Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
I look up. Shake my head once. The shape of her shoulders collapses and reconstitutes into something that has to survive. Knight swears under his breath in a language made for swearing. Ozzy shifts slightly. Render goes still in a way that means I’m watching our perimeter and also trying not to think.
“This wasn’t—” Juno says, and then, helplessly, “I didn’t—”
“You didn’t,” I say. “He fell.”
“And hit his head,” Ozzy says, voice numb. “On a very rich rock.”
“Arrow.” Gage’s voice snaps into my ear like a rubber band. He hadn’t been on comms, but he is now. “What happened?”
“Accident,” I say, because that’s the catastrophic truth. “He’s down.”
“Do not narrate details,” he says, too brisk to be anything but terrified. “Knight, time?”
“Forty seconds since impact,” Knight says, eyes on the window and the street beyond.
“Then listen very carefully,” Gage says in a low voice. “Leave. Now. You will not discuss anything here on a line that can be traced. You will not tidy. You will not gift-wrap a crime scene. You will—Arrow, are you listening?—you will get Juno out of that house.”
“Wait,” Juno says, voice shaking into anger. “I’m scared.”
“I’ve got you,” I say, and my own voice comes back to me calmer than I feel. “We’re making a call.”
Ozzy whips his gaze to me. “Arrow—”
“We are not leaving an unreported body,” I say. I spot Merritt’s phone lying on the counter, unlocked and ready for phone calls, and for once I ignore Gage’s hissed objection because this is a thing I am not willing to be wrong about. I hit the one button I’ve avoided all year. 9. 1. 1.
“Sir, what is your emergency?” a woman asks, patient and exhausted.
I grab the voice modulator out of my pocket. “There’s been an accident,” I say, my voice unrecognizable. “Man hit his head. He’s— he’s not breathing.” I give the address because ethics don’t care if they’re bad for your op. I end the call before the operator can ask a name.
Render is already at the front window, peeking through a slit in the curtain like a spy novel illustration. “Neighbor lights on,” he says. “No one in the street. We have ninety seconds before the first siren wails.”
“Go,” Gage says, a prayer disguised as an order. “Now.”
We do, and it’s awful. There’s no triumph. There’s no slow clap. Juno moves in a way I don’t like—too fast, too contained. Knight ghosts down the hall and out the door. Render evaporates. Ozzy stumbles and then corrects, and I take Juno’s elbow because I don’t know how else to hold the world together.
Outside, the air is shout-cold. The masks come off like we’re shedding skin we didn’t want to grow. We slide into the car and the siren is already a whisper three blocks away.
Juno rips the Ghostface off and drops it into her lap like it’s burned her. She stares at her hands as if they’re new. “I didn’t—”
“You didn’t,” I say again, and I hate the way my words don’t fix it. They never do. They’re only words.
Knight drives because I shouldn’t. Ozzy has gone silent, which means his head is full of the wrong kind of noise. Render stares out the window. Gage is a breath in our ears that says home. Now.
In the rearview mirror, red lights bounce and turn and disappear. My stomach does a slow roll that feels like grief and adrenaline and a moral injury I can’t put back.
No one talks until we hit the bridge. The river below is black, pretending to be calm.
“Tell me this means something,” she says, voice scraped.
“It does,” I say, and I force my own voice to be the kind that doesn’t lie just to make pain shut up.
Her jaw clenches. She nods once, too sharp to be agreement and too soft to be refusal. “Coleman,” she says, like a vow. “Rook. Beau. Devin. We will not accidentally anything with them.”
“We won’t,” I say. “We will make sure they trip.”
Render speaks without looking at us. “Merritt’s absence is a bell tolling. They’ll hear it. They’ll close ranks. Or they’ll preen. Either way, we see who flinches and why.”
“I want an ending,” Juno whispers.
“Then we’ll write one,” I say, knowing exactly how arrogant that sounds and saying it anyway because we are past polite.
She presses her palm to the glass, fingers spread, city lights slipping under like fish. “I hated him,” she says.
“I know you did.” I release a breath. “I hated him too.”
“The four left will know we did this,” she says, and the worst part is how right she is.
“It was an accident.”
“They won’t care.”
“Then we make sure the world knows the truth,” I say. “Huxley will find the call. Render will find the cameras that don’t show us. Paul will have already dropped the packet by morning.”
We drop Render and Ozzy at their building with a look that substitutes for a hug. Knight drives us the last stretch and doesn’t say a word because that would make this about him. I love him a little for that.