Chapter 407:

“The loudest one,” I agreed. “But not the deadliest.”

My phone buzzed.

Unknown Number: That was a touching performance. But you forgot one thing. A garden needs blood to grow. I’m waiting.

I looked at Elias. The hunt wasn’t over. It was just beginning.

We left the hospital through the service exit to avoid the media storm Tiffany had undoubtedly whipped up in the lobby. The night air was cool, biting.

“Where to?” Marcus asked, opening the door of the armored SUV.

“The penthouse,” Elias said. “We need to regroup. Cloud tracked Ruth’s phone signal to a warehouse in Queens, but the signal just died. It didn’t fade; it was terminated.”

“She knows we’re tracking her,” I said, sliding into the leather seat. “Cloud locked her out of the surveillance grid, blinded her digital eyes. She panicked.”

I leaned my head back against the headrest, closing my eyes. My body ached. The tension of the last few days was accumulating in my muscles like lactic acid.

“You did good today,” Elias said, taking my hand. His thumb rubbed circles on my knuckles, a grounding rhythm.

“It felt… hollow,” I admitted. “Tiffany is gone. Eleanor is dead. But I don’t feel safe. I feel like I’m standing in the eye of a hurricane.”

“That’s because the storm isn’t over,” Elias said. “Ruth is the storm. But a storm without direction dissipates. If she can’t find us, she has to return to the source.”

The car wove through traffic. I watched the city lights blur past.

“Why is she waiting?” I asked. “If she wanted to kill me, she could have taken a shot when we left the hospital.”

“She doesn’t want to snipe you,” Elias said darkly. “The Gardener wants a ‘harvest.’ That implies ritual. Ceremony. They want to make an example of you.”

𝓢𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂 𝓻𝓸𝓸𝓽: 𝓰⍶𝗅𝗇𝗈ν𝖊𝗅𝘀﹒𝓬𝓸𝓶

“Like they did with my father,” I whispered.

The realization hit me like a physical blow. My father hadn’t just died in an accident. He had been harvested.

“Elias,” I said, sitting up. “The brownstone. The body in the wall.”

“What about it?”

“The ring,” I said. “Ruby’s ring. It was a signet ring. MI6 issue, but modified.”

“Yeah?”

“My father had one,” I said. “I remember playing with it when I was a kid. He said it was a key. Not a physical key, but a digital one. It had a contact point on the bezel.”

“A key to what?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if Ruby was bricked up with her ring… maybe she was trying to hide it. Maybe Ruth didn’t know it was a key.”

“We need that ring,” Elias said. “Police evidence has it.”

“We need to get it back,” I said. “Before Ruth realizes what she missed.”

The penthouse was quiet, a sanctuary of glass and steel high above the chaos. But even here, I couldn’t relax. Every shadow looked like an assassin.

Elias poured two glasses of whiskey. He handed me one.

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