Page 192 of Joker

The world tilts. Actually tilts. My knees almost buckle.

Mac catches the shift immediately. “What?”

I can’t answer. Can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t do anything but stare at the screen while every horror I’ve been living with for the last year rises up all at once and saysI told you so.

He found us anyway.

“Raven.” Mac’s voice cuts in sharper now.

I turn. Slowly. And that’s when I see him.

Not Cal. One of his men. I know that instantly.

Not because I’ve seen him before. Because he’s got that same polished, clean-cut look all Cal’s world seems to breed into men like a disease.

Button-down shirt. Baseball cap. Sunglasses. Ordinary enough to disappear in a crowd. Except he’s not looking at the clothes. Or the cashier. Or his phone.

He’s looking at me. At Lexi. And he smiles.

My whole body goes cold. Not hot. Not panicked.

Cold.

The kind of cold that means danger has moved from abstract to immediate.

“Mac,” I whisper.

She follows my line of sight. Her whole body changes instantly. No more dry humor. No more casual errand energy.

Just steel.

“Take Lexi,” she says low and hard.

I don’t argue. I scoop my daughter up so fast she squeaks in surprise, Bunny and all, and Mac is already moving, one hand at my back shoving me toward the side exit near the dressing rooms.

The man moves too. Fast.

Too fast.

And that’s when the whole store explodes into chaos.

A rack goes down near the front with a crash loud enough to make customers scream.

Somebody yells. A child starts crying. One of the prospects comes barreling through the front doors just in time for another man I didn’t even see to crack him across the side of the head with something hard enough to drop him instantly. Everything after that happens in violent, flashing pieces.

Mac swears and shoves me harder toward the back. “Move!”

I do.

Heart pounding so hard it’s making me nauseous, Lexi clutched so tightly against my chest I’m terrified I’m hurting her.

The second prospect appears near the side hallway and lunges toward us. Then another body slams into him from the blind corner near the stockroom and they both hit the floor in a brutal tangle of limbs and fists and cursing.

“Mac!” I scream.

“Go!”

The side exit is five feet away.