His arm shot out. Not gentle, not careful. A bar of solid muscle and bone that caught me across the chest like a steel beam. The impact slammed me backward, my spine hitting the console hard enough to jar my teeth.
"No, sir." His voice was low. Absolute. Iron-clad. Not an employee to a boss. A retired soldier to a civilian about to compromise an operation. "They are in. You moving now will get someone killed. Maybe your daughter. Trust them."
I struggled against him for a second, pure instinct and desperation. But he was immovable. A mountain. And the words penetrated through the red haze.
Maybe your daughter.
I froze. Every muscle locked in place even as everything in me screamed to move, to run, to get to them.
On the screens, chaos erupted in calm, professional terms that made it somehow worse.
"He's spooked!" One of the operators announced. "He's moving toward the hostages!"
On the thermal, the signature that had stopped, the one who had heard the hydraulic spreader, was moving now. Fast. Straight toward those two huddled shapes.
Toward Anna and Daisy.
"Third floor, move, move, move!" James barked into his mic, his professional calm cracking. "He's with them! Breach the room now!"
The helmet cam feeds became a jostling nightmare. The operators abandoned stealth for speed, boots pounding up the cleared stairwell, weapons raised, breathing heavy through their mics.
The camera bounced violently, showing flashes of concrete walls, rusted railings, numbers spray-painted on walls marking floors.
Second floor. Third floor. Moving down a corridor.
The thermal image was a horror show. Three signatures now clustered around the two huddled forms. The pacing signature had reached them. The other two male signatures were scrambling, one moving toward the approaching SWAT team, one toward a far corner of the room.
"Contact! Right door!" An operator's shout.
"Gun! He has a—" Another voice, cut off by the sudden eruption of movement on screen.
Then, a single, sharp, unmistakable crack split the morning air.
Not from the speaker.
Not from the radio.
From the mill itself. Echoing across the waterfront, bouncing off concrete and water, carrying across the gray dawn with terrible clarity.
A gunshot.
Followed by a scream that pierced through the symphony of dawn.
Anna.
19.Anna
Time lost all meaning in the concrete dark.
Hours? Days? I couldn't tell anymore. The single bare bulb had burned out at some point, leaving only gray pre-dawn light seeping through gaps in boarded windows. Enough to see shapes. Enough to know I was still here.
Still alive.
Time was measured in heartbeats. In the slow, aching throb of my wrists where zip ties had cut so deep the plastic was slick with blood. In the shallow rasp of my own breathing, each inhale was a conscious effort. In the hot, sticky trickle down my arms.
My hands were numb, they had been for hours. I couldn't feel my fingers anymore. Couldn't tell if they were still attached or if they'd simply died from lack of circulation.
But I could feel everything else. The concrete column pressed into my spine. The industrial gritcoating my throat. The bruises blooming across my ribs, my face, my arms. Carter's handiwork, methodically applied.
