He slips away before I can recover, fading into the shadows like he was born there. Just like that, I’m exposed. Alone. But I can handle myself. I have to be able to handle myself.
The voices grow louder, closing in—but then they split. One veers deeper into the corridor, the other cuts closer.
Too close.
I don’t know where Cameron is. No flicker of movement, not a single creak of a footstep. He’s vanished like a ghost, and I can’t afford to sit here and wait for whatever’s coming.
So, I don’t.
I lunge from the darkness and swing.
The first attempt whistles through empty air. The second thuds into muscle—close, but not clean. Then the third landssolid, the bat striking bone with a sickening precision that folds the man like laundry.
He drops at my feet.
And in the silver bleed of moonlight from the stairwell, I see Cameron appear—arms half-raised, eyebrows carved into some hybrid form of disbelief and exasperation.
His face reads one clear question—why is it always you?
Then Adam’s voice cuts through the corridor in a furious rumble.
“What the f—”
He doesn’t get to finish.
He barrels straight into Cameron’s chest. Bad move.
Cameron doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even bother pulling the trigger.
Instead, he lifts the dart gun like it weighs nothing and drives it upward—an effortless, brutal arc that cracks clean beneath Adam’s chin. A sharpthwack, and Adam drops like dead weight.
No warning. No flair.
“Can you not see the dart gun?” he snaps, gesturing like it should’ve been obvious I was meant to stand down.
“I handled it, didn’t I?”
He steps over the crumpled body and throws me a look that’s half-annoyed, half-seriously?
“Barely. And now there’s a blood trail soaking into my floor.”
“I’ll clean it—”
“No, Nell. You won’t.” His tone slices through mine before I can finish, like the very idea of me handling bleach and a mop is more dangerous than the two unconscious men at our feet.
23
Cam
What the hell was she thinking?
I swear, by the time we get through this mess, I’m going to need insurance specifically for that goddamn rolling pin. And maybe a therapist. Or two.
Adam was always going to be a problem. A box waiting to be checked. But this—this wild, unsanctioned burst of chaos—wasn’t the way. When I say stay low and wait, I mean stay low and wait, not go charging out like some deranged vigilante with a kitchen implement.
It could’ve gone sideways in half a dozen ways. She doesn’t even see it.
And now?
