandro never misses.”
I move methodically, eyes tracing lines, angles, places a bullet could have gone without announcing itself. The shot had to land somewhere.
“Can you see where it hit?” I ask.
“Hold on,” Grim replies.
I hear the faint sound of him squinting, the rustle of movement. In the background, someone speaks Spanish sharply, like an argument over a video game as he and his cousin must be watching the video together.
Then, “Yeah,” Grim says. “I can see it. Let me pull the live feed.”
Keys clack rapidly.
“Okay,” he says. “I see you. Walk to center stage. Then stage right.”
I do.
“Keep going.”
I follow his voice.
“Almost,” he says. “Almost… right there. Look down.”
I stop.
I crouch.
There’s a small impact mark in the flooring, easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it. I rub my finger over it, feeling the roughness where something fast and violent kissed stone and kept going.
I straighten slowly, pulse steady despite the unease coiling tighter in my chest.
“He never misses a shot,” I say. “This was on purpose. I need to know what was here. What he was shooting at.”
“On it,” Grim says. “Going back.”
I keep looking anyway, circling, scanning, trusting my instincts more than the feeds. Grim rambles as he scrubs through footage, muttering about angles and shadows and compression artifacts.
Then my eye catches on something.
I can’t tell what it is at first. Just a flash of color against neutral tones. Something out of place. I step closer.
Grim comes back on the line. “It’s hard to tell,” he says. “Really dark, but—”
I reach down.
“All I can see is a shoe,” Grim continues.
My fingers close around something small and smooth. Polished. Cool against my skin.
Blue.
Familiar.
I lift my hand and let it rest in my palm, the weight insignificant and devastating all at once.
A marble.
“A shoe,” I repeat quietly.
“Yeah,” Grim says. “I’ll send you a still frame.”
Seconds later the phone vibrates in my hand. I open the file.
Grainy. Black and white. Security footage, compressed just enough to lose faces and keep shapes. And there it is, unmistakable now that I know how to look. The edge of a shoe, caught mid-step, half in shadow.
It looks a lot like the photographs Alejandro deleted.
My thumb moves on instinct. I pull up the first image from two years ago. The one from September seventh. Alejandro in the corner of the frame, carpet pattern beneath him, and in the opposite edge, the tip of a man’s shoe intruding into the shot like an afterthought.
Then the second. More recent. Someone climbing into a helicopter. Bent knee. White pants. Black shoe. Same angle. Same intrusion.
Different moments. Same ghost.
“Grim,” I say, keeping my voice level, “can you enhance this? And the photos Alejandro deleted?”
There’s a pause. Then a low sound of understanding. “Ahh. I see where you’re going with this. Yeah. Absolutely.”
The clicking of his keyboard fills the silence in my ear as I roll the marble between my fingers. It’s cool and smooth, almost soothing, which feels wrong considering where I found it.
“These cameras are insane,” Grim mutters. “High-end stuff. I can practically see the stitching.”
“Send it to me,” I say. “And do you have a way to search the feeds for that same shoe?”
A beat. “Nah,” he admits. Then, cheerfully, “But I can write one real quick.”
I frown. “What?”
Across the theater, a sharp clink of metal against glass pulls my attention away from the phone.
One tap.
Then another.
Then a third.
Slow. Evenly spaced. Deliberate.
I look up.
He’s standing alone on the opposite side of the glass, elevated above the chaos, framed perfectly by the city lights behind him. A Stetson sits low on his head, brim casting his eyes into shadow. His posture is relaxed, smug, like he’s just wandered into a bar he owns.
Mother. Fucking. Colt Harrington.
He lifts a hand and gives me a lazy little wave, fingers curling in greeting.
One finger is missing.
The bandage wrapped around the stump is fresh.
My grip tightens around the marble.
In my ear, Grim keeps talking, blissfully unaware. “Yeah, shouldn’t take me long at all. I’ll—”
“Sure,” I say slowly, never taking my eyes off Colt.
I let the silence stretch.
“Take your time.”
He doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
For a suspended beat, we just look at each other through layers of glass and distance, something unspoken passing between us. Not a threat. Not a warning. An acknowledgment. Like we both understand the rules just shifted and the board has been cleared.
Then I move.
The marble disappears into my pocket. The phone follows. I don’t slow down long enough to explain myself or pretend this is anything other than instinct taking the wheel.
“Ummm,” Grim says in my ear, “I feel like something’s happening.”
I don’t answer.
I launch myself off the stage edge, boots hitting hard, momentum carrying me forward as I shoulder through a service door and burst back into the corridors.
People are still clustered in shock, faces pale, voices loud and overlapping.
I plow straight through them, apologies useless, urgency sharper than courtesy.
I break into a sprint.
My legs burn, arms pumping as I hit open air again, the night thick with heat and noise and movement.
I don’t slow. I step onto the edge of a planter, use it for leverage, and grab the high iron fence.
My body knows what to do. I scale it in one smooth motion and drop cleanly on the other side, landing in a crouch with my fingers brushing pavement.
The assassins are here.
And this is a city that doesn’t sleep.
Dubai’s nightlife is just getting started, streets filling with music and light and people who have no idea how close they are to becoming collateral. That won’t work. Not for me. Not for what’s coming next.
Because I’m going to end this shit. Tonight.
I lift my head and look up.
The tower looms above everything else, a needle of glass and ambition still closed to the public for another two days. Empty. Controlled. Vertical.
The world’s newest tallest building.
“Yeah,” I murmur to myself, already moving again.
“That’ll work.”