Page 108 of Wicked Nightmare

"Fuck!" She grabbed her neck, both hands, fingers digging in. "It burns! Make it stop!"

Cam was on her in an instant, his large hands surprisingly gentle as he pushed her hair aside and probed the skin. His fingers moved along the base of her skull, pressing, searching. His face changed. Not shock. Something colder. "There's something here," he said. "Jesus Christ."

I moved closer, the gun still aimed at the intruder but my attention split. "What is it?"

"A wire. Embedded right into her skin. Runs along the hairline." His fingers traced the path, thin, barely visible, following a line that disappeared down behind her ear. "How the fuck did I miss this? I checked her neck. I checked her neck."

Because it wasn't visible before. Because whatever was in there had been dormant, flat against the tissue, undetectable by touch until the beeper activated it. Because Chimera had been doing this long enough to know how to hide their work.

Rose's eyes were squeezed shut, tears streaming. "Chimera... they... they said it was... for... for my own... own good. Oh God, I remember now. I remember."

Cam and I locked eyes over her head. They had been tracking her this whole time. Every moment she'd been in our apartment. Every meal. Every training session. Every night she'd slept on her little mattress in the corner of our room. They knew where she was and they knew where we were and they'd been watching and waiting, and I wanted to scream until my throat bled because we'd thought we were safe. We'd thought this shitty apartment with its deadbolts and chain locks and Cam's obsessive window-checking was enough. And it wasn't. It was never going to be enough because they were inside her.

"Get it out," Rose whimpered, her hands still pressed against her neck. "Please, just get it out."

I turned back to our captive, tapping the barrel of the gun against his forehead. Gentle. Rhythmic. Tap. Tap. Tap. Each one a promise.

"You're going to tell us everything you know about that fucking thing," I said. "Or so help me God, you'll wish I'd just shot you already."

His eyes darted between us. Whatever fight he'd had left in him was gone. "It's... it's a neural chip," he said.

Cam's hand tightened on Rose's shoulder. "A what now?"

"Chimera uses them to track their patients." The words came out in a rush, tripping over each other, because the gun was still on his forehead and I wasn't moving it. "It's connected directly to her nervous system. They can monitor her vitals, her location, even her emotional state."

My stomach dropped. This was some next-level shit. We didn't have those. Obviously. Or they'd have known we were here the whole time. This guy must not know who we were. Didn't know what he'd walked into. Thought he was retrieving a scared girl from a random apartment, not walking into a cage with two people who killed for fun and were very, very good at it.

"Can it be removed?" I pressed the muzzle harder against his temple.

He flinched. "Yes, but... it's not easy. You'd need specialized equipment, someone who knows what they're doing. If you fuck it up, you could fry her brain."

"Lovely," I said. Met Cam's gaze over Rose's trembling form. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. We were in deep shit and sinking fast, but there was something else there too, underneath the panic. The thrill. The challenge. The rush of having our backs against the wall and knowing we'd claw our way out anyway, because that's what we did. That's all we'd ever done.

I walked over to Cam, stood on my tiptoes, and kissed him. Tasted blood on his lip from where the intruder had gotten lucky with that left hook. He kissed me back, his hand finding my hip, squeezing once before letting go.

"Well," I said. "Looks like we've got ourselves a little project."

He smirked. "You thinking what I'm thinking, darlin'?"

"Yeah. Let's get the information out of him on how the fuck to remove that tracker. I'm sure he knows something he's not telling us."

The asshole's gaze darted between us, and whatever he saw on our faces drained the last of his defiance. "You... you can't... I won't tell you shi—"

Rose ran up to him and decked him right on his broken nose. His head snapped back, his eyes rolled, and he went limp. Out cold. "Shut the fuck up, Beaver."

I looked at her. "His name is... Beaver?"

She giggled, and the sound was so absurd after everything that had just happened that I almost lost it. "I mean, no. He probably has a real name, but the girls called him Beaver because of his gnarly front teeth. You didn't notice the chiclets he has going on? Yeah. Could probably eat through a tree with those. Hence... Beaver."

Cam nudged the unconscious man's shoe, satisfied. "Well, I'll be damned. Alright, when this asshole wakes up, let's get what we need and take him out to the woods. Kill him at the cliffs so we don't have to dump anymore bodies. If anyone starts checking the dumpster, we're gonna be in for a shit storm."

"Tonight just got a whole hell of a lot more interesting than that dream I was having," I said, grabbing Cam and dragging his face down to mine, sealing our excitement with a kiss.

Behind us, Beaver bled quietly into our dining chair. Rose stood over him, fists still clenched, breathing hard, and I realized she hadn't unclenched her hands since the vase. Her knuckles were white. Her whole body was vibrating. Whatever Chimera had put inside her, it wasn't just a tracker. It was a switch, and someone had just flipped it.

I didn't know if that made her more dangerous to our enemies or to us.

I decided I didn't care. She was ours now.