Chapter 7

chapter

seven

Pierce waited until he was sure Rhiannon wasn't paying attention. Then, he walked toward Gareth with the notepad in hand, his mind churning with possibilities. The silence in the gift shop felt thick and oppressive, only broken by the occasional groan of the structure under the weight of the debris. His steps were steady and calculated, but inside, unease churned. He couldn't let it show.

As he approached Gareth, the man's eyes flicked up to meet his. They were sharp, more alert than they should've been for someone who had just been pulled from a pile of rubble. Gareth sat slumped against the wall, his hand clutching a half-empty bottle of water someone must've brought him. He looked harmless enough, but Pierce could see the soldier in him.

This man was not a civilian. He was a predator lying in wait, assessing the situation and readying himself for whatever came next. They locked eyes, and Pierce knew the recognition was mutual.

Without a word, Pierce crouched in front of him, placing the notepad and pen on the ground between them.

"I need answers." He tried to speak, but his voice came out in a rasp of a whisper.

And, fuck, it hurt.

He wanted to do this without relying on the notepad and pen, wanted to use the voice that was stolen from him to find out exactly why, but when Gareth's eyes narrowed in confusion, he realized it wouldn't be possible.

Mentally cursing at himself, he quickly scribbled the same message on the notepad and held it up for the man to read.

Gareth's lips twitched as if fighting a smirk. "Sorry, I don't have any."

Pierce stared at him, unfazed, and wrote:

Is your name Gareth Lawrence?

Gareth took his time responding. "Yes."

He was lying, but Pierce hadn't expected to get the truth from him. He gave Gareth a long, unblinking look before scribbling another note.

Who sent you?

Gareth read it and scowled. "No one sent me. I told you, I was just passing through. I stopped here to use the restroom and stretch my legs and got trapped when the ceiling collapsed on me."

What were you doing in the employee-only hallway?

"I just told you. The lady behind the counter told me to use the restroom back there because the men's room was out of order."

Pierce studied the man, watching for any flicker of untruth. With his trained eye, he could detect the smallest signs of deceit: a telltale shift in gaze, a nervous twitch, a pulse throbbing too rapidly under the skin. But Gareth was unreadable. His expression remained calm and detached.

Who do you work for?

There. Something flickered in Gareth's expression—a shift, a guardedness that wasn't there before. "I'm unemployed."

Pierce didn't buy it for a second. His fingers gripped the pen a little tighter as he wrote:

You're lying. You have a map of my apartment and my place of employment. You're with Halston. If you know who I am, you know I can make you talk.

Gareth's expression darkened. "Yeah, I know you. You're Pierce."

He didn't see the need to confirm it and just waited, letting the silence hang heavy between them.

Gareth grunted and shifted positions, pressing a hand to his ribs as he sat up straighter. "Yeah. Halston's golden boy gone rogue."

Pierce flipped to a clean page in his notebook. I wasn't their golden boy. I never worked for them.

Gareth raised an eyebrow, a hint of amusement in his otherwise impassive expression. "But you worked on Project Iron Horizon, and they were heavily involved, weren't they?"

Everything in him went cold at the mention of that project. Images flooded his mind—a swirl of blueprints and diagrams, late nights in the lab under harsh fluorescent lights, failure after catastrophic failure... until one day, it worked.

The Tectra-X weapon.

A horror of his creation.

His grip on the pen faltered, and he inhaled deeply, fighting back the wave of panic that threatened to consume him. When he trusted himself not to hyperventilate, he wrote:

Why are they searching for me now?

"They've been looking for you from the moment you disappeared on them. People don't just drop off their radar without consequences."

They tried to kill me. What the fuck did they think was going to happen?

"They see you as a loose end."

So they sent you to finish what they started?

"No." The response was immediate. Gareth's eyes held a sincerity that made Pierce's hand pause over the notepad. "I'm not here for that. Yes, I worked for Halston. Worked, past tense."

Why were you searching for me?

Gareth swallowed, looking uncomfortable for the first time. His gaze flicked to the scars on Pierce's neck, then back to his face again.

"I assume you know Halston's closing in on you," he said after a moment. "And not just Halston, but a lot of people. Some more fanatical than others."

Pierce's stomach twisted, but outwardly, he remained still. He'd always known this day would come—when the past would catch up with him—but it had always just been a vague sense of paranoia until now. To hear it confirmed sent a wave of cold reality crashing over him.

Why now?

Gareth lifted a shoulder in a shrug that made him hiss in pain.

Frustration clawed through Pierce. Getting a straight answer from this guy was like trying to draw blood from a stone. He scribbled on the pad again:

You still haven't told me who you really are.

Gareth sighed heavily. "It doesn't matter. I'm just a guy trying to survive."

Bullshit.

