Page 83 of The Collector

With Elanah secured, it was time to move the prisoner. The mausoleum waited.

He yanked the trapdoor open and started down the stairs. No mask today. What was the point? In forty-eight hours, he'd be gone—this place, this persona, all of it buried. No one would recognize him on a beach in Bali, on the other side of the world. He'd be someone else by then. His go bags were already waiting for him in his boat, at the marina in town. Every piece of hisexit plan had been thought out and planned months ago. He just needed the final pieces of his plan to fall into place.

It was time to let go. Time to trade the ghosts of his past for greener pastures. He wanted to take more of them down, shake the very foundations of the cartel.

But at the bottom of the steps, he stopped cold.

Everything looked normal except for one blaring fact that had him scrambling across the room.

The prisoner was gone. The cell lay empty in front of him as he moved in closer to inspect it. He felt a slow dread creep over him. He'd worked so hard to get to this point, and the prisoner was just…gone.

For a moment, he couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. The air was wrong— it was too still, too quiet in the room. His restraints lay twisted on the floor like shed skin. The cot overturned, one leg splintered, rested against the wall.

And then it hit him.The key.

He'd never retrieved it and hadn't resecured his cuffs before he left. He'd gotten distracted—too many bodies at the club, too much noise. He'd walked away, confident the man couldn't escape. Carelessly.

"Fuckkkkk."

His roaring scream bounced off the concrete walls and back into him. He didn't have time for this. Anxiety held him in place for just a brief moment before he sprang into action, looking for clues.

He dropped to his knees, scanning the cell. Under the overturned cot, he found it—the man's means of escape. The prisoner had been digging around the cinder blocks, scraping out mortar bit by bit. Slowly, patiently. The discarded metal husks—bent lids, rusted edges—lay near a small hole in the wall. Just wide enough to crawl through.

He pounded his fists against the wall, kicked it hard enough to crack pieces of dried mortar from around the hole. Broken pieces skittered across the room.

How had he missed this.

He pulled out his phone. Checking the time. This was something the prisoner had done over time… his mind jumped back to their last encounter, remembering the bloody, cracked fingernails.

Everything was closing in. The Collector's chest heaved as he pulled up the security surveillance videos for the last twenty-four hours.

How could he have been so stupid, missed something so obvious?

Maybe he should leave. Cut his losses. Start over now. The plan was unraveling. The risk of being caught was becoming alarmingly clear. He backed away slowly, phone still in hand. He rewound the videos to about the time he left yesterday to head back to Blood Lust. He watched himself leave the basement and saw the man finish removing the bottom bricks in the wall. Watched as he struggled through the small hole.

Eight hours ago, he'd been gone from the cabin for eight hours. He switched cameras to view the outside perimeter of the cabin. Rewound the time. Watched as the man emerged from the side of the house and slowly dragged himself across the wooded outline of the driveway, moving from tree to tree. It had taken him hours in his weakened state. But two hours ago, he made it past the line of view of his cameras to the main road.

He no longer had a scapegoat. And if the prisoner made it to the Kings before the Collector finished his plans, things could go from bad to worse quickly for him. He needed to move now. He wondered if the man could identify him to the Kings. It didn't matter at this point if they found out he was the Collector. He just wanted to kill as many of them as he could, take as muchfrom them as possible before he left. It was the only way he could walk away, without coming back and risking being caught in the future.

Time to make some calls.

He scrolled through his contacts, thumb pausing on Thomas's name.

The phone rings. Once. Twice. Three times.

"Hello—?" Thomas's voice spoke cautiously, uncertain.

"I need you to do something for me. And I need it done now." The Collector tapped his fingers

He waited a beat.

"Okay… what is it?"

"I assume you've heard about Hector."

Silence.

"There's a threat to Raven. It's serious. He wants Mynx out of the mansion—immediately."