“Bria was here,” I say, following the dotted trail of blood across the planks. Some of the boards are freshly marked with bullet holes. I look up toward the water and lurch to a stop near the end of the dock, unable to move.

Tears sting my eyes and crest my lashes, spilling down my cheeks. I press my hand to my forehead, wishing I could crush this moment right out of my skull.

My birthday gift to Bria, the cherry bonsai, sits at the end of the dock, coated in a spattering of blood. I can see the spray from where she must have been shot when she was almost to the lake, the line of it pointing toward the open water.

“D-do you s-see her? K-kaplan?”

I swallow, shaking my head even though he might not be watching. “No. But she’s been shot twice. Once at the start of the dock and again at the end.”

“D-do you see her? In w-water?”

“No, no. I don’t see her,” I say, scanning the water for irregularities on the rippling surface. There’s nothing. No scrap of clothing, no hand reaching out for help, no body bobbing on the waves.

“Then s-she m-might have m-made it.”

I glance back down at the end of the dock and rein in a sob as I turn in a circle, looking for any sign of Bria in the forest or on the shore. “It’s a lot of blood, Samuel. I don’t know—”

“You d-don’t k-know Bria. S-she can m-make it. S-she w-won’t…give up-p. S-so you don’t give up-p,” he says, his voice dark and menacing. I hear the killer in him. The man without the mask. But I hear the mentor in him too. The protector. He’s done what no one else has, what I thought I couldn’t do. He’s stayed with her no matter the darkness. And this time, he won’t be the only one.

I wipe my eyes and take a deep breath. If he’s right, every second might be the one in which she’s dying. I need to move.

“Send me a pin,” I say.

I cast a final glance toward the lake, then run to my bike and leave.

OceanofPDF.com

34

OceanofPDF.com

BRIA

I wake up disoriented and in pain, unsure of where I am and struggling to remember how I got here. It takes me longer than it should to realize I’m not at Honeycomb House anymore. I’m at Rose Cottage, a little fifties-era bungalow with a stained glass rose in the window of the door. I turn off the alarm on my watch. I’ve slept for four hours.

“Fuck,” I whisper, sitting up with a groan.

First thing’s first, morphine.

I give myself a shot, just enough to take the edge off the throbbing pulse of pain. Then I stand and hobble my way to the bathroom.

I let the water run as it heats for my shower, taking a long look at myself in the mirror as condensation slowly accumulate on the polished glass. Predictably, I look like shit. I’m pale with blood loss and exhaustion, my skin scratched from the branches when I hauled myself out of the water on the far side of the lake and limped to the hidden bug-out bag. My hair still has broken twigs and leaves stuck in the knots. My lip and forehead are cut from when I passed out and hit my face on a fallen log. Fortunately, I guess, that hit kept me awake.

After I made it to the shore following the worst swim of my life, I used the emergency medical pack to keep myself together. I cleaned my wounds and injected myself with penicillin. I bandaged my arm where the bullet tore through muscle but missed the bone. But my leg has been more of an issue. Though the bullet passed through my biceps femoris without hitting anything critical, it still tore shit up. I lost a fair amount of blood in Lake McDonald, and who the fuck knows what’s now swimming around in my bloodstream. After flushing the hole clean, I stopped the bleeding with QuikClot, but the pain is intense and now that the swelling has set in, I can barely move my leg.

I push myself away from the sink and carefully maneuver into the shower, tilting my head back in the water, letting the hot droplets pelt my face. I’d love to stay right here but I can’t. I have to move. I might not be safe.

Far too soon, I’m stepping out of the shower. I’ve already been here at Rose Cottage longer than I’d hoped. I need to keep moving. I only stayed at Honeycomb long enough to arrange an express courier to deliver a letter to Samuel at Cedar Ridge. His phone is too risky. So is our server. In the end, the only option was a handwritten note. With shaky strokes of the pen, I detailed my plan and requests, my final wishes.

I check my watch. Samuel should have received my courier two hours ago.

Time to get to work.

If I don’t get Caron now, I’m afraid we’ll all lose our shot. But I’m under no illusions about my chances to succeed.

I change my bandages, my leg bruised and swollen, the flesh purple and red, angry and raw. For a moment, I close my eyes, leaning my chin on my knee as I remember the feeling of Samuel’s fingers as he cleaned the wounds on my back every night after he’d saved me in Nevada. There was pain, of course, but there was deliverance in his gentle touch too. There was salvation in his words. I cannot promise you a life free of pain, Sombria. But I will give you the tools to fight back.

I open my eyes.

It’s time to fight back.

When my skin is clean and I pull fresh workout clothes over the weeping wounds, I leave Rose Cottage in the Jeep that was hidden near the bug-out cache at Lake McDonald, heading west to the outskirts of town.

I park on a gravel road bisecting fields of harvested corn, sliding out from the driver’s seat as I take out a new burner phone and text the mobile I left with Cynthia’s Praetorian bodyguard.

Send a message for Caron to call me in five minutes. Confirm and the number will be provided.

After a brief moment, the response comes. I send my number.

Another moment later, the phone rings. Like last time, it’s forwarded through a landline to keep this number safe.

“Hello, little wolf,” Caron says, the amusement like a bright star that lights up his voice. “I was hoping you’d drowned.”

There’s no laptop to disguise my voice; no point in hiding it anymore. “Surprise, motherfucker.”

Caron chuckles. I desperately want to fold my fingers around his throat and squeeze until it snaps. “I should thank you,” he drawls, taking his time with each word. “You got rid of Cynthia. Well done, taking out an informant for me. How very kind.”

“I’m nothing if not generous.” I pull a mask over my malice as I examine a chip in the black polish of my manicure. “What are you wearing right now?”

A scoff of a laugh crackles through the phone. “Isn’t that a question you should be asking my brother?”

My heart crumples behind my bones for Eli. All this time mourning the brother he’d lost, and Caron must have been there, watching from afar, indifferent to his suffering. I swallow my rage on Eli’s behalf. “Humor me, Gabe. Caron. Whatever. Actually no, I bet I can guess. You’re in a robe, lounging by a pool. Some brainwashed, traumatized woman is next to you, hoping you’ll fill whatever void some asshole carved out in her life, though you have no intention of doing so. You’re probably sipping a margarita, imagining it’ll only be a matter of time until I’m dead of sepsis and you can go back to your life of manipulating people because that’s the only way you can make friends.”

“So close, little wolf. It’s a matcha latte with Lamb Health’s ethically-sourced coconut milk.”

“Of course it is. My bad.” I turn, looking at the frayed stalks of harvested corn, the sun sinking toward the horizon in the distance. “I guess you’ve been enjoying yourself too much to notice.”

“Notice what?” Caron asks, arrogance thick in his voice.

“Isn’t it a little…quiet…where you are? A little too quiet?” There’s a long pause, then a rustle of fabric on the end of the line. “Don’t you feel like something’s…missing?”