Page 101 of Stay Scared

Cade opens the door fully and checks the floor beyond. Then he steps aside. The route is mine.

He holds out the founder key. I take it and return the cord around my neck.

The passage ahead is dark. Rook could have another trap waiting beyond the stairwell. Ash and Owen are somewhere on the other side of that flashing light. Mark is still in the theater.

Cade waits beside me.

I walk through first.

Then I reach back.

His hand closes around mine.

This time, I hold on.

Chapter 15

Cade and I find Owen at the bottom of the service stairwell.

He stands beside a split maintenance door with one hand pressed to his shoulder. Ash waits several feet beyond him under the utility light, studying the layered property map.

Both men look at our joined hands.

Cade releases mine, a movement so small most people would miss it. Owen notices anyway. His attention stays on the space between our hands after they separate, while Ash looks instead at the bandage wrapped around Cade’s ribs.

“What happened?”

“The corridor caught him,” I say.

Cade gestures toward Owen’s shoulder. “Looks like we weren’t the only ones.”

“A partition caught him when the route divided,” Ash says.

“You make it sound almost polite.”

“It was not.”

Owen studies my face without asking what happened inside the maintenance room. His attention flicks to my mouth, then the founder key hanging against my chest.

“You still have the key.”

“Ash hasn’t made a convincing argument for getting it back.”

“He has made several,” Ash says.

“They were bad arguments.”

Cade’s mouth shifts.

Ash folds the map. “The projection route is blocked beyond the next junction. Rook dropped the old fire barrier across the lift.”

“Can the key release it?”

“Not from this side.”

Owen looks toward the narrow corridor behind him. “There may be another route through my private server.”

Cade stares at him. “You have another fucking archive?”