The city tasted of ash and ozone.
Julian moved through the bruised twilight of the back alleys, a wraith stitched together from adrenaline and shadow.
The diversion had been brutal and loud—a symphony of stolen cars, short-circuited transformers, and panicked shouts that had pulled Dane’s hunters away from Elara like iron filings to a magnet.
He’d led them on a three-mile, twenty-minute chase through the industrial gut of the city, a chaotic ballet of misdirection and violence that had left two of their black SUVs mangled and smoking.
He was bruised, his ribs ached with the memory of a close-quarters tackle against a brick wall, and a fresh gash on his forearm wept blood through the torn fabric of his jacket.
But the pain was a distant hum, a signal from a body he was barely inhabiting. His entire being was focused on a single point on the map, a quiet place they had chosen for its utter mundanity: the northeast corner of Westbrook Park, by the long-forgotten Civil War memorial.
*Run to the rally point. I’ll be right behind you.*
His own words echoed in his head, a mantra against the throbbing in his skull. It had been a promise.
Not the calculated assurance of a professional, but the desperate, heartfelt vow of a man who had finally found something he was terrified to lose.
The memory of her, wide-eyed and trusting in the chaotic clamor of the bus station, was a fire in his chest, warming him against the damp chill of the evening. He had thrown away his escape plan, his money, his entire future for her. And he would do it again without a second thought.
He cut through a final, garbage-strewn alley and emerged onto a quiet street bordering the park. The manicured green space was swallowed by dusk, the lamps just beginning to flicker on, casting long, skeletal shadows from the skeletal branches of winter-bare trees.
He slowed his pace, reining in the frantic energy that had carried him this far. He forced his breathing to even out, his senses to sharpen. This was the final, most dangerous part. The approach.
He scanned the entrance, the street, the darkened windows of the townhouses across the road. Nothing. No black sedans. No figures lurking in the doorways.
The only movement was a plastic bag skittering across the pavement, pushed by a lonely wind. He slipped across the street and into the deeper gloom of the park, his footsteps silent on the damp grass.
The rally point was a specific wrought-iron bench, tucked into an alcove of overgrown hedges that faced away from the main path. It was secluded, with clear sightlines and multiple escape routes. A perfect spot.
It was empty.
Julian’s heart, which had been hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs, gave a single, painful lurch and then settled into a heavy, leaden beat.
She wasn’t there.
He stood motionless in the shadows for a full minute, his gaze locked on the bench. *She’s late. Or I’m early. She’s cautious. She’s waiting, watching to make sure I wasn’t followed.* His training supplied a dozen logical reasons for her absence. They were good reasons. They were lies.
He had told her thirty minutes. It had been forty-seven. He had fought his way clear, doubled back twice, and made sure he was clean. She should be here. Unless she had seen something he’d missed. Unless she had decided the spot was compromised.
His professional calm began to fray, the edges curling like burned paper. He began a slow, deliberate sweep of the area, his eyes cataloging every detail. He moved in an expanding spiral, his gaze sweeping the ground.
The damp mulch. A scattering of discarded cigarette butts. A crushed soda can. Nothing.
The anxiety was a physical thing now, a cold knot tightening in his stomach.
The memory of their night at the coastal inn flashed through his mind—the scent of salt and her skin, the sound of her soft breathing in the dark, the impossible, terrifying feeling of peace. It was a lifetime ago. A fantasy he had been stupid enough to believe in.
His boot nudged something near the base of a overflowing trash receptacle a few yards from the bench. It wasn’t the soft crunch of a leaf, but a harder, plastic sound. He knelt, his fingers brushing aside the wet leaves.
It was her comms device.
The small, black earpiece was crushed, the delicate casing splintered as if it had been ground under a heavy heel.
A cold dread, absolute and profound, washed over him, extinguishing the last embers of hope. She would never have been this careless. Never. This was not a sign of caution. This was a sign of violence.
His gaze snapped up, his search no longer random but forensic. He saw it all now, the subtle story written in the dirt that his desperate hope had blinded him to.
The deep, frantic scuff marks near the bench, partially obscured but unmistakable to a trained eye. The overturned trash can, its contents spilled in a way that wasn’t random. A struggle. She had been here. And she had been taken.
He stood, the shattered piece of plastic clutched in his fist. The world seemed to tilt, the edges of his vision blurring. He stumbled back to the bench and sank onto it, the cold iron seeping through his clothes.
*I’ll be right behind you.*
The promise was a shard of glass in his throat. He had sent her here. To this exact spot. He had created the diversion, drawn the fire, and left her alone and exposed. He had promised to protect her, and he had led her into a cage.
The Fixer—the cold, calculating machine that lived inside him—had analyzed every angle, every threat. But Julian Thorne—the man who had kissed her in a damp cave, who had held her in a cheap motel bed as if she were the only real thing in the universe—had been a fool.
He had let emotion cloud his judgment. He had let a feeling, soft and unfamiliar, compromise his edge. And Elara had paid the price.
A wave of nausea and guilt so powerful it buckled him forward.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to force back the images flooding his mind. Elara, terrified. Elara, fighting back. Elara, dragged into one of Dane’s black vans. Dane. A cold, pristine office. A sterile room.
What they would do to her to get the rest of the data…
His breath hitched, a ragged, tearing sound in the silence of the park. The grief was a physical weight, pressing down, crushing the air from his lungs.
He had failed. In the end, after all the running, all the fighting, he had failed in the only mission that had ever mattered. He had lost her.
For a long, desolate moment, there was nothing but that hollow, aching void where she had been. The warmth, the light, the spark of defiant idealism she had ignited in the wreckage of his life—it was all gone. Extinguished.
Then, something else began to move in the emptiness.
It started as a flicker, a cold spark in the depths of his despair. The grief was a fire, and as it burned, it consumed the weakness, the vulnerability, the man who had let himself feel. The pain was tempered, hammered, and sharpened into something new. Or rather, something old. Something familiar.
He slowly straightened up, his spine rigid. He lifted his head, and the face he turned to the gathering dark was not the one Elara would have recognized.
The lines of exhaustion and worry had been erased, chiseled away into a mask of pure, glacial resolve. The flicker of warmth in his eyes was gone, replaced by the flat, dead-light of a predator.
The guilt didn’t vanish. It became fuel. The despair didn’t disappear. It became focus. The love he had felt for her, a fragile, beautiful thing, was now transmuted into an engine of absolute destruction.
The Fixer was back.
He rose from the bench, his movements economical and precise. He let the crushed remains of the comms device fall from his numb fingers.
It was an artifact from another life, a relic of a man who no longer existed.
He had no exit strategy. He had no plan for tomorrow. Those concepts were meaningless luxuries. There was only the objective.
Corbin Dane had taken the only thing of value from him. Now, he would take everything from Corbin Dane. His company. His reputation. His life. It wasn’t a rescue mission. It was too late for that. It was a suicide mission. A scorched-earth campaign of revenge.
He turned his back on the empty bench and the ghost of a promise. He took a single, deliberate step, and then another, walking out of the park and into the cold, uncaring city. He wasn’t running anymore.
He was hunting. And he would burn the whole world down to see it done.