The Survival Game Begins
The door clicked shut behind Cole Sterling, and the room’s stillness curled like smoke from a blown-out candle. Sebastian moved before the sound faded—desk drawer open, burn phone and keys in hand, his gaze tracking to Jace, whose small hand was still locked inside Isabella’s.
“Forty-eight hours is a gift,” Sebastian said, his voice stripped of the measured calm he’d shown in front of Cole. “It’s time. And I plan to spend every second of it making sure he can’t follow.”
Isabella shook her head. The silver ring glinted under the fluorescent hum. “You don’t understand what he’s capable of.”
“I understand exactly what he’s capable of.” Sebastian crossed the room, and when he spoke again it was lower, softer, a blade wrapped in cloth. “I also understand that I’ve missed seven years of this boy’s life, and I’m not about to let a man in a three-thousand-dollar suit take one more minute of it. Dorian’s outside. We leave now, or we don’t leave at all.”
Jace looked up at his mother, then at the man who was his father. His thumb worked the edge of Isabella’s ring, a nervous habit she’d tried to break for a year.
“Mom? Are we going?” His voice was small but steady, the voice of a child who had learned to read danger before he’d learned to read words.
Isabella’s throat worked. She knelt, pressing her forehead to her son’s, a moment of private communion. When she rose, her eyes were dry, and something had hardened in her posture. “We’re going.”
—
The drive unspooled through strips of desert darkness. Highway 66 in its dying breath, a black ribbon stitched with the bones of closed gas stations and the flickering ghosts of motel signs. Sebastian took a route that doubled back twice, once through a dirt road that rattled the suspension and sent Jace’s head bobbing against the seatbelt, once through a truck stop where he bought coffee he didn’t drink and a bag of pretzels that went straight into the boy’s lap.
Dorian led in a separate vehicle, sweeping every turn, his brake lights blinking twice before each junction—an old tactical rhythm Sebastian knew from the years of studio wars and contract wars and the one time a disgruntled producer had actually tried to run him off the road. The desert swallowed them whole.
The Desert Edge Motel appeared at the end of a frontage road that barely qualified as pavement. Its neon sign—a jackrabbit clutching a martini glass—buzzed a cracked orange apology into the night. The pool beside the office had been drained years ago, its floor now a drift of sand and desiccated leaves. All the windows but one were dark.
Dorian’s sedan was parked behind the laundry shed. The security chief emerged from the shadow of a dying palm tree and gave Sebastian a flat nod.
“Swept twice. Manager’s nephew is paid to be elsewhere until Thursday. Cell signal’s weak, landline’s disconnected, and the only neighbor within a mile is a coyote who’s been watching me for the past hour.”
Sebastian’s hand found the small of Isabella’s back, guiding her and Jace toward Room 12. The key turned with a dry click. Inside, the air smelled of bleach and old dust. A queen bed with a floral bedspread starched stiff as cardboard, a laminate table bearing a dented ice bucket, a television bolted to the dresser with a dead remote. The window had been freshly caulked and fitted with a secondary latch.
Jace sat on the edge of the bed, his feet not reaching the floor. His gaze swept the room—window, door, bathroom, the sliver of space beneath the curtain. Sebastian noticed the way the boy’s eyes moved, cataloging exits like a soldier’s kid, and something twisted in his chest.
“This is like a movie set,” Jace said.
Sebastian paused, checking the window latch. “You think so?”
“It’s where the good guy hides before he wins.”
Isabella turned to the curtain, her shoulders tightening. Sebastian watched her for a moment, then pulled a deck of cards from his kit bag. He sat cross-legged on the floor across from his son, the deck fanning in his hands.
“You know Go Fish?”
“I can play War.”
“War’s too easy.” Sebastian shuffled with a one-hand cascade that made Jace’s eyes go wide. “I’ll teach you Twenty-One. It’s about getting as close to the number as you can without going over. Like life.”
Jace took his cards with both hands, studying them with a gravity that belonged to a kid twice his age. Sebastian let him win the first two rounds. On the third, he took the win with a pair of kings, and the boy’s eyes narrowed with pure Rutherford blood.
“Deal again.”
“Competitive. I like it.”
“I don’t like losing.”
“Good.” Sebastian dealt another hand. “But part of this game is knowing when to fold. You can’t win every hand. You can only win the ones that matter. The rest of the time, you save your strength and stay alive.”
Jace considered this with a crinkle of his forehead. “Is that why you didn’t punch the bad man in the face?”
Isabella’s breath caught. Sebastian’s hands stilled on the cards. He met his son’s steady, patient gaze.
“No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t punch him because you were in the room. Some fights you only take when the people you love are safe.”
“Like the good guy does?”
“Exactly like the good guy does.”
Jace dealt the next hand. Sebastian let him win it, then the one after. The boy’s eyes grew heavy, his small body tilting sideways on the bed until his cheek met the starched bedspread. Sebastian collected the cards, fit them into the box, and set them on the nightstand. He lifted Jace—small, warm, impossibly light—and placed him at the center of the bed, tucking the floral spread around the boy’s shoulders.
Jace murmured in his sleep, something that sounded like “thirty-four.” Isabella pulled the second blanket from the dresser and draped it over his legs. When she straightened, Sebastian was watching her.
“Now,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Tell me the rest.”
Isabella sat at the laminate table. She turned a paper cup between her fingers, flattening the rim, folding it, flattening it again. A clock somewhere inside the wall ticked with a dry, insectoid rhythm.
“Flynn Sterling came to my apartment on a Sunday,” she said. “Before your last premiere. He knew everything, Sebastian. My mother’s third mortgage. My sister’s residency applications. My bank password. He had it all in a leather folder, and he read it to me like a bedtime story.”
