Chapter 83: The Walls Close In
The city lights twinkled distantly behind them, but Cambria felt nothing but the cold grip of a tightening noose. The message Knox had sent haunted her every thought.
I’ve taken something of yours. Come and get it. Or lose everything.
The words pulsed in her mind like a sinister heartbeat. Knox was no longer just a rival in the shadows he was waging war on every front. And Cambria was standing on the edge of a precipice, one false move away from losing everything she had fought for.
Her team moved with precision, but the night was thick with uncertainty. Maddox rod just behind her in the convoy, his face unreadable in the flickering light of the dashboard. Brienne sat to the side, scanning the streets with hawk eyes. Even the seasoned operatives with them seemed tense, muscles coiled, breaths shallow.
"Anything on the scanners?" Cambria asked softly, breaking the heavy silence.
Brienne’s fingers danced over the handheld device. "Minimal. Knox’s usual interference. But I’m picking up movement inside the warehouse. Something’s definitely waiting for us."
Cambria’s jaw clenched. Knox loved playing mind games. He wanted to draw them in, to make them vulnerable.
"We’re walking into a trap," Maddox said quietly.
"But it’s the only lead we have," Cambria replied. "If Knox really has what he claims, we can’t ignore it. We go in, we find out what’s been taken and we bring it back."
The convoy pulled off the highway and wound down an old industrial road. The warehouses here had long been abandoned, shadows of a more prosperous time. Their rusted gates stood open like a maw ready to swallow them whole.
The air inside was thick with dust and the scent of decay. Broken beams reached toward the ceiling, and webs stretched like fragile curtains in the corners. Moonlight slanted through the broken windows, casting eerie patterns on the concrete floor.