Chapter Thirty
My shoulder radiates where the metal created a three-inch cut.
I just catalog it—four out of ten, manageable—and move on.
The blood has dried along my spine, gluing the tactical shirt to my skin.
I watch Kiera from the doorway. She thinks she’s hiding it.
The way she braces her hip against the kitchen counter when she thinks no one’s looking or the sharp, silent catch in her breath when she shifts her weight.
Her palm presses against her lower abdomen.
“Shoulder.” Cam steps up beside me, waiting to inspect the wound.
“In a minute,” I mutter, eyes still locked on Kiera.
“Now.” He’s already got the med kit open, tweezers sterilizing in the flame of a camping stove. “Before you bleed through the floor and scare the kids worse than they already are.”
I let out a deep exhale, but I don’t argue. Not because he’s right, but because Kiera’s hand is still pressed to her stomach. I need both arms working if I have to carry her out of here. “Fine.” I give in, taking a seat in the chair he’s pulled out.
The cabin feels too small for everything it now holds.
Seventeen kids are crammed into the back bedroom, lost in the heavy, fitful sleep that follows the adrenaline and lingering sedatives.
And Evelyn…My gaze drifts to the basement door.
Chained. Padlocked in a room next to Dr. Reyes is the woman who gave Kiera her eyes, her cheekbones, and her terrifying capacity for violence, down there in the stale dark of the root cellar, wrist bound to a rusted pipe.
She’s only alive because she knows things.
Alive only because Kiera hasn’t decided she wants her dead yet.
“She’s awake down there,” I say, voice flat and monotone.
“I can hear her tapping the pipe. Morse code. Dot-dot-dash. Trying to talk to someone.”
Cam’s tweezers dig deep into my shoulder.
“Let her tap. No one is going to hear her.” He pulls out a jagged piece of metal about the size of a thumbnail and drops it into the metal tray with a clink.
Blood wells fresh behind it. “This is deep, Sterling,” Cam mutters, eyes narrowed. “You need sutures.”
“Later.” I grab his wrist, stopping the needle before it touches skin. “What did you find?”
Cam’s expression shifts, something dark and heavy settling behind his eyes from whatever’s glowing on his laptop screen. “The files we pulled from the Nesting House,” he says quietly, like he’s whispering a secret. “The administrative logs. I’ve been cross-referencing them with the security data.”
“And?” I stare at Cam, waiting.
Cam hesitates, his jaw tight, and turns the laptop slightly so I can see the screen.
Spreadsheet chaos. Timestamps. Biometric scans.
“Evelyn wasn’t just reporting to someone,” he says.
“She wasn’t running half the program from inside the facility.
For sixteen years. She’s the one who kept the original pairing data intact.
And according to these logs…she’s the one who ordered the final phase activation the day Wade died.
” He swallows hard. “She’s not a prisoner down there, Sterling.
She’s waiting on someone to extract her. ”
I lean forward, ignoring the way my vision darkens around the edges. Weekly timestamps stretch back sixteen years. Like fucking clockwork.
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 00:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 02:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 06:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 03:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 10:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 02:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 05:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 01:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 13:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 02:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 23:14 hours
E. Hawthorne Level 4 clearance 10:14 hours
“She’s been fucking running it.” The word tastes bitter.
“The logs show her accessing the files and the genetic pairing data,” Cam confirms. “She’s been… cataloging them. Studying.”
“Studying what?” The question was more for me than the others.
“Us.” The voice comes from behind us. Kiera leans against the doorframe, arms crossed tight over her ribs.
A posture that screams protective, hiding the cramping I know is still tearing through her.
Her face is grey in the lamplight, streaked with soot and dried blood, but her eyes are sharp, almost predatory.
Hungry for the answers she knows will just hurt.
“What do you mean by us?” I ask. She’s looking straight at me. Her gaze drags over the blood soaking my shirt, dropping lower to the way my feet are planted between her and the basement door like a living shield.
Cam pulls up another file. Grainy black-and-white footage plays on the screen.
A laboratory. Two gurneys. Small figures strapped down.
I recognize the messy auburn hair. The sharp grey eyes.
Kiera. And beside her, a boy with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes that burn even through the old pixels.
