Page 39 of Secret Hope (Hope Landing: New Recruits #5)

The spotlight carved her out of darkness like a scalpel.

Cold white light poured down from the emergency floods, transforming her into a specimen for examination.

Every streak of fake blood became garish theater makeup.

Every piece of glass around her caught the glare and threw it back in rainbow fragments, as if she knelt in the ruins of a shattered disco ball rather than a death trap.

The Glock's weight pulled at her wrists—heavier than cards had ever been, heavier than the chips she'd pushed all-in countless times. But this wasn't poker anymore. This was the moment when the bluff got called and you had to show your hand.

Cassidy kept the weapon trained on Vega's center mass, though her arms had begun that telltale tremor of muscle fatigue.

The fake blood had dried sticky on her temple, pulling at her skin with each micro-movement.

Dust from the collapsed ceiling coated her throat, turning each breath into sandpaper.

Kenji's up there.

She couldn't see him through the swirling particles that danced in the spotlight's beam, but she felt his presence like a guardian angel made of flesh and determination. Somewhere in those shadows, he was calculating angles, looking for the shot that would change everything.

Please, Lord. Not yet. Let there still be a way out that doesn't end in blood.

Vega took another measured step forward, his Italian leather shoes crunching on glass with deliberate slowness.

He moved like a man strolling through his garden, utterly unconcerned by the weapon aimed at his heart.

Behind him, his men—not resort security but hard-eyed mercenaries who'd learned their trade in places without rules—fanned out with the patience of hunters who knew the prey was already in the net.

"Impressive," Vega said, his voice carrying that particular rich amusement of someone enjoying a show. "You got further than most."

The words slithered across her skin. Cassidy didn't answer, couldn't answer. Her throat had constricted to a pinhole, every drop of moisture evaporated by adrenaline and fear. She kept her focus narrowed to that spot between his eyes where a bullet would shut down all his cruelty forever.

She could take the shot. The distance was nothing—maybe fifteen feet. At this range, she couldn't miss.

But the aftermath was already written in the positioning of his men, in the rifles that tracked her every breath. She'd die before his body hit the marble.

"And brave, too." Vega tilted his head, studying her like she was a particularly interesting hand of cards. "You really thought this would work? A bit of fake blood and playacting?"

Movement in her peripheral vision—Webb directing the tactical team with subtle hand signals. They closed in like a vice tightening. No rushed movements, no shouting. Just the quiet efficiency of professionals who'd done this dance before.

One of them moved faster than thought. A hand clamped down on her wrist—crushing force that sent lightning up her arm. The Glock was twisted away before she could react, her finger thankfully clear of the trigger guard. Another boot drove into the back of her right knee.

The marble floor rushed up to meet her.

Impact stole her breath, sent stars exploding across her vision.

Her knees hit first—twin explosions of agony that would leave bruises for weeks if she lived that long.

Then her palms, skidding on glass fragments that bit deep.

The copper taste of blood filled her mouth where she'd bitten her tongue.

Hands pressed her down—one on the back of her neck, another twisting her arms behind her. The position was textbook, inescapable. She could smell gun oil and stale cigarette smoke from the operative holding her, feel his tactical vest's hard edges against her spine.

Vega crouched beside her with the fluid grace of a man selecting wine from his cellar. This close, she could see the small scar on his left eyebrow, the silver threading through his temple. His cologne was subtle, expensive—something with sandalwood and cruelty.

"You tried to corner me with a fake death and moral high ground." His breath was warm against her ear, intimate as a lover's whisper. "I expected more, honestly. But you're not a soldier, are you? Just a woman with a cause."

He reached out, almost gently, and brushed a strand of blood-matted hair from her face. The gesture was worse than violence—a mockery of tenderness.

"A cause you're going to die for."

Cassidy locked her jaw until her teeth ached, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear.

But inside, her heart hammered against her ribs like a caged bird throwing itself against bars.

