Chapter 269
Lance
The hallway stretched before us like a tunnel with no end, fluorescent lights casting everything in that particular shade of institutional gray that made even victory taste like ash.
Thomas walked ahead, shoulders hunched, wrists bound in steel that caught the light with each shuffling step. Diana kept one hand near her weapon, the other gripping the chain between his cuffs, and I watched the back of his head with the kind of attention you'd give a snake that might not be quite dead yet.
Serena's fingers were ice-cold in mine. I could feel her pulse through her palm, too fast, too hard. Eleanor walked on my other side, her usual composure fractured into something brittle and sharp. Vincent trailed behind, silent as a shadow, but I knew he was tracking every exit, every potential threat, the way he always did.
Thomas hadn't spoken since the interrogation room. Hadn't looked up. Just that slow, mechanical walk, like a man being led to the gallows. But there was something in the set of his spine that bothered me, some tension that didn't quite match the defeated slump of his shoulders.
"Almost there," Diana murmured, more to herself than anyone else. The federal detention facility was in New Jersey, a two-hour drive that would take Thomas out of Manhattan's chaos and into a cell where he'd wait for arraignment. Where the system would finally, finally grind him down into something manageable.
Except I'd learned a long time ago that men like Thomas didn't just accept defeat.
We rounded the corner toward the loading bay where the transport vehicle waited, and that's when I saw them.
A wall of bodies in tactical black, vests stamped with bold white letters: DHS. Department of Homeland Security. Six men, maybe seven, arranged in a formation that screamed federal authority and barely contained violence. And at their center, a man in his fifties with iron-gray hair and a face carved from the same stone as his name would suggest—all hard angles and colder eyes.
He stepped forward as we approached, one hand raised in a gesture that was somehow both polite and absolute.
"Where exactly," he said, voice smooth as aged whiskey and twice as dangerous, "are you taking Mr. Lawson?"
Diana stopped so abruptly I nearly collided with her. Her entire body went rigid, and I felt rather than saw the way her hand moved toward her badge, toward her weapon, toward something that might give her leverage in whatever the hell this was.
"I'm sorry," she said, and there was steel beneath the courtesy, "but this is an active FBI investigation. You need to—"
"I'm Garrett Stone." He said it the way other men might say I'm God. Casual. Inevitable. "National Security Council. Special Operations Director."
The words hit Diana like a physical blow. I watched her face go white, then red, then settle into something that looked like fury barely held in check by the thinnest veneer of professionalism.
"DHS." She said it like a curse. "What's Homeland Security doing at a thirty-year-old homicide? Worried Thomas buried a terrorist cell in the Hamptons?"
Stone's smile was thin. "We get involved when FBI agents make procedural mistakes that create legal liabilities."
He pulled out his phone, held it up so she could see the screen. "Your superior handed this case to my department two hours ago, Agent Rivers. You no longer have authority to detain Mr. Lawson." His tone dropped into something colder. "Would you like me to call Director Matthews directly? Have him explain why he gave up jurisdiction? Or should we discuss how you obtained sealed surveillance footage without proper authorization—six federal violations that he'd prefer not to defend in front of a review board."
"He's a murder suspect!" Serena's voice cracked like a whip, and suddenly she was stepping forward, positioning herself between Diana and Stone like she could somehow shield one federal agent from another through sheer force of will. "You can't just—"
"I can do exactly that, Miss Vance." Stone's gaze slid to her, and there was something almost pitying in it. "This is above your pay grade. Above all of your pay grades."
I was watching Thomas.
He'd gone still when Stone appeared, head still bowed, but now—now there was something else. A loosening in his shoulders. A curve at the corner of his mouth that he wasn't quite fast enough to hide.
And just like that, I understood.
"Well," Thomas said, voice soft and almost wondering, "you're right on time."
He lifted his head then, met Stone's eyes, and the smile that spread across his face was the most honest thing I'd seen from him all day. Relief and triumph and something darker, something that tasted like victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
"You know what's funny?" His voice was soft, almost conversational. "Another five minutes, and I would've told you everything. Every secret. Every lie." He met my eyes, and something flickered there—exhaustion, maybe, or relief. "I was so close to breaking, Lance. So close to just... letting it all go."