Chapter 41
MARCUS
The forest thins, and then it’s just road again, my tires biting as I swing back toward the city. That has to be where he is. There are no lawns, just concrete. And the few environmental cues I caught all point the same way. It’s an urban building.
I drive on muscle memory, my mind already stripping the problem down to what matters.
He showed me the injection. It was a clear solution, and there was no immediate collapse. She had pinpoint pupils, salivation, and tremors.
Organophosphate.
But not the fast kind, since he wants time. He wants me to count on it.
I call Zebras before I reach the highway. I name what I need and where it’s kept. The response is immediate. It always is.
Atropine. And Pralidoxime, if I can get it fast enough. I run through dosages in my head, recalculating for body weight, delay, and whatever he may have altered. He wouldn’t make it easy, but he wouldn’t improvise either. Drake likes control.
At a stoplight, I force myself to slow my breathing, since panic burns oxygen, and I don’t have any to spare.
If it’s organophosphate, he won’t want unconsciousness right away. He’ll want her aware and to maybe even attempt an escape while her body begins to fail.
Which means he didn’t take her far.
He wouldn’t risk transport time, and he wouldn’t risk witnesses. He’d choose somewhere he can leave her without staying.
I collect the supplies from Zebras and get back on the road. Drake’s wording keeps resurfacing as I choose a direction.
My phone lights up.
I answer before the second ring finishes.
Drake doesn’t bother with greetings. “I wish we had met under different circumstances. You know, with tears and hugs, like a proper reunion you see on TV.”
“Where is she, Drake? You want both of us, so you’ve got to make it easy for me to find her.”
He ignores me.
“You know,” he continues. “During several of her drunker evenings, our mother told me I had a twin. She said she had no choice but to give you up. Our father packed a bag and disappeared with a woman who could afford him, leaving her with two mouths and no future.” He pauses, as if gauging the damage, then adds, “She never claimed to know where you were. She just said, ‘You turned out better, Drakey. You did.’”
I don’t react.
His mouth twists. “It made sense, though, didn’t it? The cripple goes. Easy decision. Practical.”
He shifts closer to the camera. “After years of searching, national television solved the problem for me,” he reveals. “Thanks to Charles Pompeo, of all people. God. It was strange seeing another me hundreds of miles away.”
“You said you wished we’d met under different circumstances,” I say. “Fine. We can sort out our differences later. Right now, tell me where Iris is.”
“Oh, I know how much you want her.” He smiles faintly. “I’m your twin. I know. Or maybe I don’t even need to be your twin to see it.”
He laughs, careless enough that the camera jolts in his grip.
“We’re really alike, Marcus. Even Theo couldn’t tell the difference when I tracked him down as your father. He treated me like you from the start. After that, pretending was just a matter of opportunity.”
“Stop,” I growl.
The camera steadies again, and his eyes don’t leave mine.
“Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it,” he snaps. “Look at you. Lockwood. Surgeon. Savior.”
My teeth grit. “You killed him! You killed my father!”
“He was close to telling you everything. His mind was sometimes as sharp as ever, despite his condition. Whatever drove him to look at that old album.”
“Bastard!” I curse at him.
“But know this, Marcus. I wish I’d been the one given up,” Drake says. “Instead, I got stuck with a woman who aged into uselessness and called it sacrifice while you were taught how to win.” His voice hardens. “You learned how to build. I learned how to wait.”
I force my focus back to the screen. He’s enjoying this. But he’s also pacing something.
“Where is she?” I ask again.
Drake smiles again. But it’s different this time. Anticipatory.
“She’s somewhere everyone agreed to forget,” he says. “Somewhere that the city had already written off.”
He leans closer to the camera.
“Funny thing about places like that,” he continues. “They’re not gone yet. They’re just…standing in the way.”
I don’t react. I don’t give him the satisfaction.
He chuckles. “You’ll get another hint. When you earn it.”
Then the call ends.
He chose those words.
Written off. It’s administrative language. Budgets, permits, and decisions that were made on paper long before anything falls down.
Standing in the way. Somewhere not concealed and not protected. An inconvenience.
My mind maps the city the way I’d scan a chart, combing for places no one checks and something marked for removal, but still upright.
Finally, I figure out the place. I know where he’s hiding her.
The demolition site is quiet when I reach it.
Equipment sits where the crews left it, with the cranes parked, the fencing half open, and the warning signs posted and ignored.
Work hours are over. There are no lights and no movement, which makes it easier to get in. And easier for someone to disappear.
I park a block away and take the rest on foot.
The gate is chained, and I’m already through when my phone lights up.
I answer.
“Good,” Drake says. “You found the place.”
I don’t respond. I just keep moving.
He continues, “This was going to be your miracle, wasn’t it? Broken bones. Broken kids. I thought it fit. I wouldn’t mind taking that mantle and continuing your noble work.”
“Then take me, not her.”
“She knows the difference! The Hunts, well, they’ll find out eventually, but by then, I will have done the damage they can’t reverse.”
Floodlights cast hard shadows across broken concrete as I cross the yard and step into the shell of the building.
