Page 126 of The Dark Stranger
Too still again.
But breathing.
Alive.
That’s the only thing keeping this room intact right now.
Behind me, I hear Jace.
“I’ve got the names,” he says quietly.
Good.
Because this—
This isn’t over.
Not even close.
I tighten my grip on her hand again, my thumb brushing lightly against her skin, grounding myself just as much as I grounded her.
“I’m right here,” I say under my breath, even if she can’t hear me now.
And I don’t move.
I won’t.
Because the moment she wakes up again—
I need her to know she didn’t come back to that place.
She came back to me.
And whoever put her through that—
They just started a war they don’t understand.
I don’t like leaving her. Even with the monitors steady. Even with the doctor saying she’s stable. Stable doesn’t mean safe. Not yet. But sitting at her bedside won’t bring the others back, so I step out—and the second that door closes behind me, I lock back in.
“Run it again,” I say as I walk in.
Jace doesn’t question it. The footage is already looping—Becca’s house, low-light exterior cams, the twoof them inside earlier that night. Becca and Inez. Laughing. Drinks in their hands. No idea what was coming. I watch it for a second longer than I should, then shut that part of me off.
“We had eyes on both of them before the grab,” Jace says, scrubbing forward. “Confirmed timeline from the house to the vehicle.”
I nod once. “I know. We followed the car.”
I remember every second of that chase—the speed, the coordination, the way it escalated too clean to be random.
“They were targeted,” I say.
Jace nods. “Yeah. That wasn’t opportunity. That was planned.”
My eyes shift to the next screen.
“Christina.”
Jace pulls it up immediately. Different footage. Gas station. Grainy, but clear enough. I step closer.
