Page 91 of Misery
"We need to?—"
"I know," he says, already calling for backup. "We're moving you. Safe house. Now."
But I also know it won't matter.
Thiago—now I have a name for the monster—is ahead of us.
He has been all along, playing chess while we're playing checkers.
Watching me paint at 3:17.
Going through my things.
Learning me like a subject to master.
And somewhere, my father is bleeding.
Somewhere, Oskar is chasing ghosts from his past.
And I'm sitting in broken glass, finally understanding that every person who claims to protect me is just another cage with prettier bars.
CHAPTER TEN
Oskar
The map spread across the chapel table is covered in red marks.
Dead ends. Failed leads. Places Thiago isn't.
It's been hours since he took Ivar.
Hours of chasing ghosts while Elfe falls apart next door.
Hours of me failing at the one thing I'm supposed to be good at—hunting people down.
The warehouse district was a bust. Three safe houses checked and empty. Every contact questioned and fucking useless.
The coffee's gone cold but I drink it anyway.
"Anything?" Magnus asks, though he knows the answer.
He's asked the same question every twenty minutes like maybe this time will be different.
"Traffic cams lose the SUV at the county line," Vanir reports, not looking up from his laptop.
Dark circles under his eyes, three empty energy drinks by his elbow.
The man is one more away from a heart attack.
His fingers haven't stopped moving in hours. "After that, nothing. He knew where the cameras were. Avoided them or had plates swapped. Maybe both."
"Fucking ghost," Dag mutters from across the room.
He's been pacing for the last hour, wearing a groove in the floor. "How does someone just vanish with a whole ass person?"
"Practice," I say quietly. "Thiago always knew how to disappear."
Even as kids, he could vanish when shit got bad.
