Rio carried on as if they weren’t there, rising smoothly to lift me out of the chair, arms sure and steady, he took me across the room. This time when he laid me down, it was on the fresh bed linen, pillows soft. He settled me as if I mattered. As if I wasn’t shaking or dying inside, because I’d put myself in another kind of danger and I wasn’t makingit out of here. There was a lightness in his touch that didn’t match the threats he’d made minutes before, but there was iron in his expression.
I couldn’t decide which part of him scared me more. The carer or the man who promised he’d kill me.
I stared at Jamie over Rio’s shoulder. This wasn’t about hiding anymore. I needed Jamie to believe me. I needed him to know that I wasn’t some traitor crawling in here to sell them out. I was here because I was out of options. Because if anyone could help me live through this, it was him.
The tall guy in the suit—Killian, I knew now—watched me. Enzo narrowed his eyes, arms folded as though restraining himself. Jamie leaned against the wall, flicking a lighter open and shut, the clicking cutting through the heavy silence; and Robbie stood next to Enzo, shoulders edging toward him.
Rio dragged the chair to the bedside and set it down, making it clear he meant to stay.
“Jamie.” My voice cracked, rough and uncertain, but I forced the word out and swallowed hard, throat tight. If this was the only way to get Jamie’s help… to survive… I’d promise anything. Do anything. Whatever it took to stay breathing.
Silence. Heavy. Cold.
“Daemon… Jamie… alone,” I started, my voice hoarse and too quick, stumbling over the names as if I couldn’t quite remember which one to use. I cleared my throat and tried again, softer this time, appealing to DaemonRaze—Jamie. He and I had crossed paths back when we were teenagers. Hacked side by side in the same circles, talked sometimes, respected each other’s reputation more than anything. I didn’t know him well. But he was really my last chance to get help with what I had to do. I needed his skills, knew he’d spent time in prison, and hoped to hell that he was still up to the job. I needed an outside man to back me up. I hadn’t come here for sanctuary. I hadn’t come here to be saved. I’d come here because Jamie knew the dark the way I did—and maybe, just maybe, he’d see that I wasn’t part of it.
“Why is your name all over Kessler’s company? Why is his system using your name?” Enzo cut me off, his voice flat, sharp as a blade. “Are you here to hurt Robbie?”
I was confused, flicking my gaze at Robbie.Why would I hurt him? Did I know him? He was a blurry shape that I couldn’t focus on.“No… Jamie.”
Killian stiffened. “Why do you want to hurt Jamie?”
“No hurt…”
I’d been running for so long that the real story was lost in a hundred different personas. This final burst of survival began with red flags lighting up across the accounts I monitored—ghost traces from people in Kessler’s world, digital breadcrumbs from names I’d kept as insurance. People I tracked to be sure they weren’t tracking me, who’d been arrested or had taken their own lives. Their secrets had been sent out into the world, and that could have been me. My brain hurt, and my eyes closed. I heard them talking over me—someone saying something about fever, about calling Doc, about a million things that spun around me like smoke.
“I… can’t… paper…” I forced out, and everyone stared at me, more talking, and then, I felt paper and a pen in my hand. I couldn’t even focus on the paper; it shook wildly, and Rio took it from me. He was close enough that I could focus on his face. I began to talk, trying to focus. I saw Jamie step closer, a crease of confusion on his brow. He crouched, eyes on the scrawl in Rio’s hand. His mouth moved, repeating fragments of code I’d half written—function calls, variable strings, server ID prefixes. He forced out short bursts of tech-speak as if he was translating me on instinct, parsing out my mess of letters and numbers into something only someone like him could understand.
When he read it back to me, slowly and deliberately, I tried to nod, whimpered at the pain in my head, then closed my eyes and curled into myself.
The rest would have to wait, and if they wanted me dead, then…
Fuck I hoped it was quick.
EIGHT
Rio
Jamie strode out first,Killian on his heels, both moving as if this weren’t a man half-dead in front of them. Enzo tugged Robbie back, one hand tight on his arm, not giving him a choice.
I stayed.
Lyric was shaking—small tremors running through his shoulders—and I didn’t miss the way his fingers scrabbled at the sheets, gripping them as if he were trying to hold on. He was pale beneath the sweat clinging to his skin, eyes half-lidded and glassy.
“What about Doc?” I called after Jamie’s retreating back. “He’s burning up.”
Jamie didn’t even turn.
The door slammed, Killian’s voice chasing Jamiedown the hall. Robbie shot me a wide-eyed glance, but Enzo steered him away.
I stared at Lyric. Whatever the hell this was… I wasn’t walking.
Why?
I grabbed my phone off the side table, typed inburning up, fever, and skimmed through the kind of shit Google spat back. Sepsis, infection, flu, dehydration—none of it was helpful. I checked his wounds. They all appeared okay. Clean. Healing. No fresh blood, no pus, nothing out of place.
I went through the checklist of medications Doc had left us, mentally checking them off one by one. Antibiotics. Painkillers. Fluids. And still…
None of it made sense.
