Chapter 60 #2
The transfer starts immediately. Files begin to populate, lines of data stacking over each other as everything copies over.
I watch just long enough to catch the structure.
Names. Numbers. Threads layered over threads.
Patterns start to push through the noise.
Routes. Timing. Conversations that cut off too clean or redirect too fast.
The realization hits.
Grant didn’t just disappear from the gala. He could have doubled back. He may not have even been here to begin with.
Brooke.
Her face hits me without warning. The way she cups my face like she is holding me together with her hands. The sound of her voice when the screen goes black. The way she stays steady for me when everything else collapses.
I left her alone.
The chair scrapes loudly as I stand, the sound cutting through the room and echoing off marble and glass. I step over bodies without looking down, my focus narrowing until there is only one thing left that matters.
Then I hear it.
Sirens.
Faint at first, buried under the ringing in my ears, but they build fast. Too fast.
They are closer than they should be.
Luke tilts his head, listening with a grin that spreads slow and wide. “You should stay. Finish it. Maybe go out in a blaze of glory.”
I ignore him.
My brain shifts.
Everything inside me snaps into something colder, cleaner. I move fast without rushing, scanning the room, tracking sightlines, exits, angles. The main entrance is exposed. The side corridors will already be compromised once they breach.
There is a service hallway behind the bar.
I move toward it, stepping through blood and broken glass, keeping low. My boots leave prints, but it doesn't matter anymore. The scene is already beyond saving.
The sirens cut closer.
Doors slam somewhere down the hall. Voices cut through the noise, sharp and closing in.
“Clear the perimeter.”
“Move, move.”
They're here.
I slip into the service corridor and press myself into the shadow behind a structural column, just out of direct sight from the main hall entrance. My breathing slows on instinct, my grip on the shotgun loosening just enough to stay silent.
The ballroom doors burst open.
Officers flood in.
They move with precision, weapons raised as they sweep the room. One of them halts mid-step, and even from here I see the exact moment it registers the bodies and how many there are.
“Jesus Christ,” someone mutters.
“Call it in,” another says. “We’ve got multiple DOAs. This is a mass casualty.”
They spread out, stepping carefully through the blood, checking pulses that aren't there, calling out positions, confirming what I already know.
One of them reaches Victor Voss.
“Victim is—” He stops. “Fuck. That’s Voss.”
The name carries.
It changes the tone immediately.
“Get this locked down,” someone else says. “No one in or out. We need—”
I move.
While they focus forward, I slip back through the service corridor, silent, controlled, using the noise they are making to cover my exit. I don't rush. I don't hesitate. I move like I was never here.
By the time they realize what they are looking at, I'm already gone.
I step outside into the cold air and keep walking until I reach the car.
My hands are steady when I open the door, but the moment I sit behind the wheel, the adrenaline starts to shake loose inside my chest.
I pull away from the building and drive.
I don't remember leaving the city. I remember the road. Headlights cutting through darkness. My hands locked on the wheel while mile after mile stretches out in front of me.
Eventually the traffic disappears and the buildings thin out.
The world begins to feel abandoned.
I pull into the empty lot of a closed gas station and shut off the engine.
For a moment I just sit there, breathing.
I reach into my pocket and pull out my burner phone. It's clean, and no one has the number. Not Brooke, not Beau, not Travis, and nothing ties it back to them.
My hands still shake as I dial Brooke first. It rings once, then twice, then a third time before the call drops with no answer.
I hang up and dial again, faster this time, like that will change something.
It doesn't.
I switch to Beau, but the call rings out and ends without an answer. I stare at the screen for a beat before tapping Travis’s number.
It rings once before he picks up.
“Travis,” I cut in, my voice sharp and tight. “Where is Brooke?”
There is a pause.
“Seth, where are you?” Travis asks, his words coming fast now. “You ran out in the middle of the night. We’ve been trying to—”
“Where is Brooke?” I repeat, louder this time. “She’s not answering her phone.”
I hear him exhale.
“They left.”
My chest drops.
“They left?” My grip tightens around the phone. “Where the fuck did they go?”
“They went to look for Grant.”
My stomach twists.
“At the gala? I’m here right now. He’s not here.”
“They didn’t go to the gala,” Travis sighs.
Then—
“They went to the Grant family estate.”
My pulse spikes.
“Where is it?” I demand. “Send it. Now.”
“I don’t have the exact address yet,” Travis replies. “I’m still pulling it. They moved fast. I barely caught it before they were gone.”
“Did they check in?”
“No. Nothing since they left. Phones are either off or out of range.”
A cold pressure settles in my chest.
“Then find it,” I snap.
“I am,” he says. “But if they’re already there, you’re not going to beat them. You need to get back here so we can track them properly.”
I don’t answer right away.
Because he’s right.
If I drive blind, I lose them completely. If I go back, I get eyes, access, control.
I hang up.
Luke appears beside me like he has always been there, watching.
He smiles.
“Perfect. Now you get to find out what it feels like to be too late again.”
I’m already moving.
The engine roars to life. Tires scream against asphalt as I turn the car around too hard, too fast.
I drive like I can outrun what is coming. Like I can still get there in time. Like I have not already been too late once tonight. I don’t know what I am going to find when I get there.
I only know I can’t be late again.