Novak was already shouting into a phone. Someone—multiple people—ran toward us from a black van, equipment in their hands. Oxygen masks. Med kits. Gloves.
They crowded, reaching for him.
“No,” I snarled, clutching him tighter, holding his face in my hands. “Don’t take him—don’t?—”
“Levi,” someone said—Rio, maybe. Or Novak. I couldn’t hear. “Let them work. He’s alive.”
Alive.
Barely.
I was dragged with him into the van, still holding him, refusing to let go as masks were pressed to his face and hands moved over Alejandro’s body.
I didn’t care who touched me. Who shoved past me. Who yelled orders over me.
I wasn’t letting this man go.
Not again.
Not ever.
TWENTY-THREE
Levi
I satacross from Lieutenant Davis, feeling as if my skin didn’t fit right. My arm was in a sling—dislocated shoulder, they said, popped back in by someone who didn’t bother giving their name. Burns wrapped half my hand. My lungs hurt every time I breathed. But I’d made it out alive.
Frank sat beside me, the perfect cop, and he did all the talking because my throat was scraped raw. The talking he and the Cave had worked out between them.
“We got a tip,” Frank reported evenly, “took us to a warehouse. Turned out an old cartel leader was using it to run an organ trafficking operation. Matches the dump site victims. We located two surgeons tied to it—Oscar and Alex Dryden-Wells, father and son. As you know, both are deceased, and likely victims of whoever was running the whole thing.”
Davis nodded and then flipped through paperwork he hadn’t read, as if he already had the whole story figured out. “You’ll write the full report?” he asked. In other words,you will take full responsibility for whatever the fuck this was.
“Yes, sir,” Frank said. Calm. Crisp. As if he wasn’t lying through his teeth.
Davis leaned back, eyes narrowing. “Is there anything else either of you wants to tell me?”
Frank answered first. “No, sir.” Not a flicker.
Then Davis looked at me.
I swallowed a cough, but it clawed its way out anyway—a leftover from the smoke. My ribs hurt with it. “No, sir,” I managed, eyes on him. All I wanted was to get the hell out of that room, out of that building, out of this version of myself that had to pretend I wasn’t shaking on the inside.
But I had to play the game. Had to report injuries. Had to sign paperwork. Had to appear functional and not like a man who’d nearly died dragging the person he loved out of a fire.
Frank smoothed over the rest. He accounted for the missing time—don’t know how, didn’t care—and got us cleared.
“Nice to go out on a high,” Davis congratulated Frank.
“Yes, sir,” he agreed.
By the time we stepped into the hallway, I felt as if I were walking underwater. Slow. Off balance. Every breath tasted like smoke.
Stanton stood there as we passed, eyes wide and lip curled in a snarl. We’d handed him the murderers—dead. Gift-wrapped a backstory that didn’t touch Alejandro, didn’t risk exposing anything real.
And he still looked pissed.
Fuck him.
