Her phone buzzed again, the vibration muffled against her.
She pulled it out and checked the screen.
BLAKE:Don’t go inside. I’m on my way. Serious. Just wait.
Her stomach twisted.
If he was panicked enough to text twice and call, it meant he’d found something bad. But she couldn’t just turn back—not when the lead might vanish by the time he got here.
She slipped the phone into her pocket again. They’d worked too hard for too many years, and they were close, too close, to let Laurel slip through again. She wouldn’t waste an opportunity to end this. All of this, the long nights, the constant relocations, the just-out-of-reach promotion. No, for once, she’d see this through.
For Jensen and all the other agents who had perished on the job. She couldn’t waste this opportunity. None of them had.
The metal stairs spiraled upward, each step corroded and slick. She took them carefully, her hand brushing the cold rail bed. Every sound echoed—her boots, her breathing, the wind whistling through cracks in the walls.
Halfway up, her phone buzzed again.
Another call.
She clenched her jaw. She pulled her phone out to shut it off and noticed the signal flickered. With each step she ascended, the bars on her phone dropped until there were zero.
Fine. One less distraction.
The stairwell opened into the lantern room, the curved glass shattered in jagged teeth. Fog poured in like smoke. Her flashlight beam caught on movement. Her pulse stammered.
Just her reflection, broken by the shards.
The room stood empty.
Nothing except a circle drawn directly on the cracked concrete near the center of the room. Red grease pencil. Exactly like the one she and Blake had found on the chart.
Inside the circle lay a single, tarnished shell casing.
A chill crawled up her spine.
She squatted, heart hammering. The casing was clean. No dust, no corrosion. Whatever happened here hadn’t happened long ago.
Her phone buzzed again, startling her. She pulled it out, a half bar flickered on, then off, enough for the text to slip through.
Viv, I mean it. Get out of there. It’s not safe. That chart was bait. Jenson lived on the Lady. He’s gone. I think Maddox knew.
Vivian’s pulse pounded. She tapped the screen, but the signal bar blinked and died completely.
He was wrong. Maddox couldn’t be the leak. No way. She knew the man who’d given her a second chance, brought her up as a solid agent, and had her back since her father’s ruin.
No, he was clean. No doubt in her mind.
A metallicclankechoed from below.
She straightened, every nerve sparking. The sound came again—metal on metal, measured, deliberate. Not the wind.
“Blake?” she called softly, though she knew it wasn’t him. She raised her Glock and aimed for the stairs.
No response.
The creaking grew louder, closer. Something shifting on the floor below. Then—silence.
Her breath fogged the air. Every instinct screamed to get out, but she forced herself to move, slow and steady, toward the edge of the room. She took a step down the stairwell and bent over to see further. Nothing but shadows and the faint echo of dripping water.
