43. Ryker
RYKER
Hamilton didn’t flinch at the name Markham. He glanced at the side of his desk. An involuntary pull.
My nerves were on edge.
“Ryker, you’re reaching,” Hamilton said.
I straightened, letting my hands leave the desk. “I’m remembering.” No way in hell would I tell him I learned this information on the dark web. I would protect my resources at all costs. Plus, he might have the ability to change some of the information I’d discovered. I couldn’t take that chance.
My temper flared. I kept it leashed, but it strained hard. I leaned in again, my tone deadly quiet. “I remember a smell. It was sweet. Clean. Medical.”
He flinched, then tried to cover it up. Hamilton’s smile returned, but it didn’t hold the same ease now. “Hospitals smell clean.”
“It wasn’t a hospital.” I gritted my teeth.
His lips parted a breath before he closed them again. He didn’t correct me, but he didn’t deny it.
He recovered fast. “You’re mixing memories. I know about what you went through last year. The attack, the year in the facility to learn to walk and feed yourself again. You’re an amazing man, Ryker, but with that kind of trauma …”
I stared at him. Trauma. So, he wanted to call it that now. Not a missing child or a crime. Trauma. A label. A dismissal. My hands tightened into fists at my sides. I wanted to break something. I wanted to break him for giving me the fucking runaround when this was my life we were talking about.
Instead, I forced my voice steady. “Someone leaned close and told me to breathe. Do you remember that?”
Hamilton’s eyes locked on mine. A beat passed. He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
His silence said more than words.
I took a slow breath and felt rage settle into something colder. “You’re going to give me one useful thing. A name. A place. A paper trail. Something that leads to that scientist.”
Hamilton’s smile reappeared, careful. “I can’t give you what I don’t have.”
“You have it,” I said.
He held my gaze. “And what if I do?”
My fingers tingled, itching to tear him to pieces. “If you do, then you’re going to tell me, or you’re going to meet the maker sooner than you thought.”
Hamilton’s calm slipped enough for me to see what lived underneath. Fear. Not of me. Of whoever he thought still owned him. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
My mouth curled into a sneer. “You brought me to someone. Who?”
Hamilton shook his head. “That’s not what happened.”
“Did you introduce my parents? Were you the one that opened the door when I was missing for four days?”
His nostrils flared. The second crack. Then he shut it down again. “I helped families.”
I nodded. “I have a feeling you also helped yourself.”
Hamilton’s expression tightened.
Something sharp and ugly twisted in my chest. Not just anger, but also grief for my parents. At one time, they had trusted him. When they believed he was safe. When I believed adults were safe.
“You don’t get to pretend you’re innocent. Not with that look on your face when I say medical. Not with the way you knew exactly what I was talking about.”
Hamilton’s smile disappeared completely now.
“Ryker,” he said, softer, “you’re not thinking clearly.”
“I’m thinking clearer than I ever have. Dying does that to a man. I got out of the goddamn hospital bed with clarity.”
His voice went very quiet. “I didn’t take you.”
I didn’t move.
“I didn’t touch you,” he added.
“But you knew who did.”
Hamilton’s eyelids lowered for a moment. A long blink that felt like surrender. Then he looked at me as if he hated himself. “I knew of it.”
My blood turned to ice, but I kept my voice steady. “Who?” I asked.
Hamilton’s lips pressed together. Then he spoke, barely above a whisper.
“Markham,” he said.
The name hit hard. I knew it. I just hadn’t expected to hear Hamilton say it like a confession.
A pressure hit my chest followed by a flash of white light and metal. Breathe. Not fucking now.
My vision narrowed for a second. I forced air into my lungs, slow and deliberate, and kept my attention on Hamilton.
“I knew enough to believe the lie.” His voice frayed at the edges. “That it was research. That it was controlled. That it was for the future of America’s children.”
My hands shook once, barely. I kept them at my sides so he wouldn’t see it. “Say it. Say what you did.”
Hamilton stared at me, and there it was again. Fear. Regret. And a kind of selfish protection that had kept him alive this long. “I made an introduction. That’s all.”
I nodded slowly as certainty settled inside me. An introduction was all it took to ruin a kid.
I stepped back from his desk, forcing my hands open. “You’re going to give me something I can use. A company name. A foundation. A location. A contract. Anything that ties Markham to now.”
Hamilton’s smile tried to come back. It failed. “I can’t. They’ll kill me.”
I watched him. “You’re dead either way, motherfucker. It’s either them or me. You pick.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. He didn’t answer. He didn’t deny it.
“Ryker, your parents are good people. I failed them. Failed you. I’ve looked for a way to make it up to them for a long time.” He licked his lips, fear flashing in his expression. “There’s one thing I can give you, willingly. It might cost me my life, but I owe you that.”
I didn’t give a fuck about his life. I’d already told him the options—them or me. Looks like he’d decided who he wanted holding the gun to his head. “What?”
“I know where Nate is.”
I froze. Alarm bells rang in my ears. Fucking hell, he knew Sloane’s brother. I squared my shoulders. “Is he alive?”
“Yes. I can help you get him back.”
I stormed over to him and wrapped my hand around his goddamn neck. “Why now? What’s in it for you?”
His face turned red beneath my fingers, and I loosened my grip enough to let him talk. “My freedom if I do it right. If not, my death.”
“Keep talking, you sorry son of a bitch.”
“They’ll give him up.” His voice strained. “But you don’t get to set the terms.”
I loosened my grip but didn’t let go entirely as I talked myself out of ending his life right on his pristine floor.
“Who the fuck are they?”
Hamilton pressed his lips into a thin line before he spoke. “Do you want this or not?”
Fucking bastard. “How fast can you set it up?”
I needed a little time to prepare because even I knew that I might not walk away alive after I was able to get Nate back.
“Twenty-four hours. I’ll guarantee both of your safety.”
I dropped my hand. “Call or text me when and where. And if you’re fucking lying, I will gut you and let you bleed out. No one will ever find your body. I promise you that.”
“I swear.”
I turned to leave.
“If you keep pulling,” he said, “you’re going to drag someone else into it even more than she already is.”
My hand tightened on the handle. Sloane’s image flashed in my head. Her eyes. Her voice. That fierce refusal to stay small.
I looked back then.
Hamilton held my gaze. He didn’t say her name. He didn’t have to.
My voice dropped. “Too late.”
And I walked out before he could see what it cost me not to drag him across that pristine desk and make him fucking bleed for every year he’d stolen from my life.