Page 85 of His To Erase

I don’t know if they replaced him, but it doesn’t matter, they’re sloppy now. I can feel it. They think I’ve cracked because that’s what they always think when you bleed enough.

I hear two sets of footsteps, and I can tell one of them is dragging their feet. That’s the one I’m going to kill first.

They always come at the same time. Every twelve hours. They inject me with whatever cocktail Frank thinks will keep me compliant.

I won’t be taking it today.

I shift in the chair as the cuffs bite deep, but the left side’s loose enough that If I dislocate my thumb again, I can slip out. It’ll hurt like hell, but I’ve walked through worse.

The door opens and they walk in laughing—loud and careless, like they’ve already forgotten where they are. One of them reeks of cheap liquor and cheaper intelligence.

Perfect.

The taller one steps closer and crouches, reaching for my jaw. His fingers are clumsy, fumbling for control, a needle trembling in his grip.

“Look at you,” he mutters. “Big bad killer. Now you’re just meat in a chair.”

I smile.

It’s subtle, but it’s enough to make him hesitate. And that’s all I need. My left hand jerks free with a wet snap—thumb dislocating as I twist the loosened cuff upward and slam the jagged metal straight into his throat. He chokes, gurgling, and drops the needle.

The second one lunges for the door, but he’s too slow.

I kick my legs forward, hard enough to break the tension in the ropes.

The chair scrapes with me, dragging across the floor as I throw my weight sideways.

Pain burns up my calves, but I don’t stop.

I ram the back leg of the chair straight into his shin and he howls.

I use the momentum to twist again, and crash to the ground with the first guy’s body still tangled in mine. Something cracks—bone or metal, I don’t know. Don’t care. I’m already moving.

By the time I get my restraints off, one of them is out cold, and the other’s twitching, half-conscious.

I wipe the blood from my cheek with the edge of his sleeve, then snap his neck without hesitation.

I work fast—because it’s only a matter of time before someone checks the cameras and more of them come pouring in.

I strip them both down, hands moving quickly searching their pockets, holsters, and boots.

One’s got a rusted butterfly knife—useless, but light.

The other’s carrying a compact Glock. I take both.

I pick up the security badge that’s stuck to his chest, the plastic slick with sweat. The name reads M. Diaz—generic enough to be fake. Could be real. Doesn’t matter.

I pocket it anyway.

The smaller guard had a comm that’s still active, so I flick the channel to low, earpiece only, keeping the volume just loud enough to catch the static between garbled bursts of bored check-ins and caffeine complaints.

The hallway outside my room is dim, quiet, and smells like copper and bleach.

I don’t take the main path, I double back through a laundry chute, then through a boiler room.

I’ve never been in this building before, but I know how compounds work.

They always hide the good shit behind keycard doors and reinforced glass.

I follow the low hum of electronics until I find the security office.

It’s small and cramped, and there’s barely enough room to stand.

There’s a desk, a chair, and a coffee cup still steaming like the guy just sat down.

One man’s at the console, headphones in, eyes locked on the monitors—completely fucking unaware.

I slide behind him and press the blade to his throat. “Not a sound,” I whisper.

He freezes as I pull the headset off him.

“Where’s Frank?”

He swallows. “He’s—he’s not here. He already left.”

“Left for where?”

“I—I don’t know. He left right after he came out of your room. Took two men and the Suburban.”

I press the blade a little deeper, just enough to draw a line of blood. “Try again.”

He stammers. “I—I swear. He doesn’t tell us where. He just—he goes dark when he moves.”

That part, I believe. He’s a paranoid fucker who’s really good at covering his tracks. But I’m sure his people always forget something. I scan the console, looking at the twelve screens.

“I want the access logs. Show me every device that pinged this network in the last twenty-four hours.”

“I—I can’t. I mean I’d have to—”

I pull out the Glock and put it against his temple. “You’ve got three seconds.”

He fumbles a bit but manages to pull up a list—addresses, IPs, and device types.

Most of it looks like junk. Just security panels, guard-issued tablets, and burner phones that rotate every day.

But one of them stands out. It’s a private line with an encrypted access tunnel—it has to be Frank’s personal server.

“Can it reach external lines?” I ask.

The tech nods. “Yeah. But it’s locked behind biometric—”

“Password?”

“I don’t have—”

I slam his head into the console. Not hard enough to kill him—just enough to make sure he knows I could. Then I scan the desk. There’s a thumb scanner, a backup keyboard, and what looks like the internal shell code running behind everything. Frank built it tight, but not tight enough.

I move to the side computer, find the back access point, and reroute through it using the admin override—the kind you only know exists if you’ve torn apart systems like this before. It takes a minute. Maybe less. Then I’m in.

“Travis. Open line. Emergency protocol black.”

A prompt appears, then the chat opens.

[Unknown]: This better be you.

[You]: It’s me.

[Unknown]: How bad?

[You]: I’m amazing. He has her.

[Unknown]: You sure?

[You]: Same camera rig you flagged last year.

[Unknown]: Jesus. Okay. What do you have?

[You]: Hard drive. Personal access feeds. Looks like he’s setting up a transfer.

[Unknown]: Fuck.

[You]: Plan?

[Unknown]: Meet point Bravo in two hours. Bring the drive. Don’t die.

I kill the feed.

The tech is groaning now, dragging himself toward the radio like it’ll save him.

“Wrong move,” I mutter, and put a bullet in the base of his skull.

I grab the drive, the med kit, a burner pistol, and a black jacket hanging on the hook behind the door. My hands move without thought—muscle memory built on too many exits. But my mind’s already ahead of me. I need to get to her before Frank puts a ring on her finger and calls it fate. Or worse.

I move through the corridor behind the server room keeping my footsteps silent. The hallway branches left toward what I’m assuming is the exit, and the one to the right goes toward what looks like a private office. I should keep moving. Time’s running out, but something stops me.

That same sick, sharp instinct that’s been twisting under my skin since the second she walked into my life. So I go right.

The door’s locked, but it only takes a few seconds to bypass. I slip inside the small room, and the first thing I see is a wall of screens—feeds, reports, maps. Intel from across the country.

The second is a file left open on the desk. I flip it open and stop breathing. There are two faces that are burned into the back of my mind. My grip tightens until the paper curls, my pulse roaring in my ears.

“You fucking bastard,” I whisper. “There’s no fucking way.”

I snap the file shut and shove it into my jacket, heart pounding like I’m already in the fallout. I take the back stairwell down to the garage and find one of Frank’s men there—leaning against a pillar, smoking, and muttering into a comm.

It’s the same bastard who spit on me during the first round of being beaten.

He turns, and freezes. Recognition hits a second too late, but I move faster.

My fist slams into his throat, the crunch is satisfying as he stumbles, reaching for his gun, but I’m already behind him. Glock pressed to his spine.

“On your knees,” I say calmly. “Or I break them.”

He drops.

“Please—”

I press the barrel to his chin.

“You want to know what the difference is between you and me?” I whisper.

He nods, shaking.

“I kill for a reason.” I pull the trigger. Twice. One through the head, and one through the heart. Blood paints the pillar behind him and I drag the body to the center of the garage. Stripping off his shirt I carve two words into his chest with the same blade he used to cut my shoulder.

She’s mine.