Page 42 of The Scout

I barely registered it at first, but the shift in the airwas immediate. The first bouncer hesitated, glancing toward the source of the voice, his grip loosening.

“That’s Ryker Dane.”

The words fell into the space between us like a goddamn grenade.

The shift was instant.

Tension bled out of their bodies, their eyes flicking between each other in silent understanding. The grip on my arm disappeared. The men in front of me backed up—not in fear, but in recognition.

Charleston was small in the ways that mattered. And my name? It meant something here.

I exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through my hair. I was pissed, but I wasn’t here to cause a fucking scene. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a roll of cash, and shoved it into the lead bouncer’s hand.

“For the trouble,” I muttered.

He nodded, slipping the money into his pocket without hesitation. No words. No argument. Just a silent transaction between men who understood how these things worked.

I didn’t waste another second.

I turned on my heel and ran.

Because Isabel was out there, panicked and alone.

And if I didn’t find her soon, I was afraid I never would.

15

ISABEL

Charleston blurred around me as I ran.

The lights of King Street flickered past in a dizzying rush, the rhythmic pound of my heels against the uneven brick sidewalks matching the frantic beat of my pulse. People turned as I passed—some startled, some curious, others too caught up in their own night to care about the woman tearing through the streets like she was being chased by something unseen. Maybe I was.

I didn’t stop. I didn’t slow. I ran like I could outrun the truth, like I could outpace the words Ryker had spoken, as if sheer movement alone could erase the image of him sitting across from me, his face shadowed, his voice steady, saying the words I would never be ready to hear.

Will is missing.

In Will’s world, missing didn’t simply mean he was late to a meeting or forgot to check in. It didn’t mean his phone died, or that he got held up somewhere with abad signal. It meant something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Will’s work wasn’t the kind you took lightly. He didn’t sit in an office pushing papers. He didn’t deal in predictable risks. He dealt in shadows, in secrets, in operations that never made the news. He worked alongside men like Ryker—men who had seen the worst of humanity, men who had walked into dangerous places and come out with blood on their hands.

In this world, missing didn’t mean lost. It meant someone took you. Or worse—it meant they had already made sure you wouldn’t be found.

The thought hit me like a blade, cutting sharp and deep, stealing the breath from my lungs.

Will knew how to handle himself. He had been trained for this. But even the strongest, even the most skilled, could bleed. Could break. Could disappear without a trace if the wrong people wanted them gone badly enough.

I had no idea who those wrong people were. No idea what had happened to my brother. No idea if I would ever see him again.

My breath hitched, my chest burning, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Because if I stopped, it meant facing the full weight of what that meant. I couldn’t do it.

A man I passed reached out instinctively, as if to catch me, his brows knitting in concern. “Miss—are you?—?”

I veered away without answering. A woman near a line of waiting taxis watched me with wide, cautious eyes, gripping her boyfriend’s arm as if I were some kind of warning. I didn’t care. Let them look. Let them wonder. They didn’t know. They didn’t understand that my world had just cracked wide open, that my lungscouldn’t seem to hold enough air, that I felt like I was free-falling with nothing to grab onto.

My phone vibrated in my bag, the screen lighting up with Sasha’s name, a silent plea I wasn’t ready to answer. I ignored it. The idea of speaking—of forcing words past the tightness in my throat, of explaining anything—felt impossible.

So I kept running.

---