Page 133 of Guarded Knight

I nod once and push away the sick thoughts in my mind.

I speak into my cell. “Keep digging. I want everything on him. Any special skills. Anything at all that can help us understand what we’re getting into.”

I sit in the passenger seat, jaw locked, phone clutched so tight I could crush it. But Anton is right. I can’t think about what we missed, but rather aim for what’s still out there.

Anton turns the wheel hard, veering onto the next street without missing a beat. “Fulton’s ten out. We’ll make it in five.” Anton’s jaw flexes. “We going in quiet?”

“No other way. He’s premeditated. If we spook him…” I can’t finish the sentence.

He might do the unthinkable. If he hasn’t already… He was watching. Waiting. Perving on his sick little fantasy until he had the perfect chance. A pain like no other throbs in my chest.

I can’t lose her. Not when we were so close.

Not when I never told her I loved her.

God, what must she be thinking? Terrified. Alone. Betrayed by every instinct.

I rub a hand over my mouth. The air in the truck feels too hot. My heart’s a goddamn war drum.

“She’s strong,” Anton says, knowing I need calming.

But I don’t want her strong right now. I want her safe. She can fight through anything, but I never want her fighting alone.

Anton tries to reassure me. “We’re going to get her back. We’ve got gear in the trunk.”

We fall into silence. Not a peaceful silence. The kind where you count heartbeats between the seconds and prepare for the worst.

Get her back doesn’t begin to cover what I’m going to do.

I’m going to find her.

I’m going to end him.

And then I’m going to tell her everything—how I never stopped loving her, how every goddamn second without her was the loneliest of my life, how she’s it for me. Always has been.

And how I’m never leaving her side again.

It feels like an eternity until we round a bend and the warehouse comes into view. It’s rust-eaten, dead and alive at the same time like a haunted house.

The truck slows. Anton kills the engine.

He touched Lara. That was the wrong move.

This isn’t a rescue. This is an execution.

35

After the injection,Trent hummed while clinking bottles, organizing his medieval medicines. He came back one last time, placed a hand on my forehead, and kissed it.

It took every bit of willpower not to flinch and to stay limp when I wasn’t sure he’d ever leave.

But he did. Eventually, the door clicked shut, followed by a lock and the faint jingle of keys as he walked away to some other chamber in this house of horrors.

I count to five hundred before allowing my eye closest to the bed to inch open, keeping my body slack. Who knows if he locked the door from the inside. If he’s actually sitting and watching.

I see nothing and open it farther, not moving a muscle apart from the occasional cough I can’t stop, but that Trent would expect, even if I were stone-cold passed out.

There’s nothing in my view. No sound, not a breath… the air is still. I open my other eye no more than a few millimeters, and when I’m sure he’s not in the room, I open them completely.