Chapter 19 Breadcrumbs #2
"Don't they?" I pulled my jeans back up with shaking hands. "I'm hunting him using the skills he taught me. Torturing information out of people because he showed me how bodies break. Getting off on violence because he programmed me to associate pain with pleasure. How is any of this not him?"
Nathan was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Because you choose differently now. Every day, you choose. He made you a victim. You made yourself a weapon. There's a difference."
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to think there was some version of me that existed separate from Gabriel's influence. But lying there in the dim hotel room, coming down from mania and orgasm and forty-eight hours without sleep, I couldn't find her.
"Eight hours," I said finally. "I'll sleep for eight hours."
"Thank you."
He stayed beside me as exhaustion finally won. His presence was complicated—not quite comfort but something adjacent to it. Another broken person who understood that sometimes healing looked like hunting. Sometimes love looked like letting someone spiral. Sometimes the only way forward was through.
I dreamed of Boston. Of warehouses and breadcrumbs and Gabriel's face when he realized his pet had learned to bite. But underneath the violence, something else. Nathan's voice saying "I've got you." The weight of choice. The possibility that I could be more than the sum of my programming.
When I woke eight hours later, the mania had faded to something manageable. Still there, still pushing me forward, but tempered by rest and the strange intimacy of being seen at my worst and not abandoned.
Nathan was at the desk, laptop open, planning our route to Boston. He'd showered, changed, ordered food that sat cooling on the nightstand. Taking care of the practical things while I'd been falling apart.
"Better?" he asked without looking up.
"Functional," I admitted.
"That'll do."
I sat up, muscles protesting. Everything hurt these days—too much violence, too little care. My body keeping score even when my mind refused to.
"Find anything new?" I asked, nodding at the laptop.
"Maybe." He turned the screen toward me. "Cross-referenced the Boston coordinates with Gabriel's known aliases. Found three properties purchased in the last six months under variations of names he's used before."
My heart kicked into overdrive, but I forced myself to breathe. To think. "He's getting sloppy."
"Or arrogant. Thinks he's untouchable now."
"He's wrong."
Nathan smiled, sharp and dangerous. "Yes, he is."
I stood, testing my balance. Steady enough. The shower would help, food after that. Then Boston. Then Gabriel. Then whatever came after.
"Thank you," I said quietly. "For earlier. For..."
"Being fucked up enough to understand?"
"Something like that."
He shrugged. "We're all broken here. Might as well be broken together."
I thought about that as I showered. About the strange mathematics of damage—how two broken people could sometimes add up to something functional. Not whole, never whole again. But functional.
The water ran pink for a while—blood from some wound I didn't remember getting. These days I collected injuries like souvenirs, barely noticing until they started to heal. My body a roadmap of violence given and received.
When I emerged, Nathan had laid out clean clothes and weapons. The gesture was practical, but something in it made my chest tight. Care expressed through preparation. Love shown in bullets and clean socks.
"Eat," he said, pushing the takeout container toward me.
I forced down noodles that tasted like nothing, fuel for a body that had forgotten pleasure except in its most twisted forms. Nathan watched to make sure I finished, then handed me the files he'd compiled.
"Three properties," he said. "We hit them in order of likelihood. Quick and quiet until we confirm he's there."
"And then?"
"Then we do what we came to do."
What we came to do. Such a simple phrase for something so complex. Kill Gabriel. End the source. Stop the infection before it spread. But I knew it wouldn't be that clean. Nothing with Gabriel ever was.
"He'll have contingencies," I said. "Escape routes. Backup plans. Other facilities we don't know about."
"Probably."
"He might not even be there. Might have moved on again."
"Possible."
"This could all be for nothing."
Nathan looked at me steadily. "Or it could be everything. Only one way to find out."
He was right. The only way out was through. The only way to end this was to follow the breadcrumbs wherever they led. Even if they led to more violence. More broken pieces of myself scattered across warehouse floors.
I strapped on weapons with practiced efficiency. Knife at the hip. Gun at the shoulder. The surgical kit that had become my signature. Tools for taking apart the world Gabriel had built, one screaming piece at a time.
"Ready?" Nathan asked.
I thought about lying. About pretending I was the hardened hunter I'd been playing at these past weeks. Instead, I told the truth.
"No. But let's go anyway."
He smiled, understanding in the expression. We were neither of us ready for what came next. Too damaged. Too invested. Too far gone to stop now.
But that was the point, wasn't it? Gabriel had made me to endure. To survive. To adapt to any situation and keep going. He just hadn't anticipated what I'd adapt into. What survival would look like when twisted into vengeance.
Boston waited, six hours and a lifetime away. Somewhere in that city, Gabriel might be rebuilding his empire. Creating more broken dolls. Teaching more pets to beg.
My hands clenched into fists, nails biting into scarred palms. Soon. Soon I'd show him what his perfect experiment had become.
A hunter. A killer. A monster who remembered how to love.
His greatest success and biggest failure, coming home to roost.
The drive stretched ahead, dark and full of possibility. Nathan took the wheel without asking—he'd learned I was too volatile to trust with vehicles when the mania hit. I watched the miles disappear, each one bringing me closer to an ending I couldn't quite envision.
What would I be when this was over? When Gabriel was dead and the mission complete? The question haunted me more than any nightmare. Because I'd built myself around this hunt. Shaped myself into a weapon aimed at one target.
What happened to weapons when the war was over?
"Stop," Nathan said quietly.
"Stop what?"
"Thinking yourself in circles. We'll deal with after when we get there. Right now, focus on the hunt."
The hunt. Yes. That I understood. That I could do.
Boston by dawn. Properties to search. A ghost to find and put down.
Everything else could wait.
The highway stretched endlessly ahead, and I let myself sink into the familiar rhythm of pursuit. This was what I was now. What I'd chosen to become.
Gabriel's pet had evolved into Gabriel's nightmare.
Time to show him what his training had really created.