Page 38 of Red Dreams

“Monitor number four took the longest,” Cassie says through the speakers, distracting me from peering closer. “Father and daughter clung to their trust in each other as if their unwavering loyalty would force me to let them go.” She laughs under her breath. “Isn’t that sweet?”

It hurts to swallow when I look where she directed. A woman, maybe a few years younger than me, is held by another man, a knife to her throat. The man, likely her father, stands over another woman bound on a lavish velvet couch, his hand shaking as he holds a scalpel.

“Wraithling.” Kaden’s voice cuts through the screams coming from the speakers and the blood-rush in my ears. “Don’t watch.”

But I can’t look away. I feel like I owe it to them to remember what they went through so it fuels me to do what they couldn’t: escape.

There’s a flicker in the screen, like a skipping frame, and suddenly, crimson blooms across the woman’s abdomen.

Kaden remains stoic and hard beside me. Witnessing violence isn’t new to him, but his arm tightens around my shoulders. I squint at the screen where the flicker was, ignoring the bile rising in my throat as the scene plays out in nauseating detail.

There it is again.

A line of code, lasting barely a fraction of a second. My lips move silently, parsing the string of ones and zeros.

“Ethan,” I breathe, hope sparking in my chest.

Kaden squeezes my shoulder. “What is it?”

I keep my voice low, praying Cassie’s audio doesn’t pick it up over the din of anguished pleas. “He’s found a way into her system.”

“Can he shut it down?” Kaden asks, his breath warm against my ear.

I shake my head minutely. “He’s working on it. It’s the most sophisticated I’ve ever seen. But this is his way of telling us to be ready.”

On monitor #4, the woman's body goes limp, a final tear tracing down her ashen cheek. The father drops the scalpel, shaking so hard he can barely stand.

And the man holding his daughter slits her throat. She crumples to the ground at the same time her father’s agonized wail overtakes all the other screams.

“And then there was one,” Cassie purrs.

The monitors stutter, then die. Kaden pushes me behind him like they’re about to explode. But all of them plunge into black screens save for the one on the bottom right. The monitor that made me want to look harder.

Of course, Cassie doesn’t give me time to process just how small her snake-sized heart is before she moves on to her next atrocity.

The man has his back to the camera, and his shoulders are hunched. He hasn’t moved since I first looked at the screen. No one else is in the suite decorated in shades of blue and gold with plush curtains and a four-poster bed. At first, I thought that was why this particular screen grabbed me—this man is alone when all the other monitors had at least two people in the frame. But no, that’s not it. I’m sure his greatest fear is just waiting off-screen and will appear for Cassie’s entertainment soon.

The man lifts his head, his attention snapping to the door, and that’s when I figure out what drew my suspicion in the first place.

There’s no audio.

Then he turns.

His lanky frame twists reluctantly, his messy brown hair and nervous tics unmistakable.

“Ethan,” I whisper in sharp disbelief.

“She fucking caught him,” Kaden rasps. “But he just sent us a message. Cassie can’t be that fast?—”

“It was a recording.” I say what both of us are thinking with painful clarity. “And a trap.”

Ethan looks directly at the camera, our gazes locking through the lens. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, a gesture so familiar it makes my heart ache.

I shake my head in denial, unable to tear my eyes away from the screen.

Ethan is saying something, his lips moving rapidly, but we can’t hear him. He gestures to something off-camera, his movements frantic.

And then Cassie steps into the frame.

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