CHAPTER SIXTY
Just as he starts to settle back into the moment, the front door slams open, hard enough that the entire house shudders on its frame.
The sound isn’t just loud—it’s violent.
Voices erupt down the hall immediately, sharp and overlapping, swallowing the quiet whole like a storm breaking through walls that were never built to hold it back.
Then boots—fast, heavy, unrelenting—pound across the floorboards.
“Down! Everyone down!” Montgomery’s voice cracks like a whip, sharp, commanding—real.
Chaos explodes in the kitchen.
Shoomaker’s body collides with mine, dragging me down with him just as weapons are drawn. We hit the floor hard—his weight caging me in, his breath ragged against my ear.
“What the fuck is this?” He growls low, not the Warden now—Shoomaker. His voice has dropped the act, just a man caught in a moment too sharp to fake.
“Don’t move!” one of the operatives shouts. “Hands where we can see them!”
I twist just in time to see Shaimez shoved down onto the marble counter, his torso forced flat against the cold surface. An elbow drives between his shoulder blades, keeping him pinned as his hands are yanked behind him. The cuffs snap into place before he even gets a breath to fight it.
“Igor Shaimez,” the agent announces, “you are under arrest for human trafficking, conspiracy to exploit minors, and multiple counts of international slave trade. You have the right to remain silent…”
The rest of the words are drowned out in the flood roaring in my ears.
The woman in red has vanished—no sign of her. I don’t even know when she slipped out.
Shoomaker still hovers over me, frozen, his mask cocked just enough that I can see the twitch of his jaw.
Montgomery is scanning the room with murder in his eyes, weapon still drawn, chest rising and falling in furious waves. He isn’t just here on assignment. He’d come for blood. For me.
His eyes find mine.
They lock there.
And suddenly, I’m not kneeling beside the Warden anymore. I’m not property. I’m not bait.
I am Starling again.
The room swirls with noise—shouting, snapping cuffs, orders flying like bullets—but none of it reaches me. Not really.
Just the weight of two men who had buried themselves in me in different ways.
Shoomaker slowly stands and offers me a hand. I don’t take it.
My fingers curl instead against my own palm, nails biting in too hard, trying to find something solid. The air feels wrong—too tight, too loud, like it’s closing in from every direction at once.
Montgomery holsters his weapon and crosses to me.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, voice lower now, controlled.
“No.”
It comes out automatically. Too fast. Too practiced.
But I don’t move.
Because my body isn’t here anymore.
I’m back there.
The raid.
Doors splintering under impact. Boots hitting concrete. Shouts cutting through smoke and alarms. The first time I heard Shoomaker’s voice when it wasn’t aimed at control—it was aimed at survival. At finding me.
My breath catches.
Too shallow.
Not enough air.
My chest tightens so suddenly it feels like my ribs have been locked from the inside.
I swallow, but it doesn’t help.
Shoomaker’s hand is still there in front of me, but it blurs at the edges.
Montgomery says something else—my name maybe—but it sounds far away, underwater.
The room tilts.
Not outwardly.
Inwardly.
Because nothing about this feels like a rescue.
It feels like that night all over again.
Like I’m still waiting to be found.
My lungs stop cooperating before I even realize I’m slipping.
“My rose,” Montgomery murmurs, closer now, but not touching me. “Breathe.”
Inhale—too sharp.
Exhale—doesn’t make it all the way out.
Someone is there beside me—Shoomaker, I think—his hands at my face for a second, grounding, wiping something I didn’t even realize was there.
But the room won’t settle. It keeps folding in on itself, edges warping, sound breaking apart into fragments.
My chest locks tighter
The mask—
The mask—
I see it again and my body reacts before thought catches up.
“Take it off,” I cry, voice cracking as I reach blindly, grabbing at what I think is still covering his face.
It rips free in my hands.
I fling it across the kitchen like it’s burning me.
Silence snaps in behind it
“We aren’t here to hurt you, Starling,” someone says, steady—too steady.
I don’t know who anymore.
“Don’t,” I back up immediately, stumbling until my spine hits the counter hard enough to jolt through me.
My breath comes in broken pieces now.
Too fast.
Too shallow.
Not enough.
“Don’t come closer,” I whisper, shaking my head, eyes darting between them like I can’t decide which version of reality is real enough to trust.
Montgomery’s voice cuts through everything—low, sharp, instantly decisive.
“We need a medic.”
The words don’t feel dramatic. They feel procedural. Like something he’s said before when panic wasn’t theoretical.
The room is too bright. Too loud. Too close.
My back is still pressed to the counter, fingers curled so tightly around the edge I can feel the marble biting into my skin, trying to prove I’m still here in something physical.
But my lungs aren’t listening.
“Starling,” Shoomaker says, closer now, but not crowding me. “Look at me.”
I try.
I fail.
Because I’m not seeing him. Not really.
My vision tunnels hard.
The edges of the world blur inward until there’s only panic and noise and the feeling of being trapped inside my own skin.
“Hey,” Montgomery says quietly, softer than before. “Hey—my rose, stay with me. Just stay here.”
I shake my head, a small, frantic motion.
“I can’t—” My voice breaks. “I can’t breathe.”
Shoomaker moves then—not toward me like pressure, but closer like anchoring. His voice drops lower, steadier.
“You are breathing,” he says gripping my hand in his. “You’re just panicking. That’s all.”
“Don’t let go,” I whisper, not sure who I’m saying it to.
“Starling—” Montgomery’s voice cuts in, closer, urgent.
Shoomaker says something too, but it’s not distinct anymore. Just sound without shape.
I try to answer. I really do.
But my body doesn’t cooperate.
There’s a blur of movement—arms catching me, voices tightening, someone saying my name like it matters more than anything else in the room—but it’s already too far away.
The last thing I feel is the pressure of hands trying to keep me upright…
…and then everything goes black.