Page 75 of Stay Scared

“You wanted to know who was inside your house.”

His head tilts.

“My name is Rook.”

Chapter 12

“My name is Rook.”

The beaked mask fills every monitor. Nobody asks who he is. Ash already knows. His hand leaves the microphone and closes slowly at his side while Cade looks from him to the screens.

“You said he was gone.”

“I believed he was.”

Cade steps closer, dried blood dark across one forearm and the straps of his vest. “That’s not what I fucking asked.”

Owen stays beside the emergency board, watching code move beneath Rook’s image. On the theater feed, Mark pulls against the bindings around his wrists. His movements are weaker now, and the bruise along one side of his face has darkened beneath the work lights. Whatever history stands between Ash and Rook, Mark is still sitting inside it.

“Release him,” I say.

Rook turns toward the camera. “You gave them a command, and all three stopped for you.”

Ash reaches toward the microphone. “Mark has no part in this. Release him.”

“Neither did the woman you left in my room.”

Ash’s hand halts above the controls. That gets a reaction stronger than Rook’s name did.

Cade catches it immediately. “What woman?”

Rook leans toward the camera until the scratches across the beak become visible. “Interesting. You never told him.”

Cade turns on Ash. “Start talking.”

Ash keeps his eyes on the screen.

“A participant was injured during one of our first events. She required surgery.”

Rook laughs quietly through the speakers. “That is the version you kept.”

Ash presses the microphone switch instead. “Give us a verified live route to the theater and release Mark.”

“You buried what happened once already.”

“I buried evidence of what you did.”

Cade crosses the room until the console is the only thing between him and Ash. The pieces are already rearranging. Rook was not simply somebody Ash knew. He was here when Crimson Night was being built. Owen speaks before Cade can force the rest out of him.

“Rook helped build the original Decay Brigade system.”

Cade looks toward him, but Owen keeps working at the diagnostic window.

“I found an old operator signature inside the copied code. I did not know the identity attached to it.”

Rook’s mask angles toward him.

“You found VANTA.”