The small span of distance between us is eaten as I move toward the cage.

I dig the key out of my pocket and push it into the lock.

“Yeah, I’m stunned stupid too that I’m actually here—” But as the words leave my mouth, I notice the tension on the padlock.

Only it’s too late.

I hear a click, then a loud whirring noise. The top of the cage is yanked backward as the sides fall away. Alex’s arms are stretched above his head as he’s hoisted into the air, suspended before me.

Oh, my god.

A trap has been triggered.

I called checkmate too soon.

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41

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INERTIA

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ALEX

In physics, inertia is the consistency of force moving at the same speed, on the same path, without change, unless interrupted.

In life, inertia is a state of apathy, lethargy. Idleness. The state of remaining the same, unmoved and unmovable.

Before Blakely, I never thought of life outside of science. Everything had a scientific explanation. And I was on a course to greatness, even if the world would never appreciate my discovery, my sacrifice. My ego was so that I didn’t sense my inertia, how I was drifting on a linear path, stagnant, for an unmeasurable timeframe.

I could’ve existed in that dormant state forever.

Until she interrupted my state of being.

The most unfeeling and cruel creature—inhumane by her own design—crashed my world of metrics and careful calculations and changed me. With a darkly ironic twist, she made me see the world through a human lens.

So as I’m thrust into the air, my wrists and ankles bound by cable, my limbs stretched and my body racked, all I can see is how astonishingly beautiful she is below me. How the widening of her sea-green eyes convey her vortex of emotions. How her parted mouth, her words hung in suspension just as I am, begs to be kissed to steal away her fear.

She removes all doubt.

“Alex—” she shouts, spinning in a circle below me. “What the fuck is going on?”

The cables cinch tighter, slicing into my skin, and I grit out a response. “You need to leave. Now, Blakely. Go—”

Even as I glut the painful words from the bowels of my desire to keep her, I know it’s already too late.

The timepiece starts to descend from the joist in the middle of the room, the ticking amplified by the speaker and acoustics. I watched Grayson design majority of the trap, but he left me in the dark for his finale.

When she left me in this cage, I knew where Blakely would start. I figured I’d give her a day to ease into her scheme before I picked the lock and took care of Addisyn who, by the way, spent most of her time on her phone and complaining of boredom, while she paid little notice to me.

I should have acted sooner.

I should have been more thorough.

But as always, when it comes to Blakely, I’m too narrowly focused on her to foresee the variables.

During our three days together, Grayson enlightened me on a number of details. The Rolex he stitched into my leg wasn’t a warped countdown measure; it was to conceal the tracker he placed beneath my skin.

Brilliant, really, because the painful wound masked any discomfort the tiny tracking device might have caused.

Grayson’s curiosity was piqued when the GPS dot showed me spending a great deal of time at a dog kennel. Oh, he had a laugh, walking in to discover me caged like an animal by the torturous love of my life.

“In love, we are all trapped,” I said to him.

“Indeed,” was his reply.

I spent the next seventy-two hours torn between my selfish need for Blakely to return, and my hope she wouldn’t—that she’d run away and, this time, she’d never look back.

Blakely stares at my pocket watch dangling from the beam as if she’s been entranced by the rhythmic ticking. When she finally speaks, her voice is low and monotone. “I kept the bargain,” she says, her gaze flicking up to find mine. “Brewster is handled. All the murders are pinned on him and his crew. Grayson is in the clear.” She wipes a hand across her forehead in thought. “I kept the fucking deal.”

“But the deal wasn’t with you.”

Grayson leans against the back wall, arms crossed over his chest. He’s partially obscured by the shadows in the room, his light gaze assessing first Blakely, then me.

He cocks an eyebrow. “I’m surprised the trap worked,” he says, his admission unexpected. “I had limited supplies to work with here.”

After he drugged Addisyn with the animal sedatives, he rigged a medieval stretching device using the top of the crate as a rack. The suspension is geared by a simple cable hoist. If not for my extremely uncomfortable predicament, I’d appreciate the mechanics.

He’s not as smug as I first perceived him. With an IQ to rival my own, he views the world like one giant puzzle he’s always piecing together, as evident with his meticulous traps. Admittedly, he has a very macabre picture in mind of that completed puzzle, but at this point in my life, strung from cables like a morbid marionette, I’m not one to judge.

“Your trap is unnecessary,” Blakely says, her voice rising over her fear. “Like I said, I took care of Brewster. The investigation into the murders is over. None of it is a threat to you, or to London.”

Grayson’s eyes flare at the mention of his psychologist.

A tense silence chokes the air as the two of them stay locked in a stare off, some measure of threat passing between them.

Not for the first time, I wish I was privy to that first conversation between Blakely and London. If only she had let me in completely, we might have been able to beat the disturbed duo at our own game instead of playing theirs.

Grayson is the first to break the spell. The corner of his mouth hitches with the faintest smile. “We had a bet on whether or not you’d show, whether you’d leave Alex here to rot.”

I grunt as the cables bite into my bones, cutting off circulation. “She showed,” I say.

Blakely glances up at me. “Did you bet I’d come or not?”

That’s a loaded question. Grayson releases a chuckle. “Yes, Chambers, do you call this a win?”

“You can let her go,” is all I say. There was no negotiating for my life, so I wagered Blakely’s. Not that I trust the honor code of the man who rammed an icepick through my sister’s brain—but it was my only option to try to protect her.

I expel a strained breath, a tangled fusion of regret and relief tightening my chest. I want Blakely out of danger, but I also want to believe what tethers us together is stronger than a successful treatment and her malice toward me.

Yes, greedily, I wanted her to come for me.

Grayson pushes off the wall and takes unhurried steps toward the pocket watch. “I am a man of my word,” he says to her. “You’re free to go, Blakely.”

She licks her lips, stalling. “And what happens to Alex?”

Standing in the middle of the room, he touches the pocket watch, giving it a spin. “Do you care?”

She’s silent a beat before she says, “If you’re a man of your word, then you have to release him. You got what you initially asked for—”

“You’re trying to debate with a psychopath,” I interrupt. “Think, Blakely. There was never any real deal. His methodology is full of loopholes. It was always going to end this way. Grayson just likes to toy with his victims first.”

We discussed this. I told her we had no choice. When I tried to convince her to help me murder Grayson and Brewster, turning her into a full-fledged killer. The idea seems so preposterous now, how I believed I had designed her mind to accommodate her revenge skills.