THE CAPTAIN'S DARK OBSESSION

EVERY DOOR IN THIS BUILDING

Ninety seconds. That's what the timestamp said, ninety seconds, which meant whoever took it was still in the building, still close, maybe still watching us right that second through some door or camera or c***k in the wall for all I knew, and something in me just went, I don't even have a word for it. Not calm. Nowhere near calm.

Didn't think. Just moved, grabbed the phone off the table, hit the line for security, already halfway to the door before the guy even picked up on the other end.

"Lock every exit. Nobody in or out, I don't care who they say they are."

"Sir, we've got a full facility, that's forty, fifty people minimum right now, we can't just "

"I said lock it." Wasn't yelling. Didn't need to. When I talk like that people tend to figure out real fast I'm serious. "Pull every camera in the building, every hallway, every stairwell, parking structure too. Somebody's inside right now and I want a face."

Elena was standing behind me this whole time, arms wrapped around herself, doing that thing where she's clearly holding it together by like a thread but mostly succeeding, and honestly that made me want to hit something even more than the photo did, because she shouldn't have to be holding anything together right now. Not this. Not over me.

"Asher."

"Stay here." Wasn't even really looking at her, eyes on the hallway through the glass, watching every single person who walked by like any one of them could be it, could be the one.

"I'm not just gonna stand in a room while you go do something insane, that's not no."

"You are today." Finally turned, and whatever was on my face must've been bad because she actually stopped arguing, just for a second, just long enough for me to get the rest out. "Somebody's had a camera on you since before you even walked into my life again. I'm not letting you wander a hallway right now while I go chase a ghost. Stay in this room. Door locked. I'll have somebody outside it in under a minute."

She didn't like it. Could see that all over her face, the whole stubborn thing she does with her jaw when she's swallowing an argument instead of saying it, but she didn't fight me on it either, which told me she was scared enough to actually listen for once, and that scared me more than the photo did.

Took my head of security about four minutes to pull the first batch of footage. Four minutes felt like four hours standing in that hallway watching every single door like it might open onto whoever's been circling us for two days.

Nothing on the main entrance. Nothing on the garage. Then Marcus, my security lead, went quiet on the earpiece for a second too long.

"Sir. Third floor stairwell. You're gonna want to see this."

Took the stairs two at a time, bad knee screaming the whole way up, didn't care, barely even registered it honestly. Marcus already had the tablet out by the time I got there, footage cued up and ready, turned it toward me without saying anything, just let me look.

Figure in a dark jacket. Hood up. Face angled away from every single camera the whole time, like they knew exactly where every lens in this building sat, which, given how private this facility is supposed to be, is its own kind of problem. Watched them walk the length of the hallway outside the treatment room, phone raised, held there a solid ten, fifteen seconds. Long enough to get a clean shot right through that little window in the door, easy.

Then just turned around and walked out the emergency stairwell, casual, like they owned the whole place, and by the time the footage caught up to real time they were already gone. Just gone.

"Run it back through the parking structure." Wasn't really asking. "I want a plate, a face, I don't care, something."

"Working on it. But sir " Marcus hesitated, which he never does, he's ex-military, doesn't hesitate on anything, and that alone told me I wasn't gonna like whatever came next. "Whoever this is knew the camera blind spots cold. That's not luck. That's somebody who's either been in this building before, or somebody who had help getting the layout."

Which meant somebody on the inside. Which meant the list of people I trust just got a whole lot shorter, and I already didn't have that many names on it to begin with.

Left that thread for Marcus to keep pulling and went back down to Elena instead, because she'd been alone behind a locked door almost ten minutes at that point and I needed to actually see her, with my own eyes, fine, before I could think straight about literally anything else going on.

She was on the treatment table when I got there, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, and the second she saw me she was up and across the room before I even had the door shut all the way.

"Did you find them? Anything?"

"No. Not yet."

"Asher "

"I will." Wasn't a promise I could actually back up yet and I said it anyway, because the alternative was telling her the truth, which is that somebody just proved they can get inside a building I own and stand ten feet from her without anyone noticing, and I wasn't about to say that out loud while she was still shaking.

She was shaking, barely, probably didn't even realize she was doing it, but I noticed, I notice pretty much everything about her, always have, and before I even decided to my hands were on her shoulders, steadying her, and she just. Let me. Didn't pull back.

That's the part that got me honestly. That she didn't pull back.

"You're safe right now." Came out quieter than I meant it to. "Nobody's getting near you, not in this building, not anywhere, I don't care what that costs me or who I have to go through to make it true."

"That's not super reassuring. The whole 'who I have to go through' part."

"Wasn't going for reassuring. Going for honest."

She looked up at me then, and there was something in her face I hadn't seen since she walked back into my life yesterday, something underneath the fear, something that looked a lot like she was actually seeing me instead of the version of me the papers write about.

"Two years," she said. Quiet. "You've been doing this, watching out for me, for two years, and I had no idea. What else don't I know, Asher."

Shouldn't have answered that. Every rational part of my brain knew exactly where that question led, straight to a locked room in my penthouse I've never let another person see, straight to years of things I've never said out loud to anybody, and I stood there with her hands not quite touching mine and I almost told her all of it right then. Almost.

"More than you'd want to hear right now," is what came out instead. Coward's answer. Knew it the second I said it.

She didn't push, just kept looking at me like she was deciding whether to let it go, and something about the way her eyes went over my face right then, I don't know, my whole chest just went tight, and none of that had anything to do with a stalker or a knee or anything currently trying to kill either one of us.

Marcus's voice cut in on the earpiece before she could say anything else, or I could.

"Sir. We got a hit on the stairwell camera, cross-referenced with the garage."

"And?"

Long pause. Too long.

"The face doesn't match anyone in our system. But the jacket does. Same one shows up in a delivery log from three days ago. Signed in under a contractor badge."

"Whose badge."

Another pause, and I already knew before he said it, could feel it coming the way you feel a hit coming half a second before it lands.

"Chase Whitfield's assistant. Badge was checked out under his name."

Elena's hand found my arm, gripping tight, neither one of us really deciding that should happen, it just did, and I stood there staring at nothing, floor tilting a little under a name I genuinely never thought I'd have to say out loud like this, not once, not ever.

Chase. My own teammate. One of maybe three people on this entire planet I actually trust.

Phone buzzed in my pocket before I could even process it. Pulled it out on instinct, expecting another blocked number, another photo, another piece of proof that somebody's been circling us this whole time.

Wasn't blocked.

Was Chase.

We need to talk. Now. Alone. It's about your brother.