Page 120 of Peak Cruelty

“Want me to carry you?”I ask.

She glares.“Try and I’ll bite you.”

“There she is.”

We reach the edge of the walkway.The gravel shifts beneath our feet—wet and loud, like it wants to betray us.I scan the street.Empty.No headlights.No movement.

Too empty.

Marlowe notices it, too.Her steps slow.She doesn’t say anything, but I feel it—her breath shortening, her spine pulling taut.

Then the sound.

Not one.

Many.

Boots.Fast.Crunching over the grass, the gravel, the road ahead of us.

That’s when they appear—six men, maybe seven, stepping out from the trees like they’ve been there the whole time.All armed.Faces covered.Tactical gear, not rental costumes.This isn’t amateur hour.

There’s no shouting.No warning.Just raised rifles and the kind of stillness that says: don’t try it.

Marlowe stops first.

I step in front of her, instinct more than strategy.

One of them signals.The others fan out.

A voice crackles through a comm, low and clipped:

“Confirmed.Both targets in sight.”

Targets.

Plural.

She doesn’t flinch.Doesn’t run.Just watches them the way you'd watch a wave coming, already too close to move.

I feel her eyes before I hear her voice.

“This was a mistake.”

She doesn’t ask what happens next.

She already knows.

Instead, she says—so soft it cuts?—

“I was almost starting to believe it could work.”

And that’s what lands the hardest.

Not the guns.

Not the men.

Not even the fact that I don’t have a plan.

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