Marcus said something. The wind tore the words away before Zach could hear them.
He pushed harder. Cleared the vegetation. Crossed onto the open stone.
Marcus glanced his way. The bastard’s expression didn’t change. Didn’t show surprise or concern. Just… acknowledgment. Like he’d expected Zach to come. Like he’d calculated this too.
And maybe he had. Maybe Marcus had known the poison wouldn’t kill Zach, only slow him down. Slow him enough that he’d be compromised, desperate, fighting his own body while trying to protect someone he?—
The thought cut off.
Because Emma was looking at him now, eyes wide, rain streaming down her face.
And Zach knew—with absolute, crystalline certainty—that he could not reach her in time.
I’m too late.
Chapter 39
Thunderous Fury
The cliff edgematerialized through sheets of rain like something from a nightmare.
Emma pushed up from where she’d fallen, breath tearing in her lungs, and climbed the rise on trembling legs, every movement burning. Wind tore at her with violent hands, whipping her soaked hair across her face. Rain stung her exposed skin like tiny needles, cold and relentless. Below, the ocean raged—a churning mass of black water and white foam that crashed against the rocks with thunderous fury.
She stood and fumbled for her phone with shaking fingers, desperate for anything—a signal, a connection, proof that the world still existed beyond this storm-wrapped hell.
Nothing. No bars. No service. No lifeline.
Hold on, Zach. Just hold on.
His name pulsed through her mind like a heartbeat. His blood drying on her hands made her stomach clench. She left him bleeding on the side of a cliff, in a hurricane, trying to protect her even as his body failed. She had to find help. Had to find someone, anyone?—
A branch cracked behind her.
Emma spun, her sneakers sliding on wet stone.
A man stepped out of the trees.
He moved with unnatural calm, as if the storm were nothing more than a light drizzle. His clothes were soaked through, plastered to his frame. His fancy pants and shirt should have looked incongruous out in the middle of the storm, but her attention locked on his hands. On the gun he held, barrel pointed casually at the ground between them.
Controlled.
“You shouldn’t be up here alone,” he said, voice carrying on the wind. He took another step closer, positioning himself near the cliff’s edge at an angle to her. Not directly across—between her and any path back down. “It’s dangerous in weather like this.”
The reasonable tone contrasted with the insanity in his eyes. Emma’s skin crawled. This was the voice of a man who believed he’d already won, who was going through the motions of an inevitable conclusion.
“Who are you?” Her question came out rougher than she intended, throat raw from crying and screaming and sheer terror.
But she didn’t run.
Every instinct screamed at her to bolt, to put distance between herself and that gun, but her legs held firm. Something had shifted inside her during that desperate climb. A barrier cracked, letting something else flow through—molten steel now replaced her spine.
She would protect Zach. Whatever it took.
“Ah, they didn’t tell you! Why, I’m the conductor of all this.” The man bowed. “Marcus Sinclair, at your service.”
Her hand found the Windstone in her pocket. The moment her fingers closed around it, warmth flooded through her palm, spreading up her arm. Not hot—justpresent, like a living thing responding to her touch.
She didn’t understand it. Not fully. But she trusted it.
