Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Elara and Kael race to the Ashland Street gym to warn Tobias. They arrive to find the building already on fire with signs of a forced entry. Kael breaks through a side entrance and rushes inside. Elara follows and finds Tobias semi-conscious, injured but alive, having dragged himself toward the back exit. They extract him through the rear as the fire spreads. While waiting in a stolen car two blocks away, Tobias reveals that Soren Marsh sent him a warning text moments before the attack, giving him just enough time to barricade himself. He also reveals that Marsh embedded a data chip inside the forged catering badge, containing encrypted Collectors files. Elara realizes she still has the badge. Kael contacts Declan for another safe house location while Elara examines the chip, which contains partial records of Crane's network, including a name that connects directly to Nina's case. The chapter ends with Elara recognizing the name and telling Kael they have a new target.
Eight minutes.
That was what Kael had given me—eight minutes of reckless driving through streets slick with rain, running red lights like suggestions, cutting through traffic with the precision of someone who'd mapped every shortcut in this city long before tonight. I gripped the dashboard once when he took a corner hard enough to lift the rear tires off the wet asphalt. He didn't slow down.
My mind ran parallel tracks. One tracked our speed, our route, the shrinking distance between us and Ashland Street. The other kept replaying Crane's voice through the partition wall—burn it—and the flat certainty in the scarred woman's reply, as though torching a building with a man inside it was just another line item on an agenda.
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