This close to death, every sense sharpened to painful clarity.

She could hear individual raindrops hitting the windows, feel each piece of glass beneath her knees, taste the metallic fear coating her tongue.

"Nothing to say?" Vega asked, and she heard genuine curiosity beneath the mockery. "No final words? No plea for mercy?"

She lifted her head, meeting his dark eyes directly. In them, she saw nothing—no conscience, no humanity, just the flat calculation of a man who'd turned suffering into profit margins.

"You don't win just because you survive," she said, surprised by how steady her voice came out.

Something flickered across his face—annoyance, perhaps, at her refusal to break. His smile tightened to something less amused, more dangerous.

"No," he agreed, standing with the same fluid grace. He brushed imaginary dust from his knee, the gesture obscenely fastidious given the destruction around them. "But I prefer both."

He stepped back, addressing Webb with the casual tone of a man ordering lunch. "We'll stage it well. Building collapse during the storm—tragic but believable. Her friends too, of course. Can't have witnesses."

The words hit harder than the boot to her knees. Not just murder—erasure. Their lives rewritten as cautionary tales, their deaths attributed to hubris and natural disaster. No justice. No truth. Just another tragedy lost in the hurricane's accounting.

"Unstable flooring gave way," Webb agreed, already crafting the narrative. "Storm surge flooded the lower levels. They ignored evacuation orders, thought they knew better. Such a shame."

Cassidy's stomach twisted into knots. Somewhere in this ruined resort, Spencer and Sophia were counting on her. Kenji was risking everything. And she'd led them all to slaughter.

Lord, I trust You, she prayed, closing her eyes against the spotlight's glare. Even now. Even here. Show us the next move. Show us Your plan.

The prayer felt different than her usual calculated petitions. This came from deeper—from the place beyond strategy, beyond control, where faith lived in its purest form.

A sound filtered through her concentration. Faint at first, then growing. Metal groaning under stress. The building settling? Or?—

Her eyes snapped open, gaze drawn upward despite the spotlight's blinding glare. Through tears and dust, she caught a glimpse of movement in the mezzanine shadows.

Kenji.

Their eyes met across the impossible distance. Even from here, she could see the decision crystallizing in his expression. The goodbye he couldn't speak aloud.

His hand rose slowly, deliberately. Palm flat against his chest.

Immediate danger.

The signal hit her like electricity. Every muscle coiled, ready. Whatever he was planning?—

A tremendous crash erupted behind the mercenaries. Metal shrieked against marble—something massive falling, failing, surrendering to gravity and storm damage.

The tactical team reacted, weapons swinging toward the sound. Just a second's distraction, but?—

"Move!" Kenji's voice, commanding and desperate.

Cassidy didn't think. She twisted, using the operative's momentary distraction to wrench sideways. Her knees screamed protest as she dove, rolling behind the splintered remains of a buffet table.

Gunfire erupted—sharp, purposeful. Kenji's shots, forcing the mercenaries to cover.

Then came a sound she'd never forget—the death cry of overstressed metal. Support beams shrieked like tortured souls. Bolts sheared with reports like firecrackers. The entire mezzanine structure shuddered, twisted, and began its catastrophic divorce from the walls.

"Structural failure!" someone screamed. "Move! Move! Move!"

But physics cared nothing for tactical positioning.

The ceiling came down in sheets—not a clean collapse but a rolling cascade of destruction. Concrete chunks the size of refrigerators. Glass panels that became glittering shrapnel. Support beams that had held for decades now twisted into modern art sculptures of failure.

The sound was biblical—like God had decided to crumple the building between massive hands. It overloaded every sense, turned the world into chaos and dust and the primal terror of being very small beneath very large falling objects.

Cassidy pressed herself flat against the floor, arms over her head, as debris rained around her. Something massive slammed into the buffet table—wood exploded above her, showering her with splinters. Glass fell like sleet, each piece singing its own note of destruction.

