He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Alex’s POV

I was reviewing the Bayport filing when my phone lit up with Marcus’s name.

Marcus was not a man who called for small reasons. I’d retained him for three years, paid him well, asked him very specific questions, and he had never once delivered an answer that wasn’t worth the interruption.

I picked up on the first ring.

“Talk to me”

“Mason’s deployed a search team.” His voice was low, economical. “They have the apartment

I was already standing. “How?”

“The woman. Selina Reeves. She gave it to him an hour ago”

I closed the Bayport file and reached for my jacket.

“How many men?”

address.”

“Three that I can confirm. They’ve been told to bring Maya back to the penthouse.” A pause, the kind Marcus used when there was a second thing he hadn’t decided how to say yet. “There’s also a separate communication I intercepted. Not from Mason. From Selina”

I stopped moving.

“She contacted someone independently,” he said. “Not Mason’s team. Her own. One person, paid separately.

Another pause.

“The instruction was to arrive before Mason’s men. And to make sure Maya doesn’t leave

the building.”

The room wa

very quiet.

“Marcus.” My voice came out flat. “Say that plainly”

“She wants the girl unalived, Alex.”

I don’t remember deciding to run.

I remember the lobby of my building, the night air hitting my face, my car already pulling to the kerb because Dario had seen me coming and knew my face when something had gone wrong. I remember telling him the address and telling him to drive like he meant it and he did, because Dario had also been with me long enough to read a room.

Twelve minutes across the city at eleven at night..

I spent eleven of them on the phone.

“Marcus Selina’s contact. Can you intercept?”

“I’ve already made that difficult for him. His car has a problem it won’t discover until he turns the key. But I can’t guarantee he’s the only one, and I can’t guarantee Mason’s men don’t have instructions that go beyond retrieval.”

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“Best estimate on Mason’s team arrival”

“Twenty minutes from when I called you. Maybe less.”

“Then I have eight.”

“Seven, if traffic moves.”

“Keep the line open.”

I put the phone in my jacket pocket and watched the city blur past the window and thought about a woman in a grey pullover reading trust documents at a kitchen table, absolutely composed, with no idea that the building she was hiding in had already been given to the wrong people.

Dario pulled up to the kerb at eleven forty–three.

“Wait here,” I said. “Engine running

“How long?”

“Five minutes. If I’m not back in ten, call Marcus”

I crossed the pavement at a pace that wasn’t quite running and pushed through the front door. The lobby tile cracked, right in the centre was exactly where Maya had described it, exactly where I’d stepped around it both times I’d been here.

I stepped on it.

Third floor. The stairs, not the elevator… faster and no signal lost.

w it was me.

I knocked. Three times, same as before. Deliberate, unhurried, so she’d know

A long pause.

“It’s Alex.” I kept my voice low. “I need you to open the door right now.”

The chain scraped back. The lock turned.

She opened the door in the grey pullover again, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead, the yellow legal pad still in her hand. Alert, not panicked she’d heard something in my voice and her face had already arranged itself into the expression she wore when she was processing a threat rather than feeling it.

“What happened?”

“Mason knows where you are. He has men coming.” I looked at her steadily. “We need to leave. Now.”

Something moved across her face not fear, exactly. The specific, cold recognition of someone who has correctly predicted that the worst was coming and finds no satisfaction in being right.

“How long?”

“Less than ten minutes.

She turned away from the door.

I watched her move through the apartment with controlled, rapid efficiency. She pulled a coat from the

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hook by the door, slung the tote over her shoulder, and stopped.

Looked around the apartment once.

Looked at the photograph on the mantel… her father, her wedding day, his face with that expression.

“The cat,” she said.

I stared at her. “Maya…”

“It’s been on the window ledge every night. I’ve been feeding it.” She was already moving to the kitchen window. She unlatched it, pushed it open. The grey cat appeared on the sill immediately, amber eyes expectant. She picked it up…. one fluid motion, entirely certain and tucked it against her chest.

