“Of course. I can do ten AM. What’s going on?”
“Quest and I broke up. He found out about the dungeon and he lost it and we said things we can’t take back and I don’t know what to do.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.” Her voice was warm and steady and it made me feel less like I was falling. “We’ll work through it tomorrow. In the meantime, try to rest. Don’t make any big decisions tonight. Your nervous system is in fight mode right now, and anything you do from that state is going to feel urgent but won’t serve you.”
“Okay. Thank you, Janelle.”
“That’s what I’m here for. Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I hung up and felt slightly less like the walls were closing in. Janelle always did that—pulled me back from the edge with a few sentences that made me feel seen. Tomorrow I’d sit on her couch and unpack this mess, and she’d help me figure out whether I’d made the right choice or blown up the only good thing I had.
But right now I had something else to handle. Something I’d been putting off for too long.
I drove to the warehouse.
The plan was simple. Tonight I was going to end Thad. No more threats, no more promises, no more visits where I told him next time would be his last. I’d told Quest I needed help with the body, and he’d said “I got you.” Now that we weren’t together anymore, I was going to handle the killing myself. The body could wait. I just needed this to be over.
I went in through the side entrance with my gun in one hand and a knife in the other because I wanted options. The warehouse was dark and I turned on the overhead light, walked toward the cage and stopped.
The cage was empty.
The chains had been cut, the padlock was sitting on the floor beside the cage door, and the interior was clean. Someone had wiped it down. The water bottle I’d left last time was gone. Thewaste bucket was gone. Even the smell had been reduced, like someone had come in with bleach and scrubbed the concrete.
Thad was gone. And whoever took him had been methodical about it.
My hands were shaking as I pulled up the camera feed on my phone. I’d installed a small wireless camera in the warehouse months ago, pointed at the cage’s entrance. I scrubbed back through the footage and found a timestamp from yesterday.
A figure in a dark hoodie and a face mask wheeling a wheelchair through the side entrance. They moved with purpose, no hesitation, like they’d been here before and knew the layout. They cut the chains and pulled Thad out. He was barely conscious, limp, couldn’t stand on his own. They loaded him into the wheelchair and wheeled him back out the way they’d arrived. The whole operation took less than four minutes.
I scrubbed back even further and found that this figure had been here a couple of times. I should’ve placed an alarm on the door, but I wanted the storage facility to remain inconspicuous. Besides, it was so far out the way, no one knew about it. Prime bought it especially for me.
I stood in the empty warehouse with my gun in one hand and my phone in the other and felt the ground shifting under my feet. My apartment was destroyed. My relationship was over. And now my prisoner was gone. The one thing I had control over, the one piece of leverage, the one act of power that reminded me every day that Mehar Ali was not a woman to be fucked with—had been taken from me while I was at dinner getting my heart broken.
I called Quest.
He picked up on the fourth ring. Longer than usual. I felt the distance in those extra two rings.
“What.” His voice was flat and cold and nothing like the man who’d called me Peach twelve hours ago.
“Thad is gone. Someone took him from the warehouse. I’m here right now and the cage is empty.”
Silence for about three seconds. Then: “Go back to the hotel room. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
He hung up before I could say anything else. No “are you okay,” no “I’m on my way,” just an instruction. But he was coming. We were broken up, and he was still coming because whatever we were to each other now, the Thad situation was a problem that belonged to both of us, and Quest didn’t leave problems unresolved.
I drove back to the hotel and waited. He knocked on my door exactly twenty-eight minutes later. I opened it and he walked past me without greeting, without touching, without looking at me any longer than necessary. He sat on the edge of the bed and held out his hand.
“Show me the footage.”
I handed him my phone. He watched the video twice, scrubbing back and forth, zooming in on the figure’s build, their shoes, the wheelchair, the way they moved.
“Somebody must’ve been following you.” He watched the video a third time. “The wheelchair was planned. This wasn’t a rescue, this was an extraction. Whoever this is, they’ve been watching you for a while.”
“Who would do this?”
“Kacey, maybe.” He said it without hesitation. “She’s been digging for months. She hacked into an Apple ID trying to find information about Thad. She asked me to set up a meeting with you. She knows you’re connected to whatever happened to him and she’s been putting pieces together.” He handed my phone back. “She’s on to you, Mehar.”
“What do I do?” I asked.
