I look across the room at Kiera. She's loading magazines with grim, focused determination. She looks like a warrior preparing for battle—someone who has already decided that whatever she finds tonight, she'll survive it. She glances up and catches me staring. "What?"
"Nothing," I lie. "Just making sure you're ready."
"I've been ready for sixteen years," she says, her voice confident. "Tonight, I'm just finally doing something about it."
Cam clears his throat. "Slight problem." We all turn to him. "I've been monitoring the Nesting House security feeds," he continues. "And there's activity. Lots of it. Vehicles are arriving, and personnel are moving equipment. It looks like...they're evacuating."
Kiera freezes, her entire body locking up like a predator sensing danger. "What?"
"Someone tipped them off," Cam says, his voice spiking with alarm as he pulls up the live feeds. "They're moving the kids. Right now." The room explodes into chaos. Chairs scrape back. I feel my pulse slam against my ribs as adrenaline floods my system.
"How long do we have?" I demand, already reaching for my vest.
"They started loading the first transport twenty minutes ago," Cam says, eyes glued to the feed. "If I had to guess, they'll be gone in two hours. Maybe less."
"Fuck the timeline," Kiera says, already moving toward the door with lethal purpose. "We go now."
"Kiera, we're not ready…" Lila starts, her voice tight with concern.
"We go now," she repeats, her voice like steel. "Or those kids disappear, and we never find them again." She's right. We all know she's right.
I grab my go-bag and throw it over my shoulder. "Change of plans. We hit them during the evacuation. Use the chaos as cover."
"That's insane," Cam argues.
"That's the job," I reply, moving toward the door with Kiera. "Lila, you drive. Fast and aggressive. Cam, I need you to kill their communications. No calls in or out. No coordination."
"On it," Cam says, already typing.
Kiera stands at the door, hand on the handle, her whole body vibrating with barely contained violence. "Let's go, Ghost." I take one last look around the warehouse. At Cam, surrounded by his glowing screens. At Lila, checking her rifle one final time. At Kiera, the woman who is about to walk into the place that took her mom away.
"Everyone out alive," I say, my voice low and final. "That's the only acceptable outcome."
"Everyone out alive," the girls echo, their voices overlapping like a haunted melody.
We move as one out the door, toward the truck, toward the Nesting House, and whatever truth is waiting there. Seven hours that turned into two hours became right now. The cicadas are emerging whether we're ready or not.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The mountain road unspools before us like a black ribbon, twisted and treacherous in the dark. Lila drives the truck like she’s trying to outrun the devil, engine screaming as we climb higher into the Appalachians. The GPS on the dash showed seventeen minutes until we reach our destination, but we were burning time we didn't have. In the passenger seat, I check my weapon for the third time. I already knew the magazine was full, the chamber clear. But my hands needed something to do other than shake. “You remember anything?” I ask Sterling. He sits in the back, geared up in tactical black, his jaw tight.
“Nothing new,” he says, his voice flat. “Just shadows. The smell of bleach. A weight on my chest like I couldn’t breathe.”
I closed my eyes, reaching for memories that aren't there—just static and noise. “I don’t even have shadows,” I whisper. “Just the song.”
The truck hit a pothole, jarring my teeth. Outside, the trees press close, pine branches scraping the windows like skeletal fingers. This high up, the air was thinner, colder. “Two minutes,” Lila said, her voice flat. She stopped making jokes three miles back. “Cam, you reading us?”
“Yep,” Cam crackles through the earpiece. “Comms are jammed. They can't call for help, but they can't coordinate their evacuation either. Expect confusion. Chaos.”
“Perfect.” My voice has a sharp, cold edge to it. “We want chaos.”
“East entrance is coming up on your right,” Cam continues. “Service road, unmarked. Two guards were stationed there, but they just left their posts to help with the loading. You've got a thirty-second window.”
Sterling leans forward, his hand brushing my shoulder. “Ready?” I nod, but I’m not. How could anyone be ready to walk back into the place where their childhood was apparently dismantled?
Lila kills the headlights and turns onto the unmarked road. Gravel crunches under the tires. Through the trees, I can see the glow of a large building—three stories of Victorian architecture disguised as a private school, all gingerbread trim and warm lights. But the lights are wrong. Too frantic. Flashlights sweeping across windows. Figures moving in the dark. We were looking at the Nesting House.
“There,” Sterling says, pointing through the windshield. “The east door. It's open.”