Doc would take it apart. Jamie would pull whatever had already been sent, whatever sat waiting in storage somewhere else, whatever network this one belonged to. This wasn’t a single man with a camera. It was a system, small but functional, and systems didn’t rely on one device.
“Who else is with you?”
He told me.
Names, loose descriptions, enough to identify the other two I’d already marked on the floor. His voice shook by the end of it, the bravado gone, leaving something smaller and easier to control. “We don’t hurt anyone!”
“What is happening in there?”
“Jake’ll suck him off, get photos, blackmail, maybe he’s a rich guy and?—”
I tightened my fingers around his throat, allowed my blade to slice a little, held him there a moment longer, watching his eyes, measuring whether there was anything left he hadn’t given me.
There wasn’t.
When I stepped back, he stayed where he was, pressed to the wall, blood trickling into his white T-shirt, not moving until I’d already turned away.
“Leave,” I growled, and he left so fast he slammed into the wall and stumbled.
Too many errors from Caleb. I’d fix them. He didn’t need to see it. By the time I reached the bathroom door, I already knew how this ended.
I banged on the door, “Cops are here!” I yelled.
There was movement inside, the door slamming open, the blond spilling out, yanking up pants, and slinking into the shadows, not even giving me a second glance. Caleb staggered out, belting his low-rise pants, not looking into the shadows, not seeing me. I didn’t see evidence of drugs, he was vodka-buzzed, and his features were relaxed now, less twisted in painat what he’d seen and done today. He left, shaking himself out of whatever anger and need to forget had made him come here.
I saw the blond before Caleb did, which was the first indication that something was wrong, because Caleb should have seen the other man following him out of Black Static, only he didn’t look.
He stepped out into the night still carrying the aftermath of what had happened inside—looser than usual, his focus turned inward, his awareness dulled just enough to matter. It wasn’t that his guard was down; Caleb didn’t function like that. I’d interrupted whatever the blond was hoping to do, and he was closing the distance to Caleb too quickly.
Caleb turned a corner without a glance behind him, without using the windows to catch a reflection, without even the minimal hesitation that might have broken a line of pursuit. Blondie followed, adjusting the gap between them with controlled precision—three steps, then five, then wider again as Caleb slowed, compensating instinctively to avoid detection.
He wasn’t guessing. He was managing distance. Following Caleb home? Wanting more from Caleb? Wanting to hurt him?
Not permitted. Access to him is restricted.
When Caleb cut into the alley, the situation changed from potential to inevitable. The space narrowed immediately, brick walls closing in on either side, light dropping off. There were no cameras, no passing traffic, nothing that would interrupt or even witness what happened next. It was the kind of place that turned opportunity into outcome.
I moved before Caleb reached the midpoint, intervention threshold met. I adjusted my path to intercept Blondie and shoved him into the shadows, one hand over his mouth, the other closed around his throat with precise placement, thumb under the jaw, fingers pressing into the carotid, cutting off both movement and momentum in the same motion.
He flailed in my hold, tried to speak, which suggested he thought this was a situation that could be negotiated.
It wasn’t.
I drove him back into the wall hard enough to disorient but not enough to draw noise, controlling the impact, controlling him. His hands came up late, untrained, reacting rather than anticipating, and that told me everything I needed to know about the level of threat he posed. Opportunistic. Not disciplined.
“Stop,” I said, because sometimes instruction is enough.
It wasn’t.
I increased the pressure, feeling the change in his pulse under my fingers as fear replaced intent, his body catching up to the reality his mind hadn’t processed yet. Caleb kept walking away, unaware, unaware was optimal, moving steadily toward the far end of the alley as if nothing had changed, as if there wasn’t a man pinned against a wall ten meters behind him who had already decided to take something from him.
The man’s eyes flicked past me again, tracking Caleb, still calculating and trying to find a way to complete what I’d interrupted.
No.
I blocked that line completely, removing the possibility before it could become action.
“You chose the wrong target,” I told him, not as a warning, but as a statement of fact.