The emergency lights failed. Darkness slammed down, broken only by the strobing of electrical shorts and the gray storm-light from shattered windows.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it ended.

The thunder died to groans and settling sounds. Dust hung in the air like fog, turning each breath into a struggle. Emergency lighting flickered back—some circuits still functioning—casting everything in hellish red.

Cassidy lifted her head, coughing. Her ears rang with the peculiar hollow silence that follows catastrophic noise. She pushed to her knees, then her feet, swaying as vertigo tried to claim her.

The ballroom no longer existed as a single space.

A wall of wreckage now bisected it—a ten-foot barricade of twisted metal, broken concrete, and architectural failure. It looked like a giant had built a dam from the building's bones. Dust still rose from it in ghostly wisps, and somewhere within, metal groaned threats of further collapse.

"Kenji?" Her voice came out as a croak.

No answer.

"Kenji!" Louder now, edged with rising panic.

Still nothing. Just the settling of debris and the storm's fury beyond broken windows.

Fear clenched around her heart with icy fingers.

She stumbled toward the collapse, climbing onto the rubble despite the way it shifted treacherously beneath her feet.

Glass bit through her palms—real blood now mixing with the fake.

A twisted piece of rebar caught her dress, tearing fabric with a sound like ripping hope.

At the peak of the debris mountain, she could see through gaps to the other side. Smoke rose from electrical fires. Sparks showered from severed cables. And through the haze—shadows. Movement.

Voices carried through the wreckage, muffled but distinct.

"—sweep the area. Find him."

"Sir, we should evacuate. The whole structure's compromised?—"

"Find. Him." Vega's voice, no longer amused. "No one makes a fool of me in my own house."

Cassidy's heart plummeted. Kenji had been on the mezzanine. The wrong side of the mezzanine. When he'd triggered the collapse, he'd been above Vega's position.

He was trapped on the other side of this wall.

With them.

"Kenji!" she screamed, not caring who heard.

A sound answered—faint, muffled by tons of debris. Not words, just a human noise. Pain or effort or acknowledgment.

Alive. He was alive.

But for how long?

"Got movement!" A shout from the other side. "Northwest corner!"

"Cassidy!" Spencer's voice behind her, urgent and scared. His hand caught her arm as she tried to climb higher. "You can't—the whole thing's unstable!"

"I'm not leaving him!"

"I'm not saying leave!" Spencer's face was white with plaster dust, a cut on his forehead bleeding freely. "But climbing Mount Destruction isn't helping anyone!"

Another section of ceiling groaned ominously, releasing a shower of concrete fragments. The debris wall shifted, settling lower with a sound like breaking bones.

"He's over there with Vega," she said, the words tasting like ash. "Alone."

"Then we find another way." Spencer's grip remained firm. "Cass, he bought us time. Minutes, maybe more. We can't waste it trying to dig through a mountain."

Logic. Cold, brutal logic that she'd lived by her entire poker career. Calculate the odds. Play the percentages. Don't chase impossible draws.

But this wasn't poker. This was Kenji.

She stared at the wall of wreckage, every instinct screaming to tear it apart with her bare hands. Through the gaps, she could hear shouting now—commands, movement, the sounds of a hunt in progress.

Her hand found her cross, fingers closing around the warm metal.

God, I'm trusting You to do what I can't. Keep him safe. Show us the way.

"Cass." Sophia's voice, urgent. She'd appeared from wherever she'd taken cover, her Interpol training evident in how she'd already assessed the situation. "Building's coming down. We need to move. Now."

One last look at the barrier between her and Kenji. One last desperate hope that he'd somehow appear, that this was all another plan, another angle she hadn't seen.

"We're coming back," she whispered to the wreckage, to him, to God. "Hold on."

The debris groaned in response, settling another inch.

And from somewhere beyond the broken stone and twisted metal, through smoke and sparks and the sounds of pursuit?—

Kenji didn't answer.