The name didn’t come with fear anymore. Not after years of studying the damage he left behind. The fractured minds. The gaps in memory. The victims who couldn’t explainwhythey were broken.
I’d built my career around men like him.
Which meant this wasn’t a coincidence.
This was premeditation.
I moved to the wall and ran my fingers lightly along the surface—not searching for seams, but for vibration. HVAC hum. Power draw. Subtle inconsistencies.
There.
A faint tremor behind the left panel. Secondary system access. Not for escape—not yet—but for orientation.
They wanted me lost.
I smiled faintly.
They’d underestimated me in precisely the way dangerous men always did.
My watch was gone. My phone. My comms.
But they’d missed something else.
They always did.
I shifted my weight and let my shoulder brush the wall again—once, twice—mapping rhythm, distance, temperature. I let my breathing slow until it matched the building’s hum.
If Logan Carter was looking for me, he wouldn’t start with the convoy.
He’d start with the silence.
And I would give him something to hear.
I reached into my boot and pressed my thumb against the thin strip embedded beneath the sole.
A pressure sensor. Passive. Invisible.
I didn’t activate it fully. Just enough to register displacement.
Not a beacon.
A fingerprint.
If he sent a message to Logan Carter like he said he did, then Logan would recognize it.
Because he was the kind of man who noticed what others missed.
The lights flickered once.
Just once.
Interesting.
I straightened, hands loose at my sides, posture calm.
Let Sentinel watch, I thought.
Let him believe I didn’t know where I was.
