Chapter 25 #2
“He knows about Coop and me.” My legs felt unsteady. “Oliver broke in here. He found that box—and that told him the truth about Coop and me. The real history. Not the cover story about finding me at the barn. He knows Coop lied.”
“Mia, are you sure? Maybe—”
“Nothing else is missing. Just the one thing that proves Coop and I have a connection. Not just a connection but an intimate and important past.” The words came faster, the panic breaking through. “If Oliver knows that, he knows Coop lied about everything. About claiming me. About the whole cover.”
And Coop had walked back into Oliver’s operation this morning.
I lurched toward the kitchen, nearly tripping over boxes we’d packed. My phone. I needed my phone. Travis was the only one who could reach him—the only one with the equipment, the connections, the ability to do anything from his fortress of screens and satellites.
I found my phone on the counter. My fingers were clumsy, uncooperative. I nearly dropped it twice pulling up the number Coop had programmed in before he left.
For emergencies, he’d said. Just in case.
This was just in case. This was the worst case.
One ring. Two.
“Mia?” Travis’s voice came through sharp, alert.
“Oliver knows.” I couldn’t slow down, couldn’t organize the words into proper sentences. “My apartment—he broke in—there was a box, letters from when Coop and I dated six years ago, and it’s gone. He took it. He knows about us, the real us, not the cover story. He knows Coop lied—”
“When?” He was typing already, rapid keystrokes through the phone. He didn’t make me justify my concerns. If anything, Travis was way more paranoid than me. “When did this happen?”
“I don’t know. Recently. But the box is gone and it’s the only thing missing, and Coop is back there right now and—”
“I’m alerting the team.” His flat, professional tone interrupted my spiral. The voice of someone who’d handled impossible situations for agencies that didn’t officially exist. “Beckett, Hunter, everyone. We’ll get him out.”
“You have to hurry.” My free hand gripped the counter, knuckles white. “If Oliver figured it out before Coop got there. Oh God, you guys were talking about how this buy was unusual. What if Oliver—”
“Already moving. You two need to get back here. Now. Don’t stop anywhere.”
“We’re leaving.”
“Mia.” Something in his tone made me pause. “We’ll get him out. I need you to drive and let me work.”
The call ended.
I looked at Lark. “We have to go. Right now.”
We left everything. Half-packed boxes, garbage bags on the floor, the scattered contents of my closet strewn across the bedroom carpet. None of it mattered anymore.
We ran to the car, and I drove way faster than was safe. My hands gripped the wheel too tightly, knuckles white. Lark sat rigid in the passenger seat, watching the road like she could make the miles pass faster through sheer will.
The highway opened up ahead of us. Empty Montana landscape stretching toward mountains. Sky darkening at the edges as evening crept in.
My whole body hummed with a fear that had no outlet. Every mile felt like an hour. All I could think about was Coop walking into Oliver’s compound, not knowing—
The impact came out of nowhere.
A wall of force that slammed into the back of the car and ripped the world sideways. Lark screaming. My hands torn from the wheel. The car spinning, leaving the road, and then—
Metal shrieking. The car rolling. Rolling again. The roof pressing down on my skull, crushing in inch by inch—
Glass exploded around us. Airbags punched into my chest and side, driving the air from my lungs. White powder everywhere.
—my legs pinned beneath the crumpled dashboard, blood running warm down my face—
The car stopped moving. Or I thought it did. Everything was still spinning inside my head.
—four hours trapped in the cold, screaming until my voice gave out, no one coming—
I tried to breathe. Powder coated my tongue, my throat. The taste of chemicals and copper.
—metal groaning as it compressed, the space getting smaller, knowing I was going to die—
No, that wasn’t right. I wasn’t alone this time. “Lark.” The word scraped out broken. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open. “Lark?”
A groan. Somewhere beside me. Alive. She was alive.
My phone. I needed to call for help—
Gone. The phone was gone. Thrown somewhere in the impact, lost in the wreckage.
—the smell of gasoline, sharp and terrifying, and no way to get out—
The smell hit me now. Fuel. Leaking somewhere. My fingers fumbled for the door handle, slipping on blood I couldn’t see.
—clawing at the window, at the twisted metal, at anything—
The door ripped open.
But not from inside. From outside.
Hands grabbed me. Rough. Efficient. Hauling me from the crumpled car before I could process what was happening. Was it paramedics? Had they gotten here this fast? That couldn’t be right.
I caught a glimpse of the face above me. Blood running from a cut on his forehead. Expression flat, empty, betraying nothing. The same dead stare I’d seen at Oliver’s compound. Watching everything. Giving nothing away.
Bishop.
“I think I owe you for my broken nose. My chance will come when Oliver is finished with you.”
Something bit into my neck. Sharp and sudden. The sting of a needle breaking skin.
I had one last moment of clarity. One flash of understanding—what this meant, what Oliver had planned, what was coming for Coop. A scream built in my throat, but my mouth wouldn’t work anymore. My limbs went heavy. The world smeared at the edges.
Then the darkness swallowed everything.