“What do you think happened to her?” the woman asked.
I looked her dead in the eye. “I think she was working on something important. I think people noticed. And I think the only reason she’s not dead already is because whoever took her wants what she knows.”
The woman’s expression didn’t change, but the man leaned forward. “You have a lot of enemies, Mr. Culberson.”
I laughed, short and sharp. “I don’t have enemies. I have competition.”
He didn’t like that. He checked his notes, then looked up again. “If you see or hear anything, you call us. Immediately.”
I nodded.
They left, footsteps echoing down the corridor. Augustine waited until the door shut, then exhaled. “You think they’ll come back?”
“They always come back,” I said.
He grinned, the scars on his face going white with tension. “What’s the plan, boss?”
I stared at the TV, at the looping image of Seraphina, her smile an act of war.
“We find her first,” I said.
The fluorescents hummed above, cold and relentless, and the news anchor kept talking, but the only sound in my head was the grind of gears, and the slow, certain click of a safety coming off.
“You okay, brother?” Augustine asked.
“I shouldn’t have left her,” I said, but the words were lost in the blood in my mouth.
Augustine lingered at the edge of the room, just out of reach. He had enough sense not to speak, not to get close. I could feel his eyes on my back, the silent accounting of what came next.
I hit the wall and the skin split all the way across the knuckles, a raw latticework of white and red. The pain was real, immediate, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
I thought about her face the last time I saw it: pale, drawn, angry and vulnerable at the same time. I remembered the way her voice caught when she said my name. I remembered the gravel I’d kicked up leaving her driveway, the way my heart pounded out a code of regret even as I told myself it was better this way, that she was safer without me.
I was an idiot.
The blood dripped down the wall now, slow at first, then in a rhythm. I stared at it, unable to look away. “They came for her,” I whispered. “The Russians. Or whoever was paying them.” My head buzzed with the details, all the things I’d ignored in the hope that the world would just let her go.
Augustine crept a step closer, not touching, not speaking. He knew the rules.
“I left her alone,” I said, louder now. “I left her wide fucking open.”
He grunted. “You did what she wanted.”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “What she wanted got her taken.”
My hand throbbed, the pain climbing up my arm, through my shoulder, into my jaw. I wiped it on my jeans, leaving streaks, then looked up at Augustine. He saw the decision in my eyes before I spoke.
“I’m going after her,” I said. “Tonight. I don’t care if it gets me killed.”
He nodded. “You want help?”
“No.” I flexed the hand, watching blood bead at the knuckles. “I need you to keep the club out of it. I don’t care what you tell Damron, just keep everyone away.”
Augustine smirked, a quick twist of the mouth. “You’re gonna come back.”
I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe in anything except the cold certainty that the world was about to eat me alive. Seraphina’s face crossed my mindseye again, and it crushed me. Yeah, time for some mine to die.
I pressed my forehead to the wall, eyes closed. “I won’t let them hurt her,” I said, and this time the words felt like truth.