It purred.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

She looked at me over its head. “Non–negotiable.”

We made it to the car in four minutes.

As Dario pulled away from the kerb, I saw the headlights of two vehicles turning onto the far end of the street. Moving slowly. Deliberate.

Maya saw them too.

She said nothing. She held the cat, looked straight ahead, and said nothing.

I kept my phone to my ear. “Marcus”

“They’re at the building,” he confirmed. “They’ll find the apartment empty in about three minutes.”

“And the other one?”

“Still stationary. The car problem I mentioned is proving persistent.” A pause. “He won’t be a factor tonight.”

“Good.” I looked at Maya. “Are you alright?”

was

“I’m fine.” Her voice was even. “Where are we going?”

“My house. Outside the city.” I watched the street settle behind us. “It’s secure. Gated. Nobody gets in or out without my clearance.”

She absorbed this. Looked at the cat. Looked at the window. “For how long?”

“Until we file. Until you’re ready to step into the light.” I paused. “Maya…there’s something else. The search wasn’t only Mason’s.”

She turned to look at me.

“Selina gave him the address,” I said. “And then she made a separate arrangement.

I watched her understand. The stillness that came over her face was not surprise. It was the particular composure of someone absorbing confirmation of a thing they’d suspected and had hoped not to be right

about.

“She wanted to make sure I didn’t leave the building,” Maya said.

Not a question.

“Yes,”

The cat made a small sound. Maya’s hand moved over its ears, automatic, grounding.

“Alright,” she said finally. Quietly.

That was all.

The house was forty minutes north of the city, up a wooded private road that the GPS didn’t know existed, which was by design. I’d bought it three years ago for exactly this kind of reason not because I’d anticipated. tonight specifically, but because I had spent enough years in competitive maritime to understand that there would always be a night that required a location nobody had on file.

Dario keyed us through the gate.

Maya stood in the entrance hall with her tote and her cat and looked at the space with the same assessing stillness she brought to everything.

“Guest room is on the second floor,” I said. “There are clothes in the wardrobe, various sizes, I keep them for emergency situations. The kitchen is fully stocked. The wifi password is on the card by the router, and the router is in the study, which you are welcome to use”

She looked at me.

“I’m putting you in a house,” I said, “not a gilded cage. You have the run of the place. I’ll be in the east wing.

“You live here?”

“Sometimes.” I set my keys on the console table. “Often enough.”

She nodded once.

The cat dropped from her arms, landed silently, and began an immediate and systematic inspection of the hallway with the proprietary air of an animal that had already decided this was an acceptable situation.

Maya watched it for a moment.

“Thank you,” she said. Simply, without performance, the way she’d said everything tonight. “I mean that….

I looked at her. Travelling coat, reading glasses still on her forehead, leather tote with her father’s trust documents and a legal pad, standing in my entrance hall at half past midnight because someone had tried to have her killed.

Unbroken

Exactly as she’d been every time I’d looked at her since the door of that apartment swung open.

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“Go and sleep,” I said. “We have work tomorrow”

She went upstairs.

I waited until I heard the guest room door close.

Then I took my phone back out and called Marcus.

“I need you inside Mason Empire,” I said. “Not at the edges. Inside. Every board communication, every legal filing, every move he makes before he makes it.” I walked through to the study and closed the door behind me. “He’s going to come at her legally first. Then corporately. Then, if we let him, personally. I want to know the order before it arrives”

“That’s a deep placement,” Marcus said. “It’ll take….!

“Whatever it takes. Resources aren’t the constraint.” I sat down at the desk. “She has fourteen days before the trust activates. After that, every move becomes public and the rules change. I need those fourteen days to be clean.”

A pause. “Understood.”

“And Marcus.” I looked at the door. At the ceiling above it, where a light had just come on and then, after a minute, gone off again. “Get it done quickly.”