I turned, pushing past them.
"Marcus."Michael's voice followed me."Don't do this. Don't shut us out."
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
Because they were right.
But stopping meant letting fear win. And I wasn't ready for that.
The door swung shut behind me, cutting off whatever else they might have said. Despite my efforts to escape, their worry followed me into the pre-dawn darkness.
***
I drove to the lake on autopilot, my mind stuck inlooped fragments of Michael's words."Then you get fucking killed."
The street outside the station had been quiet.Too quiet.There was no early morning foot traffic or late-shift workers smoking outside the 24-hour diner across the road.
Even the usualhumof the city was off, like everything washolding its breath.
Someone was watching me.
Not in the way they had before—an abstract sense of being observed and studied from a distance. No, this wascloser. Heavier. More immediate.Like a hand hovering just above my shoulder or a whisper brushing my neck.
At a red light, I adjusted my rearview mirror. Mygut clenched. The angle was off.
I kept ittilted slightly upwardso I could catch trafficandwatch for anyone following me. But now it was lower, reflectingonly my eyes, shadowed and hollowed by exhaustion.
I hadn't touched it.
My knuckles tightened around the steering wheel. The forensics team had searched my truck methodically.Someone fucked with the mirror to unsettle me.It was a microscopic shift, enough to make me question myself.
The light turned green. I kept driving.
The lake would clear my head. It had to.
Lake Washington stretched black and endless before me, swallowing the thin glow of streetlamps along the shoreline. The air wasunnaturally still, with no usual breeze, as if even the wind refused to stir the surface.
I shouldn't be here.
The thought was immediate.Instinctual.My hands hesitated on the zipper of my wetsuit.
I pushed forward because this was mine.This lake, this ritual, and this control. He hadn't taken it yet.
The first plunge was a shock to my system.Colder than expected.My lungs clenched involuntarily as my body momentarily rejected the intrusion.
I forced a breath. Then another. And started swimming. Stroke. Breathe. Stroke. Breathe.
The rhythm should have settled me.Instead, it didn't sit right.My body resisted, and my movements were stiffer and lessfluid. Thewater seemed thicker, dragging at my limbs in a way that had nothing to do with fatigue.
Ninety-seven.
I sucked in a breath.It tasted wrong. Metallic. Chemical. Like the inside of my SCBA mask before the air cut off.
Ninety-nine.
Somethingbrushed my foot. I kicked harder, swallowing the urge to twist around.
