He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 189

Chapter 189

Zara’s POV

The silence had been worse than the messages….. I had been in my office since seven.

Alex was awake.

The news had arrived through the same channel as everything else…. the contact at the hospital whose usefulness had become double-edged, information flowing both ways, me receiving what I needed and apparently someone else receiving what I had not realised I was transmitting.

Alex was awake and responsive and the attending had used the word discharge.

I had read the update and felt the cold arrival of a fear I had been postponing since the garder

If Alex was awake, then Alex could speak.

If Alex could speak, then Alex could tell Reeves things that Reeves was currently working with evidence to piece together.

And if Alex told Reeves things….. the voice from the wedding, the angle of the shot, whatever he had processed in the weeks of lying in the dark hearing everything Maya said to him, then the picture Reeves was building would acquire details that changed its résolution.

The photographs I had released were already being questioned for provenance.

Carter….. Maya’s investigator, had reportedly been working the trail for thirty-six hours.

My assistant knocked at nine-forty.

I had been staring at the same paragraph of the document in front of me for eleven minutes without reading it, which was information about where my attention was currently located…..

“Miss Zara, you have a visitor.”

“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” I said

“He said you’ll want to see him.” A pause. “He was very certain about it…..

He.

I set the document down.

The certainty in the message…. you’ll definitely want to see hirn, communicated itself through my assistant’s delivery….

I stood.

The reception area was at the end of the corridor, visible from the moment you stepped out of the office suite….

One person.

Seated in the chair nearest the window, with the particular, settled ease of someone who had arrived without urgency and was prepared to wait for whatever duration was required.

I stepped into the corridor.

Looked at him.

For a moment I simply stood there.

Not from recognition….

1/4

Chapter 198

+15 Bonus

Masun Hargrove:

I stood in the reception area and looked at him leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets

“Mason,” I said.

My voice came out steadier than it had any right to.

He smiled.

The slow version. The one that communicated he had been waiting for this moment and had found its arrival satisfying.

“You’re smarter than most people,” he said. “Today you’ve been unbelievably foolish”

I held his gaze.

“The empty restaurant,” I said.

“Was exactly what I told you it was,” he said. “A test. Whether you’d come.” He tilted his head slightly. “You came.”

“You already knew I would.”

“I suspected,” he said. “I wanted confirmation…..”

I looked at the glass panels. At the corridor. At the space between us and the nearest person with any capacity to be listening.

“Not here,” I said

He straightened from the wall…..

“Of course,” he said.

My office.

Door closed

I sat on the edge of the desk rather than in the chair…. the positioning of someone who had not fully decided whether they were staying in the room and was not going to communicate otherwise by settling into it.

Mason sat.

Looked around the office accessing….

“Marcus Webb,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“He’s dead because of you.”

“He was going to talk to the police,” Mason said. The same flat delivery he had used in the anonymous messages. Information

communicated as fact…..

“And you handled it,” I said.

“Yes.”

I looked at him.

At the man sitting across from me with no particular expression on his face…. not remorse, not satisfaction, nothing that communicated the weight of what he had just told me in plain language in a closed office.

“You killed someone,” I said.

214

Chapter 195

+15 Bonus

“I made a problem stop,” he said. “The same problem was going to frake your problem significantly worse.” He held my gaze. I’m not asking for gratitude. I’m explaining the landscape.”

The anonymous messages..

The photograph of Marcus Webb delivered at two in the morning.

He was planning to talk to the police. He had enough evidence to prove you were the one who hired him.

“The IV tampering,” I said.

He held my gaze….

“That was you,” I said.

A pause…..

“I arranged access,” he said. “The execution was incomplete.”

“Because Maya was in the room”

“Because Maya is always in the room,” he said, and something moved in his voice on the word… not bitterness

“You tried to kill him,” I said. “And it failed. And now he’s awake.”

“Yes,” he said.

“And you came here.”

“Because Alex being awake changes the timeline,” he said. “The evidence Reeves is building has a new contributor. The investigation into your activity has someone who heard things from inside a hospital room that he’s about to tell people in official capacities.” He leaned forward slightly. “Violence has produced nothing useful. It has created evidence. It has created witnesses…..” He held my gaze. “I’m not interested in more violence.”

“Then what are you interested in,” I said.

་་

“The same thing you are,” he said. “Separation. Alex and Maya; pulled apart by something that doesn’t leave a body behind or a surveillance record or a tampered IV line.” He paused. “Something that works at the level where they are actually vulnerable.”

“Which is,” I said.

“Trust,” he said. “What they have is built on it. Everything they’ve survived…. the investigation, the scandal, the wedding, the

hospital, they’ve survived it because they trust each other. Completely. In the specific way that people trust each other when they’ve been tested enough times that the testing itself has become evidence.” He looked at me. “That’s the vulnerability. Not Alex’s body. Not Maya’s reputation. The trust between them.”

I looked at the window.

At the city….

“You want Alex,” he said. “I want Maya. If we’re honest about those things…. which we should be, at this point, given what we’re each holding on the other, then the path is clear.” A pause. “We separate them. Without bullets. Without fabricated photographs that get traced in thirty-six hours. Without anything that leaves a record that a detective with the current evidence

load can find.”

“How,” I said.

“Carefully,” he said. “With patience. With the understanding that this is a long play, not a short one.” He held my gaze. “I’ve been running short plays. They keep failing. I’m done with short plays”

I sat with it.

23/4

Chapter 189

What I knew.

+15 Bonus

Mason Hargrove had killed Marcus Webb.

Mason Hargrove had arranged the IV tampering.

Mason Hargrove was now sitting in my office offering an alliance against the two people we both had reason to want separated.

He had information that could also destroy me.

I had information…. now that could destroy him.

The mutual leverage was so complete that the only available direction was forward together or destruction of both simultaneously.

What I did not know:

Whether Mason’s long play was real or whether this was another test.

Whether an alliance with Mason Hargrove was survivable as a long-term proposition or whether it was simply a faster route to a different version of the same problem.

Whether I still, at this point in everything, wanted what I had come to this city to want.

That last one.

I sat with that last one.

Alex, awake in a hospital bed..

“What’s your plan?” I said.

Mason looked at me for a long moment.

Then he began to tell me.

日

Comments

U

Support

Share