Ten stories stripped to the bone, the stairwells exposed, and the floors marked with spray paint, showing numbers, arrows, and NO ACCESS warnings written by people who won’t be here when the structure comes down.
“She’s not high,” Drake says lightly. “Never was.”
Below-grade, then.
I angle toward the service stairs, taking them two at a time. My phone signal dips, then stabilizes again, but I keep it in my hand anyway. I need the last breadcrumb he’ll give me.
“You remember what kept the place running?” he asks. “Before anyone cared what it looked like?”
Utilities.
I reach the first sublevel and stop. The air changes here. It’s cooler and damp, and it’s filled with the smell of old iron and standing water. Pipes run along the ceiling like arteries no one bothered to remove.
“She needed space to move,” Drake adds.
My signal flickers, and the call drops as I start down the next flight.
There are no bars down here, which means Drake would’ve made his calls elsewhere. Iris was brought here after.
From where she started, he could watch me, guide me, and adjust. But down here, he loses that advantage, so he wouldn’t risk it unless he no longer needed eyes on me.
Which means she’s close.
The lower level opens into a wide mechanical corridor filled with rusted pipes, old gauges, and doors bolted shut decades ago that were never reopened. I move slowly now, counting breaths and listening past my own footsteps.
Boiler room doors are heavier than the rest as they’re reinforced and meant to stay closed when things go wrong.
I don’t force the first one. And I don’t force the second either.
The third one, however, gives with a groan that echoes longer than I like.
Inside, the room is half-stripped. The walls are scarred where the equipment was torn out. A few columns are still standing, and they’re load-bearing and untouched. Dust coats everything in a fine layer, and it’s disturbed in one place only.
I see her shoes first.
They’re discarded, with one on its side like it slipped off unexpectedly.
I move faster.
Iris is on the floor near the far wall. She’s on her side with her knees drawn in, her arms slack at angles. There are no restraints, as though she’d been placed there and forgotten. Christ. I’ll fucking break his face for this.
I drop beside her, already working through what I see. Her breathing is shallow but present. Her skin is damp, her pupils are tight, and saliva pools at the corner of her mouth. The tremor in her fingers is worse now, harder to control.
“I’m here,” I say in a low voice close to her ear. “Stay with me.”
Her eyes flutter, and focus comes and goes.
By the light of my phone, I draw up the atropine and run the calculations in my head, considering the elapsed time, her body weight, and the way Drake held the syringe. He wouldn’t overdose. He’d want deterioration, not collapse. Just enough to let fear do the rest.
The problem is that atropine leaves no room for error. Too little does nothing. But too much and I push her into a different kind of failure. I have an antidote, but I also have the knowledge that it could kill her.
My thumb rests against the injector. I feel my pulse there, loud and insistent, as if delivering a last warning. If I’m wrong, there’s no correction window. No second attempt.
I make the decision.
Because if I hesitate now, then she dies slowly. And I don’t survive that.
I brace her as best as I can with one arm behind her shoulders, pulling her close to me so she won’t hit the concrete when her body reacts. Her skin is clammy and too warm, trembling under my hands.
I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in.
“I should’ve found another way,” I quaver. “I should have never let him touch you.” My voice breaks despite my efforts. “If I fail you, then I’m not walking out either.”
I draw a breath like it might be my last.
“I’ll see you on the other side if I’m wrong,” I say softly.
Then I administer the dose.
Her body jolts violently, a gasp tearing out of her like her lungs are arguing with her own body. I tighten my hold, absorbing the movement and murmuring her name and anything that might keep her here.
Her breathing comes uneven at first, then it stutters into something that almost resembles a rhythm. I pull back just enough to see her face.
Her eyes are open, but they’re too wide, searching and confused.
She tries to shove at my chest, weak but determined, panic flashing across her features like she’s seeing a stranger where safety should be.
“No,” she rasps, barely audible. “No—”
“It’s me. Marcus,” I say quickly, holding her steady. “I’m here.”
She freezes.
Her gaze sharpens, her focus snapping into place inch by inch. Recognition hits her harder than the drug ever could, and her hand curls into my shirt, her fingers twitching, then gripping.
“Marcus,” she breathes.
“I’ve got you,” I say.
But the relief is short-lived.
A groan rolls through the room, deep and structural. Dust shakes loose from the ceiling, pattering against the concrete around us, and somewhere behind me, metal shrieks, settling into a new, worse alignment.
I turn.
The doorway I came through is no longer a doorway because the concrete has slumped inward. It’s not a clean collapse. It’s engineered.
Drake didn’t just leave her here. He prepared the place to finish the job.
Iris feels it too, and her grip tightens. “What—what was that?”
“Stay with me,” I say, already scanning the room for load-bearing columns and old vents. Anything that looks like it might connect to somewhere else.
Another tremor runs through the floor.
We’re not just trapped. We’re on borrowed time.
I help her sit up despite her body’s delayed response. “Can you move your legs?”
She nods. “I think so.”
“All right,” I say, keeping my hand on her back until her balance holds. “We do this together.”
Because Drake may have set the board.
But as long as she’s breathing, the game isn’t over.
And I’m not done fighting for her yet.