Page 86 of The Ashes of Summer

The corridor runs ahead under dim emergency lighting, concrete underfoot, pipes overhead. And the further in we go, the more the quiet stops feeling like quiet and starts feeling like something holding its breath. A house this size should hum. Should creak. This one is a held breath.

Every footstep echoes. Every movement is too loud.

Left turn, then another passage. No guards. No cameras. No staff. Nothing.

I catch Carter's eye. He feels it too—shoulders tight, gaze never settling.

We go deeper. One hallway becomes another, then another. Too many turns. Too many empty rooms. A maze built under a mansion, laid out by a man who wanted anyone who got in here to get lost.

She's somewhere above us. Maybe a floor. Maybe two. Close enough that I have to fight the urge to start kicking doors, and the only thing stopping me is knowing exactly what that costs her.

Ahead, a heavy steel door stands half open. Hayes lifts a hand. Everyone stops.

And I hear it.

A metallic sound. Small. Insignificant. The kind you'd miss.

My stomach drops before my brain catches up. Because that sound shouldn't exist in an empty corridor.

My eyes snap to the floor just as something silver comes rolling out of the dark ahead of us.

"MOVE—"

The canister blows before half of them have turned.

White floods the corridor in seconds. I drag in a breath and it's fire—straight down my throat and into my lungs like I've swallowed a lit match. Shouting. Somebody hits a wall. Somebody else is coughing hard enough to bring up blood.

The corridor's gone. One second I can see my men. The next they're shapes in a white sea.

And through all of it, one of them is moving.

Not staggering. Not blind. Moving.

Kurt.

"KURT!"

My voice goes nowhere. My eyes are streaming, every breath is broken glass, and all I can see is that shape crossing the smoke like a man who knows exactly where the walls are.

The rage that comes up cuts clean through the gas.

Every conversation. Every warning. Every fucking line he drew on that map with my phone burning in my fist.

Not a man helping me get her back.

A man using me to get himself back inside.

He wants her first.

I've sat across a table from a hundred men like him—men who dress obsession up in prettier clothes so they can sleep at night, who tell themselves they're the ones protecting her. The difference between him and his brother is presentation. Not intent.

"KURT!"

The shape turns. Long enough for me to see his face through the white⁠—

—and he doesn't look proud. He looks guilty.

Somehow that's worse. As though feeling bad about it changes a single thing. As though Summer's supposed to care about his conscience while she's tied to a bed in this house.