Page 40 of Tag
“She doesn’t miss,” I repeated. “The fact that we’re breathing right now? That was a warning.”
“She could’ve taken any of us out?”
“She could’ve takenallof us out.”
Faron cursed under his breath. “So Graves doesn’t just want us gone—he wants usterrified.”
“Well,” Aponi said, standing, “he picked the wrong damn team.”
Aponi
We moved fast.
Packed only what we could carry. Destroyed the rest.
I didn’t look back when the cabin faded into the trees behind us.
Kaylie rode in the backseat, groggy but stable. I watched her in the rearview mirror—pale, but alive.
That was enough.
For now.
Tag drove with the kind of focus that made me forget he was even human. His jaw was tight, his hands steady. But I saw the ghost of Sable in his eyes.
“What happened between you two?” I asked softly.
He didn’t look at me. “Once? We were allies. Briefly. She saved my life. And I repaid her by walking away from the program she never could. She wanted me to join the program with her. She let the money drive her.”
“Why?”
He did glance at me then. “Because I still had a soul.”
That silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was loaded. With the past. With the question neither of us wanted to say out loud:
How do you fight someone who knows all your moves?
Faron
I followed behind in a stolen truck, keeping distance, eyes scanning every curve of the road.
We were heading south—to a contact Tag said might have a dossier on Graves’ early operations. A man off-grid, deep in the desert, who owed Tag more than a few favors.
But none of that mattered if we didn’t survive the night.
And that woman?
Sable?
She wasn’t chasing us.
She washerdingus.
Toward something.
A trap.
I gripped the wheel harder. “This ends with her bleeding in the dirt,” I muttered.
