Page 207 of Joker

That kind of sickness doesn’t delegate the important parts.

The first body goes down quiet.

One of Cal’s men, posted at the back corner near the service path with a cigarette between two fingers and all the awareness of a dead branch. Cain takes him from behind and lowers him soundlessly enough that the only proof anything happened is the little orange spark of the cigarette dying in the dirt.

The second one isn’t as clean.

Blaze catches movement near the side window and somebody inside spots him half a second too soon. There’s a curse, a scramble, then the side door flies open and a bigger manbarrels out into the dark with a knife in one hand and panic already making him stupid.

Shadow hits him low. Blaze takes him high. The whole thing is over before the bastard even understands he made the wrong choice.

Not clean. Not pretty. Useful.

A light snaps on inside the cabin. Then another.

Voices.

One sharp with alarm. One calmer.

There he is.

I hear him before I see him and it pisses me off all over again how controlled he sounds.

Not panicked. Not sloppy. Just irritated in that cold, superior way men like him use when they think composure itself counts as power.

Logan appears at the corner of the porch just as I clear the front steps. “Inside,” he says.

I nod once and go.

The front door is unlocked.

Second mistake. Or maybe not. Maybe he thinks only men who feel guilty lock doors when they’re on somebody else’s land. Maybe he thinks the badge in his pocket and the family name in his bloodstream are shield enough.

Either way, the door swings in easy.

The cabin inside is exactly what I expected too. Sparse furniture. Dust over surfaces nobody actually lives with. A cheap lamp on the side table. Empty bottle on the counter. Two duffels near the back wall and a burner phone sitting beside them like this whole setup was built for movement, not comfort.

And there he is.

Cal stands in the middle of the room in jeans, boots, a fitted dark button-down rolled to the elbows, and the kind of calm expression that tells me he still thinks he can talk his way through this. Mid-thirties maybe. Good-looking if you like the polished, respectable kind. Hair neat. Jaw clean. No wasted movement. No obvious crack in the mask except in the eyes.

The eyes are wrong. That’s where the rot lives.

He looks at Logan first, then me, and something ugly and amused passes over his face. “Well,” he says. “This is less subtle than I expected.”

I shut the door behind me. Slowly.

He tracks the motion.

Good. Let him understand exactly how small this room just got.

“Subtle stopped mattering when you touched her,” I say.

That lands. Not big. Not visibly.

Just enough.

His gaze slides to me fully then, and I watch the exact second he realizes who in the room matters most tonight. “You,” he says quietly.