"Where is she?"
He laughs, spitting out blood.
I grab his jaw and squeeze until I feel bone grinding. "Now."
"Back of the yacht," he garbles out.
I drop him and run.
The hallway stretches. Every step feels like wading through wet concrete. Like the air itself has thickened into something designed to slow me down, to make me watch what's coming without being able to stop it.
Faster. Move faster.
Finally, it opens onto the back platform.
I hit the door at full speed.
And the scene registers in pieces.
Fragments that will be carved into my skull until they lower me into the ground.
Calder.
Standing at the edge of the platform, silhouetted against black water and the Manhattan skyline.
Keira.
On her knees. A guard's fist twisted in her hair, wrenching her head back at an angle that has to hurt. Mascara cutting rivers down her cheeks. Her mouth open in a silent scream…or maybe she's screaming and I just can't hear anything over the roaring in my ears.
And my son.
In Calder's arms, sobbing so hard his small body convulses with it. Snot and tears and hiccuping cries as he reaches toward his mother with grasping fingers.
Mamma. Mamma. Mamma.
And then I see it.
The thing that stops my heart completely.
A concrete block sitting on the platform floor, a coarse rope wrapped around Hale's ankle.
Every thought, every calculation, every shred of control I've built over a lifetime collapses into a single, primal frequency.
"—never really mine, was he? But we both knew that. Just a constant reminder that my wife opened her legs for another man."
"Please." Keira's voice is destroyed. "Please, Ewan. I'll do anything. He's just a little boy. He's innocent."
"Innocent?" Calder laughs, devoid of humanity. "He's evidence of your betrayal and all your lies." He lifts Hale higher, adjusting his grip. “Evidence I'm about to dispose of.”
I raise my weapon, barrel trained on the center of his skull.
"Let him go."
Calder finally turns to look at me.
"Ah, there you are." He shifts Hale in his arms, putting my son's small body directly between us. Using him as a human shield. "I was starting to think you'd miss the main event."
I angle the gun. Search for a clean shot. Any shot.
