THE LULLABY KEY : THE FALL
CHAPTER 38: The Threat That Remains
The text came at 3:00 AM.
Lena was in the warehouse command center, reviewing the strike plans for the seventh time. Her eyes were burning. Her head was pounding. She hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours.
Her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
She opened the message.
“You won this round. But there are seven more vaults. And we know where you sleep.”
Attached: a photograph.
A photograph of her bedroom. In the cabin. In Maine.
Taken that morning.
Lena’s blood turned to ice.
She looked at the timestamp on the photograph. 6:47 AM. She had been in Baltimore at 6:47 AM. The cabin was empty.
But someone had been there.
Someone had broken in.
Someone had stood in her bedroom, in the place where she had hidden from the world for seven years, and taken a photograph.
She showed Marcus.
His face went pale.
“This is Marchetti,” he said. “He’s sending a message.”
“What kind of message?”
“That he can reach you anywhere. That nowhere is safe. That he’s always watching.”
Lena’s hands shook. “Then we need to go dark. No more hotels. No more safe houses. No more patterns.”
“We need to go underground. Completely. Off the grid.”
“How?”
“I know a place. In West Virginia. A bunker. Owned by a friend who owes me a favor. No one knows about it. No one can find it.”
Lena looked at the photograph again. At her bed. At her bookshelf. At the window where she used to watch the snow fall.
“I’m tired of running,” she said.
“Then let’s stop running. Let’s go to the bunker. Let’s plan our next move. And then let’s hunt him down.”
Lena nodded.
She deleted the message.
Then she picked up her bag and followed Marcus to the car.
Behind them, in the shadows of the warehouse, a red light blinked.
The same red light that had blinked in the Knickerbocker basement.
The same red light that had blinked in the cemetery.
The same red light that had followed them everywhere.
Because the mole wasn’t just in the Swarm.
The mole was in their inner circle.
And the mole was watching.