48. Ellie
ELLIE
The coffee is cold, but I drink it anyway, needing the caffeine hit.
The kitchen island is covered in the same maps from last night, the edges curling under the weight of my laptop.
Killian is standing by the window, watching the treeline, his hand resting on the hilt of the knife at his belt. He hasn't moved in twenty minutes.
The intimacy from a few hours ago feels like a hallucination. Or a dream I’ve been ripped out of, leaving my skin still aching for a heat that’s already gone cold. There's just the heavy, electric smell of an impending storm and the suffocating knowledge that the wait is almost over.
"We’re moving Julian at first light. Gabe hasn't radioed in. He’s ten minutes past his window. Something’s wrong..."
I nod, my fingers tracing the rim of the mug. My knuckles are still sore from where I gripped the headboard. "If we move him now, we're exposed. We have no eyes on the back road, and Julian is dead weight if we have to run."
"Kai and Jackson are scouting the north roads. They were supposed to check in once they cleared the county line," he says, his hand tightening on the knife hilt. "But they’re late. And Gabe... Gabe should have been back ten minutes ago."
I look at the monitor bank and the screens go white, then black. The signal dies in a wash of white noise before the feeds go completely dark. My stomach bottoms out. Oh, fuck.
"Killian!" My voice is high and tight with panic. In the dark, I can feel the phantom weight of the zip-ties cutting into my wrists. They’re coming to take me back. To finish what they started.
"They're inside," I whisper.
Then the power cuts for good. The fridge stops humming, the lamps go out, and I can’t see my own hands in front of my face. I hear the heavy, metallic slide as Killian clears the island, his hand slamming onto my shoulder to shove me toward the floor.
"Get down, Ellie. Now."
The island cracks. Not the sound of glass, but the heavy, bone-deep vibration of a round burying itself in the marble inches from my head.
It leaves my ears ringing, a piercing buzz that drowns out everything else.
I'm on my knees, the breath leaving me in a ragged wheeze as I scramble for the gap by the dishwasher, glass stinging my back and the freezing night air hitting my skin for the first time.
One monitor above us flickers to life on the backup battery, a high-pitched whine cutting through the silence. It’s bathed in a sickly green night-vision glow.
On the screen, I see Julian's face suddenly lighting up with relief as the first sounds of the attack reach him downstairs. He stands near the bars, his expression smug, already waiting for the rescue he thinks he’s earned.
Even through the speaker, I can hear the basement door being kicked off its hinges.
Two men in tactical gear step into the frame, weapons lowered.
They clear a path for a third man. He’s older, with sharp silver hair and a dark suit that looks out of place against the grey basement walls.
He doesn't look like a soldier, but the way the others move around him makes the hierarchy clear.
He stands in the center of the basement, hands clasped behind his back, watching Julian with complete and absolute indifference.
Julian stands. He’s leaning into the bars, hands reaching through the gaps.
The man in the suit raises a suppressed pistol. A single, dull thud vibrates through the speaker.
The impact shoves Julian back. His head wrenches back as he hits the wall. A spray of black liquid hits the floor, and he slides down, leaving a thick, dark streak. He hits the tiles and stays there. The man holsters the gun and walks out.
"I know that face," I whisper, my voice barely making it past the tight knot in my throat. I can't look away from the monitor, trying to scrape my mind for where I’ve seen him before. The silver hair, it’s a memory buried under a decade of dust, but it won't come clear. "I know him. Why do I know him?"
Killian wrenches me down by the shoulder, his fingers digging into my collarbone.
"I know him," he whispers, his voice thick with a dread I've never heard from him before.
He stares at the silver-haired figure on the screen as if he's seeing his own ghost. "Of course.
Of course it's him. I should have fucking known. I’ve seen him at every induction, every major brief.
He was always standing in the corner while Julian played king.
I thought he was just a driver. A fucking fixer.
" He looks at me, something hollow behind his eyes.
"But Julian answered directly to him. He's Genesis, Ellie.
Anton Reeves. If he just put a bullet in the man he was using as a front, they're burning everything down. No survivors.
"They're erasing us," I whisper.
I stop breathing without realizing it, the air in my throat suddenly turning to ice.
It’s a chore to swallow, the realization cutting through me before I can even find a way to breathe.
I stare at the man on the screen. I’ve seen him before.
Think. A familiar face from the edges of my father's life that I can’t quite pull into the light.
I finally look away from the monitor, my eyes locking onto the back of Killian's head as he watches the dark.
A needle-prick of light from the treeline.
The window vanishes before the sound even hits us.
The shot sounds like a crack of thunder.
It’s a deafening boom that shakes the house.
Killian hits the marble island and sags, his boots scuffing through the glass.
Time seems to stand still, the seconds stretching until the only thing left is the rhythmic pat, pat, pat of blood hitting the tile.
His shirt is already black, the stain seeping down his ribs and dripping onto the floor.
"Killian!" I scream, my voice full of panic.
I can hear it. I suck in a breath that tastes like copper as he pins himself against the stone, eyes wide and locked on mine.
He drags his gaze down to look at his own chest and pulls in a heavy, rattling lungful.
Air leaks through the wound in a wet, gurgling whistle.
My hands are moving before my mind can even catch up, but they aren't steady. I’m losing my fucking mind.
I should be thinking about entry wounds and pressure points, anything to stop the bleeding that is ever-growing on the floor.
The doctor in me is being drowned out by the girl who doesn't know how to exist without him.
I know the mechanics, his lung is collapsing, blood filling the space where the air should be.
Shit. Not him. Not like this. I crawl toward him, the glass shredding my palms, but I don't even feel it.
