Chapter 16 #3
The room beyond was a secure medical bay containing two beds, cabinets filled with drugs, and another door leading toward what looked like a private service tunnel.
Dr. Croft stood beside one of the beds arguing with a man in security gear while another woman lay sedated beneath a blanket.
Croft saw us first, and the fact that her expression barely changed told me more about her than panic would have.
“You don't understand what you're interfering with,” she said.
Trigger raised his weapon. “Step away from the patient.”
Croft's gaze moved past him until it landed on Skye, and recognition sharpened her expression. “Miss Fraser.”
Skye stepped into view despite the instinctive lift of my arm.
Croft smiled faintly. “Your colleague was very persistent too.”
I felt Skye go still beside me.
“Where were you taking her?”
“Some people require structure.”
“That wasn't my question.”
“No.” Croft's voice remained calm. “It rarely is with women who have already decided they know better.”
Skye's expression hardened. “You drugged her.”
“I treated her.”
“You locked her in a room.”
“For her own safety.”
“You built hidden corridors, moved people through them, and kept children underground.”
Croft's smile disappeared. “You have no understanding of the lives you're disrupting.”
Skye stepped forward before anger could outrun caution, and I touched her elbow lightly. She stopped.
Croft noticed.
“Interesting,” she said. “You object to control until the correct man exercises it.”
I felt Skye's body tighten beside me, but when she answered, her voice was steady.
“He isn't controlling me.”
Croft's eyes dropped pointedly toward my hand.
Skye looked at it too, then back at her.
“He's reminding me I'm angry enough to make a bad decision. There's a difference.”
Something hot and dangerous moved through my chest at the trust buried inside those words.
Croft's security man chose that moment to shift toward his weapon, a movement Trigger and I recognized at exactly the same time.
The man reached for his weapon, but Raze crossed the room and hit him before he cleared leather. The movement broke whatever control Croft had been maintaining, and she turned toward the private exit.
Skye shouted.
I moved after Croft instinctively, taking two steps before the woman lying on the medical bed suddenly arched against the mattress.
“She's seizing.”
Skye was already beside her.
For one second, I had a clear path to Croft. I could see the tunnel, see the back of her white coat, and knew I could probably catch her before she reached the outer exit. Every part of me that hated what she had done wanted to take that path.
The woman's body convulsed again, and whatever temptation I had felt to chase Croft disappeared beneath the more immediate need in front of me. I turned away from the tunnel. "Raze, medical kit."
Croft disappeared through the tunnel while Trigger swore under his breath, but neither of us followed.
We stabilized the woman as best we could until Storm and the physician Maverick had arranged reached the lower level.
By then the extraction vehicles were filling rapidly, local authorities had been contacted through channels that gave Croft House little opportunity to bury what we had uncovered, and Cipher had copied enough internal records to make sure the facility couldn't simply reopen under a new name once everyone left.
Croft was gone, and I hated letting her disappear into that tunnel more than I wanted to admit, but the woman on the bed was breathing because we had stayed, and that mattered more than catching Helena Croft in that moment.
Skye stood beside me while the final residents were moved toward the stairs, watching the last medical team disappear into the corridor.
“You let her go.”
“Aye.”
“Because of the woman.”
“Aye.”
She studied me for a long moment, and I expected anger or disappointment. What I saw instead landed somewhere deeper.
“You didn't even hesitate.”
“I did.”
“For maybe half a second.”
“Long enough.”
Her gaze drifted toward the tunnel Croft had used to escape. “Does it bother you?”
“Aye.”
“But you'd make the same choice again.”
I looked toward the corridor where children were being taken into daylight and adults who had spent months or years behind locked doors were finally being asked where they wanted to go instead of being told.
“Aye.”
Skye's hand found mine then, not because she was stumbling in the dark or because danger had pushed us together. She simply chose to take it.
I closed my fingers around hers and stood beside her while the last of Croft House emptied.
For years I had thought survival meant preventing anything else from being taken from me.
I had measured safety in distance, control, and how little of myself I allowed anyone else to reach.
Standing there with Skye's hand in mine while people walked out of locked rooms and into choices they had been denied, I understood that survival could mean something different.
Maybe survival wasn't always about holding tighter to the people beside me; sometimes it meant helping them reach a place where they were finally free to choose what happened next.