“2007,” Cam says softly. “You were there together. But look at the date stamp. This is three months after Sterling was supposedly removed from the program.” I stare at the screen.
The boy is me. Younger. Smaller. But unmistakably me.
I don’t remember that room. I don’t remember any of it.
“She’s been tracking you both,” Cam continues, voice grim.
“The answer to why…it’s buried somewhere in those corroded files. ”
Kiera pushes off the doorframe and moves toward the screen, body tense, favoring her left side.
The pain is getting worse. “Play it again,” she says.
Cam hits rewind. The footage plays. Young Kiera strains against the restraints, eight years old and already refusing to scream.
Beside her, the boy beside her reaches out.
Our fingers touch across the gap between the gurneys—deliberate, forbidden contact.
“They kept us close,” Kiera whispers, her voice cracking like thin ice.
“Even then.” I feel the words in my chest, heavy and undeniable.
That small hand reaching through the gap wasn’t random.
It wasn’t chance. It was us. Even as kids, drugged and strapped down, something in us was already fighting to find each other.
“Evelyn knew we were together at one point,” I say. The realization lands like a fist in my gut. “She’s been watching us. Studying if we have a bond.” My voice drops, cold and certain. “She wasn’t hiding from the program, Kiera. She’s been working for them. Or with them.”
Kiera’s hand finds my good shoulder. Her fingers dig in, anchoring herself as much as me. “Then why help us save the kids if she’s…” The question fractures in the air, unfinished but heavy with everything we’re both thinking.
“Bait,” I cut in. The tactical part of my brain—the cold, Ghost logic—finally snaps the pieces together. “The failsafe. The tunnel. She needed us together in that facility to trigger something.”
“And the kids?” Kiera asks, voice tight.
“The control group.” My voice comes out flat, lacking any emotion.
“She needed to see if we’d prioritize each other…
or the assets. If we’d save the seventeen or save ourselves.
” Kiera stands straighter, her body steeling itself like she’s bracing for war.
The silence stretches, taut and humming like a wire about to snap.
Then she moves. Fast. She crosses the room to the basement door, fingers scrambling for the key I left on the hook.
“Kiera…” I start, already heading for her.
“She’s going to tell me.” Kiera’s voice a low rasp, raw with sixteen years of rage. “She’s going to tell me why my mom is alive…and working with the people who tried to turn me into a file number.”
I rush to catch her before she can unlock the door, my hands on her waist, spinning her.
She fights me for a second, elbow driving toward my ribs, but I absorb the blow and pull her in, pinning her against the wood with my body, using myself as a cage.
“Not yet,” I growl against her ear. She’s trembling.
The cramps are back. I feel the tension in her spine.
“You’re not going down there half-dead and bleeding,” my voice, low and final.
“You’re not giving her the satisfaction of watching you break. ”
“I’m not bleeding,” she lies. The words come out thin, brittle, like she’s trying to convince herself more than me.
I don’t let her go. My body stays pressed against hers, pinning her to the door, my hand still splayed wide over her stomach like I can hold whatever’s breaking inside her together.
“You are,” I murmur against her ear, voice low and rough.
“I saw the color when you wiped your hands.” She freezes in my grip.
“You think I don’t watch you?” I continue, lips brushing the shell of her ear.
“You think I don’t know every breath you take, every time you flinch, every time you hide the fact that you’re coming apart?
And if you go down there right now, you’ll bleed more. For her. I won’t allow it.”
She turns her head. Her nose brushes my throat. “You don’t get to…” she starts, the words trembling with pain and fury.
“I get to everything.” My voice low and unrelenting, my hand moving to cradle her face.
“Because you let me. So now you’re going to sit down.
You’re going to let Cam look at you. And then…
” My hand slides down, resting possessively over her lower abdomen, where the cramps are centered, where the mystery lives.
“Then we go down there together. And we make her tell us the truth.”
Cam clears his throat behind us. “I’ve got the biometric logs. The communication records. If she’s been texting someone, I can find the relay point. Give me an hour.”
“You have thirty minutes,” Kiera says against my neck. Her breath is hot. Feverish.
I lift my head, meeting Cam’s eyes over her shoulder. He sees it, the same thing I see. The silent spiraling. The crash after the escape.
