Chapter 61
CHAPTER
SIXTY-ONE
They think they’re smarter than I am.
I felt it the moment they changed their schedule. The ripple. The adjustment they thought would rattle me.
They believed shifting the board midgame gave them leverage.
It didn’t.
It only proved how predictable they are.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and glanced at the rearview mirror.
The man in the back flinched when our eyes met. He’d been whimpering since he’d been taken.
I’d known he’d be a headache. From the moment I’d chosen him, I’d understood that. Loud people always were.
But he was the logical choice. Accessible. Observable. Tied tightly to them.
Removing him was efficient.
Necessary.
They wanted me to feel pressure. To rush. To make mistakes.
The truth was, they had managed one thing.
They’d disrupted my preparation.
I’d had to scramble to line a place up. I didn’t have the advantage of a controlled environment. There was no familiar geography waiting for me.
These people might have actually gotten the upper hand.
Just the possibility of it made my blood burn.
I was operating purely on instinct now—reading terrain, timing, opportunity as it came.
Improvisation wasn’t ideal.
But it wasn’t weakness.
I’d done this before.
Thankfully, I had someone to help me grab him. Otherwise, lining everything up would have been nearly impossible.
The road stretched ahead of us, empty and dark, and I forced myself to breathe evenly. Control wasn’t about perfection—it was about adaptation. About knowing that even when the rules changed, the outcome didn’t have to.
The man in the back made another noise. I turned up the radio until it drowned him out.
They thought they’d turned the tables.
They thought this was where I would crack.
I wouldn’t lose this game.
I couldn’t.
And I wouldn’t.
Not now.
Not ever.