"You think I'm lying?" He pushed himself off the ground, wincing as he used his arm to brace himself. He glared, and the muscles in his jaw twitched against the strain. "You think I wanted any part of this?"

Pierce glared back at him. What do you want then?

Gareth grimaced and relaxed back against the wall with a heavy sigh.

"I want out," he admitted after several beats of silence, his gaze distant. "I want… a life away from all this. But when I gave them my resignation, they…" He trailed off and swore under his breath. "I found out I couldn't leave because they fucking own me. I'm not a human being to them. They consider me their property. A broken tool to be repaired, repurposed, or thrown away. So, yeah, I came looking for you because you're the only person I know who has hidden from them."

It felt like the walls were closing in on Pierce, the room growing smaller, the air thinner. He had to get a grip before the panic overwhelmed him and made him useless.

Do they think you're their property because you're one of their soldiers or because of something else?

Gareth hesitated. "Something else." His voice was quiet, strained. "I don't know why you ran, Pierce. I don't know anything about Project Iron Horizon beyond its name, and I don't want to know. But I'll tell you this—when Halston thinks they own you, they don't let go." As he spoke, his gaze drifted to something over Pierce's shoulder.

Pierce turned and saw Rhiannon nearby, talking to the Japanese family. He scowled and snapped his fingers to get Gareth's attention.

How did you find me?

As he wrote the words, an icy shiver ran down his spine, a prickling sensation at the nape of his neck. The thought that he had been found—that he could've been found at any moment in the last few years—sent a wave of cold dread washing over him. He felt vulnerable, exposed, and dangerously close to losing the hard-won control he clung to.

"I'm good at what I do." Gareth smiled faintly. "But if it makes you feel any better, it wasn't easy."

It doesn't. What do you want from me?

"I don't know what I expected," he said under his breath, and his expression shifted from that of a hardened soldier to something else, something vulnerable.

It was disconcerting, seeing this man who could almost certainly kill with his bare hands look so… exhausted, so desperate.

He shook his head and gave a bitter laugh. "Help, maybe? Advice. You've managed to stay off their radar for a long time now. I need to know how."

The simplicity of Gareth's plea struck hard. What was he supposed to say? That even though he'd managed to stay hidden this long, he'd lived in constant fear, always looking over his shoulder? That his paranoia and panic attacks had become so crippling he'd had to turn to drugs and alcohol to dull them? That any semblance of a normal life had long since been destroyed, and without his dog by his side, he was closer to the edge than he cared to admit?

Instead of any of that, he wrote: Running is not living.

Gareth's gaze dropped to the note, and his lips compressed into a tight line. "Better than being a puppet."

Something about his story wasn't ringing true, but Pierce couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was.

He studied Gareth, trying to read the truth in his gaze, in his posture. There was something deeply guarded there, something he was holding back. But there was also desperation. Fear. And that made him want to—not trust. No, he couldn't let himself trust just yet. But it made him want to listen, at least.

His gaze fell on the last thing he'd written. Running is not living. Ha. The hypocrisy of it wasn't lost on him. He wasn't living either, not really. He'd merely existed in a perpetual state of fear and unease.

He shook his head, rubbing a hand over the scruff on his chin, then flipped to another new page.

Why should I trust you?

Gareth didn't answer immediately. He seemed to mull over the question, weighing his response with a certain carefulness that was intriguing.

"You shouldn't," he said at last. "You shouldn't trust anyone, Pierce. But here's the truth— I need your help as much as you need mine."

Rising to his feet, he held the notepad in front of Gareth's face one last time.

Does anyone else know where I am?

Gareth stared at the message, then met his gaze. "If I found you, they're not far behind. Maybe they're already here."

Pierce's jaw clenched, the muscles in his neck tight with apprehension. His fingers curled around the edges of the notepad, his knuckles turning white with the strain.

Gareth's words ping-ponged around inside his head—had that been a threat or a warning? He wasn't sure.

He glanced toward the rest of the group, clustered by the registers. They were relying on him to get them through this, but he'd spent the last several years hiding from the world, interacting with only a handful of people and dogs. He wasn't a leader. He was a survivor, and, up until this moment, he had only needed to survive alone.

But these people were counting on him. They didn't know the full extent of the danger they were in, but he did. The exits were blocked, the building was unstable, and he had one of the most powerful private militaries in the world looking for him. And he had no backup. He couldn't afford to panic, couldn't afford to let the pressure get to him…

He needed a plan.

Fast.

Without another word, he shoved the notepad into his pocket and left Gareth sitting against the wall. As he rounded the corner and spotted Rhiannon speaking quietly with Dot, a surge of protectiveness swelled in his chest. He had to make sure she made it out of here alive.

He wouldn't let her become another casualty of his past.