“Get Reyes awake, too. We’re going to need two sources to figure out what all Evelyn is lying about. We need corroboration. We need…” I pause, the word sticking in my throat. “We need to know if we were ever a bond.”
Kiera’s hand covers mine, pressing my palm harder against her stomach. “I chose you,” she says. It sounds like a vow. “In the opera box, in the tunnel, in the truck. Every time, I fucking chose you. That’s real.”
I kiss her temple. Tasting ash and sweat on her. “Then let’s find out if she agrees.”
From below, Evelyn laughs, a soft mechanical sound that crawls up through the floorboards like smoke.
She’s listening, and she’s not afraid. “Yeah, well,” Cam mutters, “she’s not the one I’m worried about bleeding out in the goddamn kitchen.
” Kiera tries to twist out of my hold. I don’t let her, not until Cam is in front of us with the med kit, eyes scanning her like a threat assessment.
“Sit,” he orders. She opens her mouth to smart off to him, but her knees buckle.
I feel it through my hands and move with it, steering her toward the chair.
Cam kneels in front of her, keeping his voice even, “I need to see, Kiera. I don’t want you passing out on concrete.
” She glares at him, but slowly lifts the hem of her shirt.
The bruise is already blooming and spreading across her abdomen and hip. A thin line of dried blood tracks from her thighs to the waistband of her pants. Cam swears under his breath. “Fuck.” His eyes flick to mine, sharp. “We need to rule out internal bleeding.”
“I said I’m fine,” she bites out. Her knuckles are white from the grip she has on the chair. “We don’t have time.”
“We don’t have time for you to rupture something because you decided that you don't fucking matter,” Cam snaps back. “You want to go downstairs and rip your mother’s throat out, be my guest. But you’re going to do it standing up, and in one damn piece.” That gets her, the violence.
“Fine. What do you need?” she asks, giving in to his demand.
“I need to check for pelvic tenderness and a pregnancy test.” The room goes silent.
Kiera’s eyes cut to mine, then away. “I already did one.” The words are barely audible. “After the opera.”
“And?” I ask, my heart beating faster.
“It was negative.”
“We’re checking again when we’re not in a shack in the mountains, but right now I need to know if anything feels wrong enough to stop you from going down there.
” He works fast. Cuff. Pulse. Pupils. Fingers pressing into her side, her lower belly, reading every flinch.
She stays silent through all of it, only a hiss escaping when he hits a tender spot low and to the right of her ribs.
He sits back on his heels. “Good news. You’re not actively dying. Bad news. You’re one hard hit away from pissing off Sterling. No running. No stairs alone. No playing human shield, you get me?”
Kiera snorts. “You planning on bubble-wrapping me, Cam?”
“If I could, I would,” he says. “But I have a feeling you would just pop it.”
I straighten, keeping my hand on her shoulder, anchoring her. “Translation,” I say. “You get one round with Evelyn. Then you eat, shower, and you lie down the fuck down. Let us handle the rest while you pretend to sleep and plot six different homicides.”
Her mouth twitches, a faint smile ghosting her lips. “Three homicides,” she corrects. “And one resurrection. I plan on killing Wade twice.”
“There she is,” Cam says softly. He closes the med kit with a snap and jerks his chin toward the basement.
“Thirty minutes. That’s all I’m giving you down there before I drag both your asses back up.
I’ve got logs to break and a burner trail to trace.
Whoever Evelyn has been reporting to is still out there. ”
Kiera pushes to her feet. She sways; I catch her.
This time, she doesn’t fight me. “Thirty minutes is all I need.” Her eyes immediately fix on the padlock.
I slip the key off the hook, the metal cool against my fingers.
Her pulse jumps under my hand. Below us, the pipe tapping stops.
She knows we’re coming. “Cam?” Kiera asks, without looking back.
“Yeah?”
“If I’m not back in thirty-one minutes…”
“I know,” he says. “I burn the house. With her in it.”
A muscle in Kiera’s jaw ticks. She doesn’t tell him no. I press the key into her palm, curling her fingers around it. “I’ll follow your lead.
She looks up at me, eyes storm-dark and razor-bright. She turns, slides the key into the lock, and together we open the door to the answers she’s been waiting for.