This got a reaction. Damron’s face tightened, lips going to that thin line you only see on men who have held a child and a corpse in the same hour. He looked up finally, eyes red-edged and so fucking awake it hurt. “This brings heat we don’t need, Chemist. Feds are already on our ass for the Zuni job, and now you’re telling me the Russkies are about to light up our backyard?”
I shrugged, but it wasn’t casual. “Not our problem. Unless they make it our problem.”
He let the silence go radioactive, then picked up the whiskey and sipped, not for the taste but the ritual. “You see the girl?”
I hesitated just long enough for him to notice. “No. She’s gone off-grid, or someone’s moved her. Either way, she’s not home. If they want her, they’ll have to smoke her out.”
He grunted. “Or you.”
I let the coffee go cold under my hand. “I can take care of myself.”
He stared at me, hard. “I know you can. I just wish you’d pick fights we can win.”
The door to the war room opened, and in came Seneca Wallace, the Sadist himself. He was in full regalia—scythe patch, boots polished, jaw scarred and gleaming under the bad light. He moved with the grace of a man who’d spent his youth in cages, and liked it.
He nodded to Damron, then gave me a look that was half-respect, half-threat. “Morning, boys,” he said, voice sanded down to the grain. He leaned against the wall, arms folded. “I hear we’ve got visitors.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Real friendly.”
He grinned, all teeth. “We could use it.”
Damron raised a brow. “How’s that?”
Seneca looked at the map, then at Damron, then at me. “Senator Carly is on the Intelligence Committee. She’s been looking for a reason to give us a handshake deal ever since the pipeline mess. If we play this right—keep the girl alive, keep the lab off the news, maybe do a little favor for the Bureau—we can get some heat off our own ops. She owes us, but she needs an excuse.”
Damron looked back at the map, but I knew he was running the numbers. “You want us to run bodyguard for a government stiff?”
Seneca shrugged. “Better than running body count for the feds. Besides, who else can handle this? State cops? They’ll get eaten alive.”
I felt the tension in my hands, the old scar on my trigger finger throbbing. “You’re talking about a war on our own street.”
Damron smiled, but it was the kind of smile you get before a firing squad. “We’ve always liked a good war.”
I watched the two of them, the way they could turn a bloodbath into a profit margin, the way they never lost the thread of the game even when their own necks were in the vise. I didn’t trust either of them, but I respected the calculus.
Damron finished his whiskey and slammed the glass down, letting the sound bounce off the steel. “All right. We upshift to red. No patch on the streets unless you’re armed and ready. Pull everyone off the pipeline job and get them in town. Augustine runs the perimeter. You—” He looked at me. “You’re on comms. Get me everything you can on the Russian movement. If you see the girl, you bring her in. Safehouse only.”
Seneca grinned, and the scar on his jaw danced. “You want her alive or just breathing?”
“Alive,” Damron said. “And unbroken. She’s the key.”
I watched Seneca watch me, and I knew he was thinking about leverage, about the way people crack under just the right amount of fear and pleasure. I knew because I’d done it, too.
I nodded. “Copy.”
They moved on to other business, the way people talk about funerals they haven’t scheduled yet. I let my mind drift, staring at the ledger book in the center of the table, stamped with the club’s blood-red scythe. I wondered how many names were in there, and how many had been crossed out for good.
Damron looked at me, softer now. “Anything else?”
I shook my head, but the answer burned a hole in my tongue.
I left the war room with the sense that I’d just signed up for a thing I couldn’t unsign. The sky outside was the color of a bruise, and the air tasted like the start of something irreversible.
I walked to the garage, hands still shaking, and thought about what it meant to protect someone who didn’t want protection.
The garage was a tomb for broken gods. Every bike inside wore the marks of old disasters: bent fenders, solder scars, patches of primer where the world had taken a chunk and never said sorry.I liked working at night. The silence was denser, the darkness softer. I crouched over my Harley with the patience of a funeral director, tuning the carb by touch and by memory. Grease caked my knuckles, getting into the cracks where the burn scars never really healed.
When the phone buzzed in my pocket, it was like a rifle shot. I wiped my hands on the nearest rag, but it did nothing for the grime. The screen lit up my face with a colorless glow, and the message waiting for me was exactly the one I’d been avoiding.
