49

49
When they finally wheeled him out, the living room looked less like a crime scene and more like the shell of one....emptied hollow scene. The blood already starting to brown under the lights.

I didn’t move until the last siren faded.

The safe still sat on the coffee table like it's been waiting for this moment all along.

Asher wiped his hands on his jeans and looked at me. “We need to open it before anyone else gets here.”

Damien nodded once. “Whoever attack Boone will be back. They don’t leave threads.”

I swallowed, my eyes burned from more than the smell of bleach. Boone’s words replayed in a loop, sticking sharp, "She was supposed to die first."

Me.... I was supposed to die.

Asher crouched in front of the safe, pulling tools from his bag. “Combination or key?”

“Combination,” Damien said but didn’t explain how he knew.

The tumblers clicked under Asher’s touch, one by one, until the lock gave way with a soft metallic sigh. He opened it slowly expecting teeth inside but there weren’t teeth, just papers, folders stacked tight, labeled with dates and names that punched air from my lungs.

Ivy Hayes, Elise Ward, Isabella, Natalie Reyes etc.

Each girl had a file. Each file was marked with the logo of the St. Augustine Transitional Foster Program, just like the one I and Damien stole one certain time from his shelf but this kinda be his personal own.

My vision tunneled. I reached for Ivy’s first, my sister’s name scrawled across the manila in black ink. My fingerprints smeared Boone’s blood across it as I pulled it free.

Inside were intake forms. Psychological profiles, medical notes stamped with state seals and on the last page....handwritten notations in Boone’s handwriting.

'Witness. Should have been terminated.'

The room tilted. My knees buckled but Damien’s hand caught my arm before I fell.

“Camille,” Asher said with rough voice, “look at this.”

He held up another file, Elise Ward’s. At the bottom of it is a writing written in red pen,

'Exposure risk. Neutralized.'

I couldn’t breathe. Boone didn’t just knew, he cataloged it, tracked it and d maybe tried to stop it, maybe not... but either way, it was too late.

Damien closed the safe with a sharp motion. “We move. Now.”

The paramedics lifted Boone onto the gurney while they still work furiously to stabilize him. His chest rose in stuttering with fragile gasps while a machine force oxygen into him.

Boone’s eyes fluttered once, unfocused but open, before the team carry him into the ambulance barely alive.

Damien’s voice cut in low. “He’s not yet gone but someone will want to make sure he is.”

Asher’s gaze was on the safe, his face pale. “Then we don’t have much time.”

The sirens screamed down the road, carrying Boone away while we follow suit.

The red and blue lights painted the night in harsh, rhythmic flashes as the ambulance screamed down the road. Boone’s blood still clung under my fingernails, no matter how tightly I pressed Ivy’s file to my chest, it didn’t steady the thrum of panic in my ribs.

We followed close behind. No one spoke.

Asher sat in the back seat with his jaw locked, his eyes fixed on the ambulance ahead. His hands kept twitching like he wanted to be working on something or anything except just sitting here with the weight of Boone’s words hanging over us.

The closer we drew to the hospital, the harder it becomes to breathe. Boone had always been a constant shadow in Seabridge Bay, sometimes a barrier or an obstacle but if Boone fell, the last thread tethering this nightmare to law and order would snap. And then? Who would be left to protect anyone?

The ambulance tore into the hospital’s emergency bay. Damien swung the car into a side lot and killed the engine. “Stay close,” he said, his voice clipped.

Inside, the ER was all harsh lights, antiseptic air and chaos. Boone’s gurney rolled past us surrounded by a team in scrubs barking orders. His skin was a waxy pallor against the bright red of his blood-soaked shirt. Tubes, wires, oxygen mask, all the scaffolding of life barely keeping him tied here.

I caught a glimpse of his hand dangling off the edge of the gurney. For one insane moment, I almost reached for it but then he was gone, swallowed into double doors marked 'OPERATING ROOM. NO ENTRY.'

I stood frozen until Damien’s hand pressed against the small of my back. “Camille. We can’t fall apart now.”

“I’m not,” I lied, though my legs felt like they’d give out any second.

The waiting room was half-full with a crying child that broken an arm, an older woman with an oxygen tank and a man clutching a bloodied towel to his face but none of them looked at us.

It was Asher who noticed someone first. He leaned in whispering low. “Two men, corner by the nurses’ station with plain clothes, but see how they’re not filling out any paperwork. Just… watching......”

I turned my head just enough not to be noticed. Both with their arms crossed too tightly and their gazes sweeping the room in mechanical rhythm. My stomach pitched.

“They’re not here for a check-up,” Damien muttered.

I whispered back, “Boone’s attackers?”

“Or Boone’s protectors. Hard to tell in this town anymore.” His jaw flexed. “But if they’re waiting to finish the job, we can’t linger.”

I hated that he was right.

I lowered Ivy’s folder onto my lap, gripping it tight. “I’m not letting this go. Not again.”

“You shouldn’t,” Asher said. His voice cracked but his eyes softened when they landed on me. “But you need to know what you’re holding Cam. Those files aren’t just evidence. They’re a death sentence for whoever has them.”

A nurse walked past us wheeling a machine. I flinched at the sudden screech of rubber on tile. My nerves were raw, strung so tight even the smallest sound threatened to break me.

The doors to OR opened with a crack. A doctor came out ordering for more blood units. I caught a fleeting glimpse of Boone on the bed, his chest heaving shallow under the oxygen mask, nurses pressing pads to his ribs, the machine shrilling before it was silenced.

I shut my eyes hard. Ivy’s face bled over Boone’s in my mind, then Elise’s, Natalie’s. All of them on the bed either stitched up or zipped away, reduced to evidence.

Damien crouched in front of me with his hand firm on my knee. “Camille listen to me, if Boone makes it, he’ll be a target until he can’t talk but if he doesn’t make it, then, we are all that’s left of this trail. Either way… we don’t wait here. We move.”

“I can’t just walk away,” I said.