When I opened my eyes, Augustine was gone. The war room was empty, blue light flickering over the stains on the concrete. The only thing left was my blood on the floor, a map of everywhere I’d already failed.
I let it pool there, a warning to myself and the world. Then I grabbed my jacket, wrapped my ruined hand in duct tape, and headed out into the dark.
I made it two steps before Augustine stopped me, and we headed back inside.
16
Nitro
Augustine loitered behind me, picking dried blood from his cuticles with a switchblade I’d given him as a joke. The tension wasn’t in the air; it was the air, dense as bunker concrete and just as breathable. The boys were all here—Seneca, Augustine, two of the prospects—and every last one of them tracked the blue-and-white taillights till they vanished over the rise.
Damron stood with his back to the flag, arms crossed, the scars on his knuckles whiter than the crossbones tattooed above them. He didn’t say a word until I’d finished watching the road. When I turned, he pointed at the long table and said, “Sit,” voice flat as steel in snow.
The chapel wasn’t for prayer. It was for business that didn’t belong on paper. The walls sweated old motor oil and bad decisions. The table was oak, but you could barely see the wood beneath a palimpsest of cigarette burns, knife gouges, and theacid signatures of three generations of outlaws. Even the air here tasted like a dare—half nicotine, half death wish.
I sat, folding my hands to hide the swelling and the new tape. Seneca flanked me, knife already sheathed, eyes scanning the ceiling as if the Russians might drop in from above.
Nobody lit a smoke, not yet.
Damron let the silence bloom. He wanted to see who would crack first. His own eyes were clear, but the rest of him looked built from scavenged parts—jaw stitched where a bottle had once introduced itself, brow caved at the bridge from years of getting in the last word. His President’s patch was the only thing on his body without a scar. He laid his hands palms down on the table, and just like that, the room was in session.
“Anyone wanna tell me what the fuck is going on?” He aimed the words at me, but his gaze swept the whole table, daring anyone else to volunteer.
I felt the tick of my jaw, like an old wound testing itself. I tried to keep my voice low, but it still came out tight. “It’s Russians. Or whoever’s writing their checks. They took her.”
“Her?” Damron’s lip curled. “You mean the scientist. The one whose face is currently melting my phone with news alerts.”
I nodded. “Seraphina. She’s not just some—” I stopped, felt all four sets of eyes pin me to the chair. “They want her for what she knows. And I let them have her.”
Seneca leaned in, his ruined jaw gleaming under the strip lights. “You sure it’s not just the feds playing grab-ass again?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “The way they moved, the way they covered the exit… It was pro. Not federal, not local. They didn’t want to arrest her. They wanted her to disappear.”
Augustine snorted. “You got all this from a news report?”
“I got it from the way she looked last time I saw her,” I said. “And from the fact that nobody’s claimed responsibility, noteven a ransom call. That’s not how the Feds work. It’s how black-market extraction works.”
Nobody spoke. I felt the words bounce around the room, looking for somewhere to stick. Seneca flicked a Zippo open, closed, open, closed, but didn’t light. Damron stared at me with the patience of a snake sunning on a hot rock.
“You got a thing for this woman, Nitro?” His tone was almost gentle, which made it worse.
I let the lie die on the table. “Yeah. I do.”
He chewed that over, tongue worrying something in the gap of his teeth. “You think she’s worth this much trouble?”
“She’s not a civilian,” I said. “And she’s not just a one-night stand. She’s…” I fished for a word, failed, and went with the only truth I had. “She’s one of us.”
Seneca’s grin was a skull. “So we go to war for her?”
“Not war,” I said. “Just extraction. In and out, like a night job.”
Damron tapped the table, slow and deliberate. “What if it’s not Russians? What if it’s someone using her to get to you?”
I shook my head. “I’m not that important.”
Damron laughed, a dry, mean sound. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
The words hung there, daring someone to knock them down. Seneca finally lit his cigarette, inhaled, then let the smoke fan out toward the ceiling.
