Page 206 of Joker

But that doesn’t make me prey. It doesn’t make me passive. It doesn’t make me helpless.

I’m not waiting to be saved. I’m part of the reason the trap will close.

Part of the reason Cal will move wrong. Part of the reason he’ll think he still has a shot right up until the second the men hunting him close in and take that illusion away for good.

When the door shuts behind Joker, I don’t feel like a woman left behind. I feel like the woman who finally stopped running. And for the first time since I climbed into a truck in the dark with my daughter asleep in the backseat and my whole life packed into two bags—

I’m not looking over my shoulder. I’m looking forward.

Straight at the end of him.

The trap doesn’t feel dramatic when it finally closes.

It feels cold. Quiet. Like a machine doing exactly what it was built to do. That’s how I know we did it right.

By the time we roll up on the property Dom found, there’s no adrenaline spike left in me. No wild rush. No shaking rage trying to claw its way to the surface and make me sloppy. That all burned off hours ago and left behind something a hell of a lot more useful.

Purpose.

The place is exactly what Raven said it would be.

Borrowed. Off-grid enough to feel hidden, not isolated enough to draw immediate suspicion. A one-story hunting cabin sitting back from the road behind a tree line thick enough to make a man feel private if he’s stupid. One clean driveway in, one service path around the side that could work as an exit if somebody knew the land well enough to gamble on it.

Cal would like that.

He’d like the illusion of control. The shape of the ground. The idea that he chose the battlefield.

He didn’t.

That’s the first mistake men like him always make. Thinking the place they stand means they hold the power.

Logan kills his bike beside mine and pulls his helmet off without a word. Shadow and Blaze roll in behind us, then Cain, then two more brothers keeping enough distance not to bunch the approach. Headlights die one by one until the whole edge of the property disappears into dark and engine heat and the low sound of men breathing through the kind of focus that only comes right before violence.

Dom stayed back at the clubhouse. That was never up for debate. He’s useful with screens, phones, systems, traffic patterns, and digital footprints. He is our eye in the sky.

Logan steps in close enough that only the circle of us hears him. “Perimeter first,” he says.

No one argues.

Cain takes the right side with two brothers. Shadow and Blaze move left, splitting once they hit the trees. Logan stays center. I take the straight line toward the front because there is not a version of this where I don’t end up face-to-face with the bastard who thinks he still has a right to Raven.

I don’t say that out loud. I don’t need to.

They know. We all know.

The plan is simple because the best ones usually are. Lock exits. Confirm bodies. Pull whoever’s outside first, quiet if possible, loud if needed. Leave Cal breathing long enough for me to make a point.

That last part wasn’t technically said in those exact words. It didn’t have to be.

The night air smells like dust, pine, and old heat still rising off the dirt. Somewhere in the dark, an insect buzzes stupidly close to my ear and gets ignored because every part of me is already aimed ahead.

I move through the tree line with my gun low and my knife where I can get to it fast. Not rushing. Not hesitating either. Every step is deliberate. Every angle measured. I can feel the weight of Raven’s intel wrapped around this whole operation like wire. The borrowed place. The ego. The need for control. The need to be right.

He’s here.

I know it before we confirm it.

A man like him wouldn’t stay away once he got this close. Not after the call. Not after the photo. Not after the store. He’d need to see the next move through himself.