تسجيل الدخولChapter 65Campus felt wrong from the moment I stepped through the main gate.Not visibly wrong. The quad was the same as it always was. Students moving in clusters, someone's music bleeding out of a dorm window three floors up, the coffee cart near the humanities block doing its usual morning business. All of it is completely ordinary.But my instincts had been calibrated by a lifetime and a half of paying attention to rooms and the way they changed when something dangerous entered them. And something had entered this one."Stay on the designated path," Dante's voice came through the earpiece, small enough that my hair covered it completely."I am.""Don't adjust your pace.""I know, Dante.""Alpha has eyes on the south entrance."I didn't look toward the south entrance. Looking would be the thing that gave it away and everything about this morning depended on me being exactly what I appeared to be. A student crossing campus. A girl heading to class. Nothing was worth a second glanc
Chapter 64The map on the table showed the city in clean digital lines.Safe routes marked in green. Blind spots in yellow. The cluster of rogue territory activity in the east marked in red, bled at the edges the way real threats always did, never quite contained to the space you drew for them.Dante had pulled every piece of intelligence from the last seventy-two hours and laid it out systematically. Movement patterns. Known associates. The two locations where Caden had been seen since the breach.I stood at the table and looked at it and understood immediately."He won't come to the estate again," I said."No," Dante agreed. "Too controlled here now. He knows what the response looks like.""He'll wait for movement." I traced the route between the estate and campus with one finger without touching the screen. "When I leave. That's when I'm exposed. That's the window he'll use."Matthias was standing with his arms crossed on the other side of the table. He'd been quiet since Dante st
Chapter 64The map on the table showed the city in clean digital lines.Safe routes marked in green. Blind spots in yellow. The cluster of rogue territory activity in the east marked in red, bled at the edges the way real threats always did, never quite contained to the space you drew for them.Dante had pulled every piece of intelligence from the last seventy-two hours and laid it out systematically. Movement patterns. Known associates. The two locations where Caden had been seen since the breach.I stood at the table and looked at it and understood immediately."He won't come to the estate again," I said."No," Dante agreed. "Too controlled here now. He knows what the response looks like.""He'll wait for movement." I traced the route between the estate and campus with one finger without touching the screen. "When I leave. That's when I'm exposed. That's the window he'll use."Matthias was standing with his arms crossed on the other side of the table. He'd been quiet since Dante st
Chapter 64The map on the table showed the city in clean digital lines.Safe routes marked in green. Blind spots in yellow. The cluster of rogue territory activity in the east marked in red, bled at the edges the way real threats always did, never quite contained to the space you drew for them.Dante had pulled every piece of intelligence from the last seventy-two hours and laid it out systematically. Movement patterns. Known associates. The two locations where Caden had been seen since the breach.I stood at the table and looked at it and understood immediately."He won't come to the estate again," I said."No," Dante agreed. "Too controlled here now. He knows what the response looks like.""He'll wait for movement." I traced the route between the estate and campus with one finger without touching the screen. "When I leave. That's when I'm exposed. That's the window he'll use."Matthias was standing with his arms crossed on the other side of the table. He'd been quiet since Dante st
Chapter 63The estate was different before sunrise.Not visibly. The stone and glass were the same. The grounds were the same. But the atmosphere had changed overnight in the way atmospheres changed when a decision had been made and everyone in the building could feel it even if nobody had announced it.I found Matthias in his office at five-thirty in the morning.Suit on. Tie straight. Phone to his ear, speaking in the particular quiet tone that meant whoever was on the other end was being given one opportunity to make the right choice."I don't care how long the relationship has been in place," he was saying. "You cut ties with him by the end of business today or you don't do business in this territory again." A pause. "No. That's not a threat. It's the situation." He hung up without waiting for a response.I leaned against the doorway. "Starting before dawn."He didn't look surprised to see me. Which meant he'd known I'd come. "I told you to sleep.""I did. Four hours. I'm fine." I
CHAPTER 62The security wing had more people in it than it had twenty minutes ago.I noticed that before anything else. Two additional guards at the corridor entrance. Dante's second is already at the console. The particular quality of tension that filled a room when something had happened and the people in it were still processing what it meant.Matthias was standing in front of the main monitor with his hands at his sides and the expression he wore when something had moved beyond irritation into a different category entirely.I stepped up beside him and looked at the screen.Security footage. The outer gate. Timestamp from forty minutes ago.A black SUV was parked just outside the perimeter with its engine running. The driver's door is opening slowly.Caden stepped out.He was calm. That was the first thing. Not the frantic energy of someone acting on impulse or the barely contained fury he'd brought into the corridor earlier tonight. This was different. Deliberate. He walked to the
CHAPTER 15 The estate felt different the moment I walked through the side entrance Thursday evening. Not visibly. Everything seemed unchanged on the surface Marta's standing at the door, clipboard in hand The hallway lights dimmed for the evening The aroma of dinner prep wafting through the back h
Chapter 13I didn't sleep well.The four words kept pulling me back every time I got close to something restful. He's aware of you. I'd turned the number over three times, run it through everything I had, and come up with nothing. No match in my contacts. Caden had never seen a match like this befo
Chapter 12Saturday shift started at ten AM. The estate had its own weekend vibe The formal hallways were quieter, but the back rooms were bustling with activity Matthias was home, so the upper floors were buzzing with activity, and the ground crew was extra cautious around the perimeter of his sh
Chapter 10Marta was a small woman who moved like someone had installed an engine where her spine should be.She was waiting for me at the side entrance at six PM exactly, clipboard in hand, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead, wearing the kind of expression that said she'd trained a hundred







