“I’m saying,” Reese cuts in, “that Bellrose Institute got exactly what it wanted. You were never the target, Cason. You were the distraction. You want to know who really hired me? It was Malcolm all along.”
My stomach drops through the floor.
His thumb stops brushing against my skin, and I realize how comforting the touch had been. I want to ask him to give it back, to keep doing it.
“No.” I shake my head, unwilling to believe it. “That’s—no. He wouldn’t do that.”
I have to be misunderstanding. After all, the chances of me being able to comprehend anything right now are very low. I’m standing here with the ghost of my abductor seeing shadows move.
I’m dreaming.
That has to be what’s going on. Because there’s no way in hell Malcolm would ever orchestrate his own nephew’s kidnapping. My brain clings to that conclusion with the kind of desperate optimism normally reserved for lottery tickets and miracle cures. It’s the only explanation thatdoesmake any sense.
I let out a shaky breath and nod slowly.
“Okay,” I say. “Great. Perfect. That actually explains a lot.”
Reese’s brows draw together.
Again, I look past him at the wall, the concrete, the lightsthat are just a little too bright, the shadows that may or may not be breathing like a suspiciously alive lung.
“Yeah.” I gesture vaguely with one hand while the other is still busy clutching his wrist like a stress ball. “This tracks. Trauma brain. Classic. My subconscious finally snapped under the weight of unresolved emotional damage.”
Reese just stares at me.
I nod again, more confidently now that I’ve invented a coping mechanism.
“I mean, obviously this is a dream,” I inform him like he should’ve come to that same conclusion. “Or a nightmare, I guess. Which means I’m about to wake up in my apartment, Felix is going to be screaming at me for breakfast, and I’ll go back to my therapist who’s going to charge me extra for whatever the hell this is.”
Silence.
Reese blinks.
“You think you’re dreaming,” he says flatly.
“Correct.”
He releases my throat, but his hand doesn’t leave for long. It forms a fist and comes flying at my face. The punch isn’t hard enough to knock me out, but my head still snaps sideways as pain explodes across my jaw. I stagger.
“Fuck!”
Okay, fine. I punched him first. Now we’re even.
“Still dreaming?”
“Unfortunately,” I mutter before spitting blood onto the concrete, “that felt extremely real.” I rub my jaw, glaring at him. “And, also…rude.”
He ignores that as he takes a step back. “You hacked half the dark web to get back at the person who hired me to kidnap you. Or who youthoughthired me. The person Malcolm led you right to.”
My stomach tightens. “How do you—”
“You dismantled networks, burned accounts and contacts, exposed people who had spent years staying invisible, whodependedon that invisibility to stay alive.”
Each sentence lands like another blow.
“You destroyed something I spent years building.”
Oh.
