Chapter 26
Cade
When the overhead lights die, my vision doesn’t need to adjust. It just drops straight back into the cold, familiar grid of a close-quarters engagement. Everything in my brain stops dead, replaced by the easy metrics of muscle memory.
I have all of my weight driven straight into Clayton’s chest, my left knee pinning his shoulder into the rug while my good leg locks his hips down.
He’s a big man, running on the blind, desperate adrenaline of a cornered animal, his boots kicking wild against the baseboards.
He manages to get a hand inside my collar, his fingers ripping the cotton of my shirt, his knuckles hitting my jaw in a blind, sloppy arc.
Fucking bastard.
I don’t feel the blow. My right-hand shoots through the dark, my fingers locking around his throat, my thumb driving deep into the soft tissue right beneath his jawline until his breath turns into a wet, rattling wheeze.
But I also don’t want this to end too soon.
The only illumination in the entire bedroom is the flash of the monitor on Sadie’s ankle, casting a pulsing halo across Clayton’s bleeding face every five seconds.
In the strobe of the light, I can see his eyes rolling back, his mouth opening to scream for help, but the air cuts off before the sound can clear his teeth.
My right calf is screaming, the snakebite venom burning like acid through the muscle fibers from the strain, but I ignore it. I raise my left fist, my knuckles split and slick with his blood, preparing to deliver the final, crushing blow to his temple.
As I take a breath, I remember the promise I made to her beneath the window.
I’ll keep you safe. But I don’t make the same promise for myself.
I’m entirely prepared to finish it. To put this fucker down right on his own floorboards. But then Sadie screams, a blood-curdling, frightening sound. As it ends, I hear the pops.
They’re barely audible. But I know what they are.
Beneath my knees, Clayton’s entire frame goes instantly slack, and blood splatters across my face. The violent heaving of his chest dies, his hands dropping away from my throat to slap against the floorboards. Two neat, smoking holes are there in his skull.
I freeze, my fist still suspended in the air, my breath tearing through my lungs.
And my chest goes painfully tight.
He’s here. He’s fucking here.
A sharp, high-intensity flashlight beam cuts through the open doorway, pinning my face in its white, blinding glare. The hallway current hitches, the bulbs flickering back to life, casting a haze over the ruined bedroom.
“You always did have a sloppy way about things, Kellan,” a voice drawls from the threshold. The voice is so well-balanced, and so goddamn familiar, it aches.
Ben Knight steps into the room. His hair gleams under the hall light, his black T-shirt dripping rain onto the floor, his face expressionless. The suppressed pistol in his right hand stays level, pointed dead center at my sternum.
I stay on my knees over Clayton’s cooling body, my hands smeared with his blood, looking straight down the black barrel of the weapon.
“Ben,” I deadpan, expecting a speech. The man won’t go out without one.
“Get off the casualty, Sergeant,” Ben says, his blue eyes shifting down to Clayton’s face for a fraction of a second before locking back onto my forehead. “You’re making a mess of an already very untidy file.”
I shift my weight, my bad leg popping as I drop my hips back onto my heels, keeping my hands open and visible at my sides. “You shot him.”
“He was a local liability,” Ben says, his tone entirely conversational, like we’re back on the ridge outside Carson City.
“He was running a corrupt grid, altering state reports, and making entirely too much noise with the feds circling the county looking for you. He was going to kill your little friend here, and then I’d have to track you through a flooded draw. This is better, don’t you think?”
“And what about me?” I ask, my eyes narrowing. I can’t bring myself to look in the direction of Sadie. I can’t imagine her seeing this, even though I know she is.
“You could die to the responding marshals three miles down the highway,” Ben replies, his finger tightening just a fraction against the trigger.
“Or you could die right here on this rug. The math works out the same either way. You’re a true liability, Cade.
Bradford couldn’t even help you, Turner Martin couldn’t manage to put you down, but I don’t leave dead files open on my desk. ”
From the corner of the room, near the shattered dresser, a sharp intake of breath cuts through the space. Sadie steps forward into the light, her face pale, the bloody fence pliers still gripped tightly in her hand.
“Please don’t do this,” she says, her voice trembling but her eyes leveled straight at Ben’s throat. “I… I need him.”
Ben doesn’t even turn his head to look at her. He keeps the barrel locked on my chest. “Stay back, Mrs. Briggs. The folder I brought yesterday will remain with you as a courtesy to ensure your freedom. Don’t ruin your own salvation out of sentimentality.”
I look at Ben, his eyes flickering with something like my own mirror.
“You won’t pull that trigger, Ben,” I say, my voice dropping. “You couldn’t pull the trigger on me in Lubbock. You couldn’t do it when you unlocked that gate. And you won’t be able to do it now.”
Ben’s expression flickers with pure professional disappointment. “Is that the manic episode talking, Sergeant? Because we both know I’ve pulled it for less.”
“No sir,” I say, shaking my head. “The smoke cleared out of my eyes three days ago. I know exactly what I am. I’m a broken machine.
I love fire, and I love the drop. But I know you, Ben.
I know your code of ethics. I know the personal manifestos you used to scream in my ear while the dogs were howling in the hollow.
You don’t kill your own. Not with your own hand. ”
Ben stays silent, his chest rising and falling slowly.
“I know you’d feel the weight of my death, Ben,” I tell him, holding his razor-blade gaze without a single blink.
“Because I’d feel the weight of yours. We built that ridge together.
You pulled me out of the line because you thought we were a team.
You thought we were taking out the assholes who didn’t deserve to live. You kill me, you’re just like them.”
“You became a liability when you killed Rodriguez and Wheaton, Cade,” Ben says, losing his clinical edge for the first time. “You lost control.”
“Yeah, I did,” I shoot back, my chin tilting up, defiant. “And someday, you’ll figure out what causes you to lose control. And then figure out what brings it back. It’s just a process.”
Ben shifts his weight. “Interesting concept.”
“I…” My voice trails off, and I look back over my shoulder at Sadie. I take in the growing bruise on her collarbone, the blood on her pliers, and the beautiful, terrifying look in her blue eyes.
I shift back at Ben.
“I think I love her, Ben,” I confess, my chest feeling heavy.
“I love her more than the fire. More than the drop. I’m not running from my fate anymore, but she isn’t taking the blame for this county’s rot.
That file won’t stop them from coming for her.
If you’re going to close the file, you have to put the bullet through both of us, because I’m not letting her go. ”
Sadie gasps, her arms instantly wrapping around herself, eyes blown wide.
She doesn’t know Ben like I do.
Ben Knight scrutinizes me. He searches my face, looking for the twitch in my jaw, the manic static in my eyes, or the blind, unhinged instability that Bradford defined in his textbook evaluations.
But he’s not going to find that. Because I don’t fucking feel it.
Slowly, the barrel of the suppressed pistol drops an inch. Then two. Ben lets out a short, defeated breath that sounds almost like a laugh, his lips twitching as he lowers the gun completely to his side.
“You always were a stubborn bastard, Kellan,” Ben mutters, shaking his head as he steps fully into the room. He looks over at Sadie, his eyes scanning her bare ring finger, then tracks back to me. “You’re an absolute idiot, you know that? Love makes a man weak. It makes you predictable.”
“Or it made me stay on my feet,” I say, rising slow from the floor, my bad calf locking down but holding my weight.
Ben turns his flashlight glare straight down onto the orange flashing light of the plastic housing around Sadie’s left ankle.
“Well,” Ben says, letting out a sigh. “Let’s get that shit off her leg.”