Page 220 of Stay Scared

The doors begin to close.

Cade steps forward until an officer blocks him. Owen stays beside him, watching me through the narrowing gap.

Ash stays exactly where I left him.

Somehow, that is the one that gets under my skin.

The last thing I see before the doors meet is his bare face, and the way he stares at the key clenched in my hand, like part of him is already trying to follow it.

The ambulance pulls away.

My phone keeps vibrating inside the evidence pouch. Twenty-five thousand dollars sits in my account. Three men know which hospital I am going to.

The founder key digs into my bandaged palm hard enough to hurt.

My fingers tighten around it.

Chapter 27

Six weeks after Crimson Night, the silence is worse than the chase.

Cade stays away because I told him to.

Six weeks pass without a burner-number text, a black truck across from Halden Coffee, food arriving through Mark, or a two-in-the-morning knock because Cade decided six weeks really meant five and a half.

That should make the absence peaceful.

Instead, I notice every black truck that turns behind me and every broad-shouldered man who enters a room before his face becomes visible. Twice, I wake because I dreamed somebody was standing outside my bedroom door. Both times, the hallway is empty.

Cade has never been good at absence.

Apparently neither have I.

My shoulder clears physical therapy after two weeks. The cuts on my palms disappear sooner. The narrow scar beneath my ribs takes longer to stop itching.

Crimson Night stays everywhere.

Rook’s broadcast survives in hundreds of clips. Some end before Cade releases me. Others cut Ash into something almost mythic beneath the red lights. One freezes on Owen’s archive long enough for strangers to identify coffee shops that still make me check every window when I pass.

I quit reading coverage during the second week.

Mark keeps reading.

He sends me anything I actually need to know and keeps the rest to himself.

Owen contacts me once through a courier who leaves a forensic report with my building manager during week four. An outside firm verified Owen’s deletion and physically destroyed the remaining private storage media. Material tied to Rook stayed intact for evidence.

Everything Owen collected because he wanted me belongs to nothing now.

At the bottom of the last page, beneath somebody else’s signature, his handwriting crosses the margin.

I wanted to keep it.

He leaves the sentence alone.

I read it three times before locking the report in the drawer beside Ash’s founder key.

Ash waits another twelve days before making his move.