Chapter 7 - THE BAIT
Nora stared at the photograph of the depot wall until the letters blurred. “They don’t have me,” she said. Reed nodded. “Which means the message is for Adrian.” Adrian stood at the other end of the conference room, fists clenched at his sides. The threat had achieved exactly what it was designed to do: transform Nora from a person into leverage. She could see it in the calculations moving behind his eyes. “No,” she said.
Adrian looked at her. “No what?”
“No trading anything for me. No secret meeting. No heroic nonsense.” Her voice grew steadier with every word. “I spent three years being treated like an object people could move around. I’m not becoming one now.”
Reed almost smiled. “Good. Because nobody is making a trade.”
Federal agents took control of the Cross archive investigation, while Chicago police continued pursuing Cameron’s abuse case and his apparent disappearance. Yet Nora noticed an uncomfortable truth: Cameron might now be a victim of the same network that had helped him stalk her. She hated him. She feared him. She also did not want him murdered. Holding those truths at once felt like carrying broken glass.
Elise Mercer joined the investigation in person. She looked nothing like Adrian except around the eyes. Where Adrian’s restraint felt armored, Elise’s energy was restless, sharp, and impatient. The first time she met Nora, she said, “I’m sorry my family landed on top of your life.” Nora answered, “Your brother says the opposite.” Elise gave a tired smile. “That sounds like Adrian.”
Elise explained the archive’s strangest detail. Julian Cross had embedded account information inside scanned photographs and used a phrase from an old children’s book as the encryption key. Adrian’s mother had known the phrase. Elise knew only part of it. “There may be a second copy,” she said, “and Douglas Vale thinks Adrian has it.” Nora remembered Cameron’s obsession with her belongings, his sudden interest in Mercer after Black Halo, and the tracker inside the purse he had gifted her. Something clicked.
“The purse,” she said.
Everyone turned.
“Cameron gave me that purse six months ago. He chose it. He insisted I carry it to formal events.” Nora looked at Lena. “You searched it for electronics, right?”
“Yes.”
“For paper?”
Lena frowned.
They retrieved the purse from evidence storage. Inside the lining, beneath the place where the tracker had been stitched, technicians discovered a narrow strip of microfilm. Nora’s skin prickled. Cameron had hidden something in her belongings without her knowledge. Again.
The film contained photographs of handwritten ledger pages and one image of a woman standing beside Julian Cross. Adrian recognized her immediately: his mother, Victoria Mercer. On the back of one photographed page was a handwritten line: THE FIRST DOOR WAS NEVER THE SAFE ONE.
Elise went white. “That’s from the book.”
Federal cryptographers combined the phrase with Elise’s partial key and unlocked another section of the archive. The files implicated Douglas Vale more deeply than anyone expected. Bank transfers suggested he had paid Northbridge to locate the missing Mercer material. More recent payments were routed through Cameron’s private company.
Nora understood with horror. Cameron may not have known the full plan, but he had been helping his father hunt the archive while simultaneously controlling her. The tracker was not only about jealousy. She had become a delivery mechanism without knowing it.
Police finally located Cameron using toll-camera footage. He was being moved between properties by Northbridge operatives. A tactical team raided a warehouse before dawn and recovered him alive, bruised, dehydrated, and furious. Miles Holloway escaped again.
At the hospital, Cameron asked to see Nora.
She refused.
Then he offered information only if she came in person.
Reed advised against it. Priya reminded Nora she owed him nothing. Adrian said nothing at all. Nora spent an hour thinking before making her decision. “I’ll go,” she said, “with police present, door open, cameras recording, and he stays restrained.”
Cameron looked smaller in the hospital bed than he ever had in her memories. One wrist was cuffed to the rail. A bruise darkened his jaw. When Nora entered, his eyes filled with something dangerously close to relief. “You came.”
“I came for information.”
“Nora—”
“No.” Her voice stopped him. “You don’t get to use my name like we’re still in the same story.”
Cameron swallowed. For once, the polished mask did not return. “My father told me Adrian Mercer destroyed our family’s future. He said Mercer had evidence that belonged to us. I thought if I could get close enough…” He closed his eyes. “Then you started trying to leave.”
“So you tracked me.”
“Yes.”
“You told yourself that was love?”
Cameron looked away. “At first.”
The admission hurt more than a lie.
“What does Miles Holloway want?” Reed asked from the doorway.
Cameron’s face tightened. “The original archive. Not Elise’s copy. Julian Cross has it.”
Adrian, standing beyond the threshold, went still.
Nora stared at Cameron. “Julian is alive?”
Cameron nodded. “My father has known for years.”
“Where?”
May you like
Before Cameron could answer, every light in the hospital room went dark.
A second later, gunfire cracked somewhere below.