My vision narrowing until my fingers are fumbling in the slick heat of his shirt, searching for a reason to hope.
All I can hear is the spitting hiss-shuck of his chest trying to pull air through a hole that shouldn't be there.
He tries to fire back, his shoulders bunching as he forces himself upright against the island, but his hand is too slick with his own blood to hold the weight of the gun.
The weapon slips and clatters to the tile as his strength falters.
He collapses onto the glass covered floor, his boots skidding through the shards as he fights the floor for traction.
I grab the front of his vest and haul him around to the safe side of the marble, his body a dead weight that smears red across the tile behind him.
More gunshots come, the rounds are already chewing up the drywall above us.
I’m not strong enough to do this, but I’m doing it anyway, my heels sliding until we hit the stone.
I slam our backs against the island and shove my thumbs into the hole in his chest. I count the seconds between his rattles.
His skin is going grey and cold. Every breath is a struggle, a burble of blood and air that makes my stomach turn. His heat is bleeding out through my fingers.
No. No. No. What the fuck do I do?
Leather soles click against the tile. They stop just past the edge of the island, the silver in the man’s hair catching the strobe of the light.
I stare at him, and the recognition finally hits.
I know that face. I know the way he used to stand behind the locked study door.
The hushed, vicious arguments. The way my father’s hands used to shake so hard he couldn't even pick up a glass after this man left. He isn’t here to save me. He's here to take me back.
"Stay back!" The scream rips out of my throat, raw and ugly. I’m still pressing my thumbs into Killian’s chest, his blood hot and sticky against my skin, my whole body shaking so hard I can barely stay upright.
"I know who you are! I saw you through the gap in the study door. I saw the way you looked at him."
The man stops. He looks at the blood on the marble, then at my face, his gun lowered.
His expression is terrifyingly mundane, like he’s watching a child throw a tantrum.
"You have your father's eyes, Eleanor. Gregory always said you were the one thing he didn't regret.
" He takes a step closer, the measured click of his heels marking the seconds.
"But he was a weak man. He was afraid of the legacy he’d built, and he was even more afraid of the things he kept hidden from you. "
"He was afraid of YOU!" I'm sobbing now, the panic a white-hot roar in my ears. I look down at Killian, his eyes are rolling back. "He’s dying. Help him! If you wanted us alive, you’d help him!"
The man's smile is razor thin. He nudges Killian’s skidding boot with his toe, a gesture of absolute dismissal.
"I don't need both of you, Eleanor. Killian was never meant to survive the night.
He was a tool that outlived its purpose.
" He takes another step, the coldness of him filling the kitchen, heavy and stagnant.
"You think he loves you? He was sent to watch you, child. He was a keeper, not a protector."
"He's not a tool," I whisper, my fingers sliding slowly over the cold metal of the gun on the floor.
The man reaches into his jacket, his voice dropping to a low, cruel rasp. "Pity your father never told you. He had another—"
He doesn't get to finish. My hand finds the trigger. I pull it twice without aiming, without even thinking. The recoil nearly snaps my wrist.
The first round catches him in the throat, the second punches through his chest. The silver-haired man doesn't stagger. He drops like a stone, his head hitting the marble with a hollow thud.
His companions shout, lunging into the frame to drag him back, but they aren't fast enough. I lunge for the panic button on the underside of the island.
The world doesn't just close; it slams shut.
The reinforced steel shutters drop over the windows and the kitchen entryway with a series of deafening, bone-jarring crashes.
One of the men in tactical gear wails as a shutter catches his arm, the sound cut short by the absolute seal of the metal meeting the floor.
Silence follows, thick and suffocating. The emergency lighting flickers to life, a sickly white that makes the blood pooling around the silver-haired man's head look black. He’s dead. He’s right there on the tiles, and I just killed him.
Killian’s breathing is shallower now. Fuck. I move through a checklist in my head: pressure, airway, vitals, ignoring the fact that I lack the tools to save him. He’s turning the color of ash.
His eyes flicker, unfocused and blown out with shock. His lips move, barely a breath. I lean in until my ear is against his mouth.
"Panel," he croaks. "Behind the desk... in the nook."
He goes slack. I grab his belt and haul him across the tile toward the recessed desk in the far corner, a heavy, built-in slab of cold slate and dead monitors that Killian used as a tactical hub while he ate.
The sound of his boots dragging, a heavy scrape against the stone.
The glass screens reflecting the violent, orange glare of a blowtorch.
I reach the desk and fumble for the catch hidden beneath the stone lip, my hand hitting a heavy, sealed trauma kit stashed right beside the release.
The emergency light is a low, electric hum that fills the silence while I work.
I’m shaking so hard my hands barely work as I rip the trauma pack open with my teeth, nearly choking on the plastic.
I start jamming the gauze into the wound, packing the hole with everything I have to stop the fountain of blood from draining him dry.
As I work, I’m looking at a corpse that’s still breathing, counting the shallow, rattling hitches of his lungs while my fingers disappear into the sodden hole in his chest. Tears blur my vision as I work.
The metal shutters are groaning. Out there, they’re using torches. I can hear the muffled shouts of men who aren't in a hurry because they know there’s nowhere for us to go.
"Don't leave me," I sob, the words breaking apart as I press my forehead against his ashen skin. I’m bawling now, hot tears mixing with the cooling blood on my hands, my throat so tight I can barely force air past the knot.
"Killian, please. Don't you dare leave me!
" I hook an IV bag to the side of the desk and watch the fluid start to drip.
The steel doors begin to buckle. The first lick of orange from a cutting torch bites through the top corner, the shower of sparks reflected in the pools of blood on the tile. The steel hits a high screech as it warps.
Time's up.
Fuck.