Her Obsession (by Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 109

Her Obsession.

We Knew It Was A Trap.

GD

Sage

The van smells like diesel and wet wool. Naomi drives like she stole the road, Winnie riding shotgun with the medical bag on her lap. fingers fiddling with the straps like she’s scared to sit still. I’m in the back, laptop closed but warm on my knees, maps and camera graba folded into my jacket. The feeds showed the van’s route, and the plate trace brought us here: a compound sunk into a slope, a service gate half–hidden by scrub and a single concrete bunker door set into the earth. My chest tightened because I know this place. Not from maps or data, from memory, corridors carved out of stone, steel doors, stale air. A holding place. The kind of place men put other men when they wanted them to stop being a problem. We used to call them tombs at the compound. I’d been down there many times before.

“This the one?” Naomi asks, voice low.

I point. “Yep. They keep people down there. It’s an absolute maze and I can guarantee it’s a trap.”

“What’s the game plan?” Naomi asks, eyes on the road, that familiar half–smirk already finding its way back.

I look over at Winnie first. “Once we get out, you drive the van back down the road. Stay low, keep your eyes sharp. If you have to leave the vehicle to save yourself, leave it. Don’t get pinned for a box of pride. Understood?”

Winnie meets my gaze and nods, steady. “Got it.”

Then I turn to Naomi. Her grin goes sharp, hungry. “Naomi, if you’re up for it, I have no fucking plan but to kill everyone who stands in our way.” I watch the way that lights her up. She laughs, like it’s the best thing she’s heard all week. “Sounds fun,” she says, and punches the wheel once for emphasis.

We pull the van onto the back road, keeping to the shadows and hedges, making ourselves as small as possible.

Naomi and I move up to the gate like shadows. The scrub swallows our footfalls. The two guards at the entrance are careless, leaning on the rail, passing a cigarette back and forth, their radios clipped to their belts. They don’t see us until it’s too late. Naomi steps left, silent and sure. I slide behind the nearer man and put the muzzle to the back of his head, cold and quick. One squeeze. He drops forward without a sound. The cigarette falls from his fingers and rolls in the grit. The other guard turns at the movement, starts to reach for his radio; Naomi’s pistol flashes once, and he crumples where he stands. Two bodies, no alarm, only the faint hiss of the cigarette and the distant wind. No shouting. No drone of extra engines. Exactly what we needed.

We don’t pause. I check the gate quickly, no tripwire, no secondary cameras. Naomi moves the bodies into the shadow as if we’re hiding trash, then we slip through the gap in the fence and press to the concrete bunker door. The heavy hatch groans when Naomi works it. I shoulder in, she wedges and turns, and the door gives with a long, grating sound. The air inside is cold and still. Our lights are low. The corridor consumes our footsteps; concrete walls absorbing sound. We move slowly and methodically, closing the door behind us. Naomi leads, handgun up, eyes sweeping. I take the rear with my blade ready. Every door we pass gets a quick check, peep through the observation slots, listen for breathing, and check the lock bolts. If a room looks recently used, we keep moving until we can clear it without clatter. The tunnels twist tighter, the pipes hum, and vents breathe old air. Occasionally, a soft noise, a cough or a scrape makes both of us freeze and push forward with deliberate, silent motions. We clear six rooms like this: two empty bunks, a storage room full of crates, a maintenance closet with tools, a cell with a blanket and a dented tin cup. The weight of the place presses on us.

Naomi signals left at the junction, fresh footprints in the dust and I follow. The corridor narrows, the air colder. Halfway down a side passage, there’s a door with a padlock that isn’t crusted with rust like the others; the metal gleams new. That catches Naomi’s eye. She wedges her shoulder into the frame and kicks. The wood splinters. She slides a metal bar in, twists it like she’s opening a stubborn jar, and the lock snaps free. The door swings inward with a skreech, and we see the room, an iron bench bolted to the floor, a dented tin cup, and a bundle wrapped in a filthy blanket. Slow. Careful. I move in with my hand flat against the wall, blade tucked into my palm. I pull the blanket back with two fingers. Nico blinks up at me, bruised and raw, coughing as if the air itself surprised him. For a second, the relief knocks the wind out of me. He looks like shit, but he’s alive. My hands go to his bindings, fingers finding the knots, working them

loose.

1/2

12:03 Tue, Oct 21

We Knew It Was A Trap

He tries to sit. “Sage- he rasps, and then the rest of it comes out in a breath, sharp and small. “It’s a trap.”

The words land hard enough to make the corridor tilt. I tense to spin, to clear the room, to pull Nico up and move. I don’t get to. There’s a sharp, wet whisper behind me, like cloth over metal. Naomi’s body folds forward with a soft sound that is too quiet to be natural. I whirl around. The light catches on a metal syringe angled at her neck. Her eyes go wide and then slow; her hands fumble, useless, and she hits the floor without a cry. Someone is at my back in a motion too fast to track. A hand clamps around my shoulder, hard enough that it might as well be iron. A face leans close in the dim, a grin bared in the light from the corridor, teeth too clean, eyes like the glint of a blade. Before I can wrench away, there’s a stinging shock in my neck, a hot burn where the needle goes in. The world spikes and then goes soft and betrayed.

“Don’t struggle, girl,” the voice says, flat and patient, like they’re reading instructions. The edges of the corridor blur. Footsteps move away, calculated, distant. Someone laughs once, low and ugly. A numbness unravels down my arms and up the back of my skull. My vision pools at the corners. Sound gets wide and far, Naomi’s body on the floor behind me, a muffled curse from somewhere in the tunnels, my own breath that suddenly sounds like someone else’s. I try to speak. The syllables choke and turn to air. Nico’s hand slips from mine. The last thing I see is his face, panic folding into confusion, and that grin again, Yakov’s shadow, leaning over the doorway like a promise I don’t want to keep. Then everything goes dark.

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