Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
When I step out, the mirror shows me someone I almost recognize. The bruise on my jaw is gone. The raw marks on my wrists have faded to thin pink lines that will probably turn into scars only someone looking for them would notice. My eyes are different, though. Not the color or the shape. Just the depth. The person looking back at me has seen things the girl who went into that container hadn’t seen yet, and it shows.
I put on clean clothes from a supply Dean keeps for situations exactly like this. Soft pants. A sweater that isn’t Render’s hoodie, even though I catch myself wishing it was. The hoodie is in the laundry with everything else that survived the past ten days, and the absence of it feels bigger than it should.
The farmhouse is quieter now. The BRAVO squad has gone to help coordinate Serafina’s custody transfer with the FBI. Diaz is handling the logistics. Sawyer is with Dean in the operations room, dealing with the fallout from the evidence package—bank freezes, official inquiries, media calls that Dean is declining with the efficiency of a man who’s never wanted credit for any of this.
Arrow and Gage are in the kitchen. Arrow is actually cooking—eggs, toast, coffee—with the focused attention of someone rediscovering that normal things still exist. Gage is at the counter, eating everything Arrow puts in front of him and offering commentary that sounds like criticism but is really just the familiar, abrasive warmth of a very long friendship.
“Your eggs are too wet.”
“Then cook your own eggs.”
“I would, but you’re standing in front of the stove like you own it.”
“I do own it. Dean gave me standing kitchen privileges.”
“He gave you those privileges because you threatened to reorganize his filing system.”
“Incentive-based negotiation.”
I take a plate of the slightly-too-wet eggs and sit beside Gage. He glances at me, and the look contains about seventeen quiet assessments in half a second.
“You look like Poe,” he says. “Not the face. The expression. The one he gets when he’s decided something and the decision’s not up for debate.”
“What decision?”
“Whatever you decided about Render.”
The eggs suddenly require my full attention. I focus on them. Gage watches me focus on them, and the silence between us is the silence of someone who knows exactly what he’s looking at and is deciding whether to push.
“He’s been watching you for years,” Gage says. “The whole crew knows. We had a pool going about when he’d finally do something about it. Arrow bet on last Christmas. I bet on never. Knight refused to participate on moral grounds.”
“Who won?”
“Nobody, because the pool assumed he’d make a move under normal circumstances, not in the middle of a hostage situation in a storage unit.” He pauses. “It was a storage unit, right? That’s the vibe I’m getting.”
“Gage.”
“I’m not judging. I’m just saying. Render James, the most controlled person I’ve ever met, finally crossed the line he’s been staring at for years, and he did it during the most stressful ten days of his life. Which means whatever he’s feeling isn’t casual. Casual doesn’t survive storage units.”
The observation is so accurate it makes my eyes sting. I eat an egg. Drink the coffee Arrow slides across the counter without being asked. Feel the warmth of the mug and the kitchen and the quiet, fragile sense of belonging that comes from being in a room with people who’ve known me since I was stealing fries at crew dinners and are choosing, now, to treat me like someone who belongs at the table.
“Does Poe know?” I ask.
“Poe knows everything. It’s the most annoying thing about him,” I say, and it’s the truth.
I find Poe on the porch.
He’s sitting in one of the rocking chairs. The swelling around his eyes has gone down enough that he can see out of both of them now, though the left one is still ringed with color that makes him look like he lost a fight with a paint set. The cut along his hairline has been cleaned and closed properly with butterfly strips.
Orchid sits with him, but when she sees me walk out she gets up to leave. She knows we need a moment to talk. I smile at her as she passes by.
I sit in the chair beside him. The porch faces east. The morning light is soft on the lawn that someone gets paid to keep neat for a house nobody officially lives in. Birds are doing ordinary bird things in the trees. The world is putting on a convincing performance of normal.
“So,” Poe says.
“So.”
“Render.”
The name sits between us. I don’t rush to fill the quiet. I let him decide what comes next, because this conversation belongs to both of us, but the specific pain of a brother realizing that the two people he loves most have crossed a line he never gave them permission to cross.