Sebastian’s jaw set firmly—wait, I cannot use “jaw set firmly.” Let me rephrase.
Sebastian’s face went still, a dangerous blankness settling over his features. He folded his arms, the only tell the whitening of his knuckles.
“The deal was simple. I disappear. Clean break. No calls, no letters, no goodbye.” She held the cup with both hands now, crushing it slowly. “If I didn’t, he’d destroy you. He showed me the evidence he’d gathered, and I believed him.”
“And you believed that by leaving you were protecting me.”
“I believed it was the only way you’d survive.” Her voice bent, but didn’t crack. “I was young, and I was terrified, and I loved you enough to make the worst mistake of my life.” She looked at the sleeping child. “And then I found out about him a month after I left.”
Sebastian’s silence filled the room like water. The clock ticked.
“If I’d told you, you’d have come after me,” she continued. “You’d have burned through Sterling, and he’d have seen you coming. He had the files. He had the proof. I couldn’t—” She stopped, pressing the crushed cup against her lips. “I couldn’t let the man I loved get destroyed because of a child I never planned to have.”
Sebastian crossed the room and sat in the chair beside her. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t try to take her hand. He simply sat, letting the proximity be its own argument.
“Seven years,” he said. “You carried that alone.”
“Every day.”
He turned the ring on her finger—the silver band, worn smooth by her endless turning of it. “And you still wore this.”
“It was the only truth I had that made sense.”
The clock ticked. Jace turned in his sleep, murmuring.
The burn phone buzzed. Sebastian answered, speaker on. Helena’s voice came through, clipped, all business.
“I planted the schedule. Family Festival scouting near Pioche, Nevada. It’s sitting in Westbrook’s system with your name on it. If Cole’s investigators check—and they will—they’ll bite inside the hour.”
“Good.” Sebastian leaned back. “Anything else?”
“He’s turned your production office inside-out. Photographing your desk, your calendars, the coffee-cup rings. He’s thorough, Sebastian. He’s not trying to hide it.”
“Let him dig. Every hour he spends chasing a ghost in Nevada is an hour he’s not looking at the truth.”
A pause. “You want me to stay put? He could come for me.”
“You’re a civilian. He won’t touch you. It’s not his game.” Sebastian’s voice softened. “But keep your passport on the kitchen counter, just in case.”
“Charming. Call me when this ends.” She hung up.
Isabella was watching him. “The decoy—will it work?”
“It’ll work for tonight. That’s all we need.” He set the phone down. “Tonight, we sleep. Tomorrow, we go to ground and I start tearing the Sterling family apart from the foundation up.”
—
Outside, Dorian stood between two abandoned station wagons, his back pressed to the corrugated steel of the laundry shed. The desert cold had settled into his bones, but he’d been uncomfortable before; discomfort was data. He scanned the motel’s sight lines, the dark windows, the faint orange smear of the neon jackrabbit reflecting on the empty pool.
Headlights appeared. Not from the access road—from the highway slip road, low beams cut to parking lights, moving at a crawl. The vehicle pulled onto the shoulder, killed its engine, and sat in the dark.
Dorian watched. The driver rolled down the window, raised a camera with a telephoto lens the size of a small cannon, and aimed it at Room 12.
The man didn’t hear Dorian cross the lot. He didn’t see the shadows move. He became aware of Dorian when the security chief’s hand closed around his windpipe from the open window, a grip that wasn’t negotiation.
“Who sent you?”
The man’s hands clawed at the door handle. Dorian tightened his thumb and first finger into the hollow beneath his jaw. “Let me rephrase. Who’s paying you to take pictures of a motel room?”
“Sterling,” the man wheezed. “Cole Sterling. Private contractor. I’m not—I’m not field, I’m surveillance.”
Dorian took the man’s camera, removed the SD card, and crushed it between his boot heel and the asphalt. He took the man’s phone, scanned his ID, photographed it with his own device.
“You’re going to drive out of here and tell your client you found nothing. No lights. No movement. No sign. And if I see any vehicle approach this location again tonight, I’ll identify you to Sterling as the leak myself. Understood?”
The man was nodding before Dorian finished. Dorian released his grip, stepped back, and watched the sedan pull away with a smear of rubber. He pocketed the camera and melted back into the shadows.
—
In Room 12, the silence had settled into something almost safe. Jace’s breathing had deepened into the rhythm of a child who trusted the blanket above him. Isabella sat on the edge of the bed, her hand on her son’s back, the silver ring catching the lamplight. Sebastian stood at the window, watching the strip of desert dark.
“He’ll come with everything,” she said quietly. “Cole, I mean. He’s not Flynn. He doesn’t have a rulebook.”
“Then I’ll write one for both of them.”
“How do you fight someone who doesn’t follow rules?”
Sebastian turned. In the low light, his face was a study in angles, his eyes holding something that made her breath catch. “You make the rules matter more than the game.”
A high whine sliced the air. Sebastian’s hand snapped to the deadbolt. The sound sharpened, growing closer—small rotors, a drone’s particular angry hum. He pulled the curtain a millimeter.
A camera drone hovered beyond the glass, its propellers cutting the night, a red LED blinking steady. It turned, orienting its lens on the room, and the light from the interior made the glass a mirror to the outside. The drone descended until it hung eye-level, hovering in the desert dark.
Isabella was on her feet. “Oh no—”
The drone’s underside speaker crackled. It powered up with a short burst of static, and Cole’s voice crackled through the drone’s speaker: “Here’s the game, Rutherford. In forty-eight hours, one of you loses everything. Choose who.”