Fuse (Cerberus Personal Security #4)

Chapter 1

ONE

Talia

STATISTICAL PROBABILITY

Victor Lawson is twenty-three minutes late, and in my world, that means he’s probably dead.

The café’s ambient noise—clinking cups, muted conversations, the hiss of the espresso machine—should provide perfect acoustic cover.

Instead, each sound sharpens into a threat variable.

The ceramic strike of a saucer hitting a table mimics the click of a hammer locking back.

A sudden burst of steam masks the scuff of approaching footsteps.

My fingers trace the edge of my phone, tapping a silent, nervous rhythm against the case. I’m ready to call the FBI contact who might be our only hope. If Victor’s still alive. If they haven’t found him. If my calculations about corporate assassination aren’t about to become deadly accurate.

Last night’s conversation replays on a loop, a corrupted file I can’t close.

“They know, Talia. They’re watching me.” Victor’s voice crackled through the phone in panicked bursts, the frequencies clipped by poor reception. “I was followed from the lab. They’ve been parked outside my apartment all night.”

My throat tightened—the familiar constriction that arrives when variables shift too fast.

“Are you certain? Coincidences happen, and in a city this size—”

“It’s not a coincidence.” The certainty in his voice makes the hair on my arms stand up, even in memory. “Black sedan. Tinted windows. Same one from yesterday and the day before.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m at my sister’s place across town. She’s out of the country, but I have a key.”

“Here’s what we’re going to do.” I kept my voice steady, professional, forcing the tremor in my hand to still.

Probability calculations spiraled through my mind, assessing risk vectors.

“Meet me at the Westlake Coffee Shop on Third. I have a contact at the FBI—James Morrison. He can help with protection.”

“You think this is really that serious?”

The fear in his voice was a physical weight, transmitted through cellular towers into my apartment, where my very recent ex-boyfriend’s boxes still lined the hallway like tombstones.

“Seventy-three deaths and a pharmaceutical company willing to cover them up? Yes, Victor. It’s that serious. Bring the drive.”

“Okay.”

Eight months ago, Meridian began human trials for ML-273—their “miracle” cancer drug. Initial results were promising, the kind that make stockholders salivate and executives order champagne.

According to Victor, kidney and liver damage appeared in the first trial phase, but management pressured the research team to exclude the data points.

Statistical outliers, they called them. By the third phase, the outliers became the norm.

Patients were dying. Organ failure. Massive internal bleeding. Hearts simply stopping.

Victor documented everything. Seventy-three fatalities that Meridian buried in paperwork, falsified results, and pushed for FDA approval anyway.

“I’ve created a database tracking every death,” Victor told me three weeks ago. “Names, dates, autopsy results. The evidence is irrefutable.”

“The families—do they know?”

“Meridian paid them off. NDAs so thick you’d need a forklift. But the patterns …” His voice cracked. “You can’t hide patterns from someone trained to see them.”

My hand tightens around my teacup until the ceramic bites into my palm.

Mint steam curls into my face, sharp and grounding, but it can’t mask the underlying scent of the café: burnt coffee.

Bitter, acrid, institutional. Someone ordered a dark roast and left it too long on the warming plate. It smells like a mistake.

A mother at the next table wrestles twin toddlers while texting someone who isn’t responding fast enough—the frustrated thumb jabs give it away.

Her engagement ring catches the light, but a paler band of skin rings her finger beside it.

Recent removal of the wedding band. The way she touches that spot creates a somatic loop of guilt. Affair, probably.

Or abandonment.

The businessman in the corner reeks of cologne—something expensive and recently applied. Too much for a regular workday. Job interview. His hand gestures are rehearsed, his pulse visible in his neck as he checks his watch. High anxiety.

The barista has dark circles under her eyes and keeps checking her phone between orders. The pattern—quick glance, forced smile for customers, back to phone—reads personal crisis, not professional negligence.

I process these details automatically, cataloging patterns and anomalies. It’s not a choice. It’s an operating system.

“You don’t experience life, Talia. You dissect it.”

Nathan’s voice slithers through my thoughts. Three years of his observations, his critiques, his careful dismantling of who I am. Last night’s fight echoes in my skull.

“You’re like a computer pretending to be human,” he said, standing in our bathroom—my bathroom now—while I packed his toothbrush. “Every response calculated for optimal outcome. Every emotion filtered through some probability matrix.”

