Caleb is mine.
He struggled, inefficient and increasingly desperate, his grip on my wrist weak, leverage nonexistent, his movements deteriorating into panic as control slipped away from him. There’s a moment when the body understands before the mind does, when survival overrides everything else and clarity arrives too late to matter.
He reached it.
By then, Caleb had already stepped out of the alley and onto the next street, safe without ever knowing he’d been at risk.
Only then did I look back at the man.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Nothing man!”
I squeezed his throat. “Try again.”
He struggled and kicked, and by the time I was done, in less than a minute, I decided it wasn’t worth my time getting answers—he was a low-level player in information gathering on any mark that looked like potential gold. Nothing I had to care about.
I ended him cleanly, efficiently, without excess or hesitation, the way I’d been trained to do, the way that ensured there would be no second attempt, no future correction required. When it was done, I moved his body out of sight, checked his pockets with methodical thoroughness, extracting what mattered and discarding what didn’t.
David Branson. Twenty-seven. I memorized it then called in my clean-up team; Branson was their problem now.
By the time I stepped back onto the street, Caleb was already two blocks ahead, walking as if nothing had happened and he hadn’t needed anyone to intervene on his behalf.
That was the part I couldn’t ignore.
They take. I take. The difference is outcome—damage versus preservation.
I didn’t take from Caleb.
I followed him home, made sure he was safe, then took up a position with a clear line of sight of his building, and of the window where his bedroom was.
No one touched what was mine.
No one touched Caleb and lived.
THREE
Caleb
Three dayssince the hurried blow job in a club bathroom and my skin was tight and I was restless. I didn’t know if I wanted sex, dancing, food, work, or sleep, so I ended up heading out to clear a list of chores I’d been putting off forever. Working seven days a week at all hours played havoc with laundry, food buying, and banking. I was still decompressing from the last retrieval the Cave had worked on, too many deaths, too late to save some kids, and my brain was a mess.
Still, that didn’t mean I was too tired to spot my stalker for the second time in the last thirty minutes.
The first instance, I’d dismissed him being there. People crossed paths in cities all the time, reflections lied, timing overlapped. It meant nothing. It had meant nothing right up until it happened again, and this time there was no denying the deliberate adjustment, the distance, the sense of being tracked without ever being crowded.
I slowed as I crossed the street. Cars passed in a steady stream, someone argued on a phone, a cyclist swerved too close to the curb and cursed. Normal noise, normal motion, a world that didn’t care about me in the slightest.
Except for him.
I didn’t turn. I didn’t need to. The reflection in the shop window gave me enough—dark jacket, hands in pockets, gaze angled away a fraction too carefully.
Novak.
Doc’s pet psycho had a habit of appearing when I didn’t want him there, and lately that habit had started to seem a lot like intent.
I kept walking, counting steps without thinking, letting my pace vary enough to test whether he compensated. He did. Not perfectly, not in a way anyone else would notice, but I saw it—the delay, the adjustment in stride, the way he maintained distance as if it were something he’d calculated and locked in place.
That was new.