“That’s not—” My fingers fumbled with the toiletry bag, dropping the zipper pull.

“It is.” He stepped closer. His cologne, usually pleasant, became sharp in the small space. Invading. Claiming territory one last time. “Three years, Talia. Three years of living with someone who processes feelings like data points.”

I exhale slowly, shoving the memory into a mental subfolder. Delete.

Focus on Victor. He’s never late. The man sets his watch to the atomic clock. Twenty-three minutes constitutes a massive deviation.

My gaze tracks across the café for the twentieth time.

Three laptops glow at separate tables, their owners hunched over screens, islands of isolation.

A man in a gray suit scrolls through his phone.

The barista with a rose tattoo climbing her collarbone leans against the counter, attention flicking between customers and the clock above the door.

Outside, late-afternoon light casts long shadows across rain-slick pavement. A delivery truck idles at the curb, hazard lights creating rhythmic orange pulses. Across the street, a black SUV sits in a no-parking zone.

Tinted windows. Engine running. Exhaust pumping a gray cloud into the cool air. No driver visible. A parking ticket curls beneath the wiper, rain-spotted and ignored.

Anomaly.

Everything about that vehicle screams wrong.

A cyclist coasts past, head ducked against the wind. Two teenagers laugh near the corner, sharing earbuds, oblivious to everything beyond their bubble of youth and music.

Movement snags my peripheral vision.

Victor. Finally.

He darts down the sidewalk across the street like prey that knows the predator is upwind. His usual professorial shuffle is gone, replaced by quick, jerky movements. Shoulders hunched against more than cold. The messenger bag he clutches against his ribs might as well be welded there.

Our eyes meet through the glass.

Relief softens his features for a heartbeat. He lifts a hand.

The cup burns against my palms. I set it down carefully, deliberately. No sudden movements. Nothing to draw attention. My heart hammers a frantic rhythm against my ribs, entirely at odds with my still hands.

Victor steps off the curb and into the crosswalk.

The SUV’s engine roars.

No.

The word dies in my constricted throat—lost in the sudden scream of tires. The vehicle launches forward. Zero to forty in the span of a breath. No horn. No brake lights. Just mechanical violence given purpose.

Time fractures.

The meaty crack of steel striking bone echoes through the glass. A sound, wet and ruinous, physics winning against biology.

Victor pinwheels through the air. The messenger bag tears free. Papers explode like startled birds, white confetti raining down on a murder.

His body hits the asphalt with a wet slap that silences the street.

Behind me, sharp gasps. Ceramic shattering on tile. A child’s piercing scream. The mother clutches her twins, pressing their faces into her chest to shield them from the data.

The SUV fishtails. Corrects. Vanishes around the corner. Tires squeal. The stench of burning rubber floods through the door as someone rushes out. Chemical and acrid. It tastes like violence.

I’m already moving. My legs obey before my brain finishes the calculation.

Blood spreads beneath Victor’s skull in an expanding crimson lake.

The metallic tang hits my nostrils—copper and iron, sharp enough to make my stomach heave.

His left leg bends at an angle that defies anatomy.

Bone pierces skin just above the knee. White stark against red.

The raw meat smell of exposed marrow rises in waves.

I drop into the slush beside him. My fingers find his carotid, slipping on sweat and rain. A weak flutter against my fingertips.

Still alive.

Barely.

His eyes swim into focus, pupils blown wide with shock.

“The drive.” Blood bubbles on his lips, pink foam. Punctured lung. “Inner pocket … Messenger bag … Hidden seam …”

My hands move. Checking vitals is useless—the damage is catastrophic—but I do it anyway because the alternative is screaming. Coffee-stained notebook splayed open. Pages fluttering in the wind. Laptop with a spiderweb crack across the screen. The messenger bag lies three feet away.

“Take it. Run.” His fingers claw at my wrist with strength that defies his injuries, nails digging into my skin. “They’ll come—for you next.”

Pressure builds in my throat. Words trapped behind the constriction.

“Don’t talk.” My voice sounds thin, distant. Inside, calculations spiral: survival rate with these injuries is less than one percent. Response time for paramedics in this neighborhood is four to six minutes. Too long.

His grip tightens, bones grinding under skin. “Promise … Evidence—gets out.”