I'd spent the night in my apartment, door locked, pistol within reach, staring at the ceiling and running through everything Micah had said. Every word. Every implication. Every piece of information he'd dropped like breadcrumbs leading me somewhere I wasn't sure I wanted to go.
Micah knew everything.
Well, almost everything.
He knew I was on the run. Knew about the organization—the "family"—that had found me and was getting close. He knew things I hadn't told anyone, things I'd buried so deep I'd almost convinced myself they weren't real anymore.
He didn't say how he knew. I didn't ask.
Micah Dane was the kind of man who told you what you needed to know when you needed to know it. Asking for more was a waste of breath, and he'd respect you less for trying.
But then he'd said it.
St. Paul's School for Boys.
The words had hit me like a fist to the sternum. I'd frozen, my entire body going rigid, every muscle locking down like I was fourteen again, standing in that cold hallway with linoleum floors and fluorescent lights that buzzed like dying insects.
St. Paul's.
Where it all began.
I shoved the memory away, clamped down on it before it could take root. I didn't want to think about those years. Didn't want to remember what we'd been before we became what we were.
Damn those years.
But Micah's offer—that was harder to ignore.
Protection. Resources. A network designed to keep men like me alive when the system decided we were expendable.
I'd asked what the catch was.
There was always a catch.
Micah had looked at me with those dark, unreadable eyes and said there wasn't one.
I didn't believe him. Not fully. But nothing in his voice, his posture, his expression told me he was lying. And I'd spent enough years reading men in high-stakes situations to know when someone was feeding me bullshit.
Micah Dane wasn't.
So, I'd asked what the next steps were.
He'd handed me an address. Told me to go there. Told me that when I arrived, I was to say three words to the man at the door.
"What, like a password?" I'd asked, still half-convinced this was some elaborate joke.
Micah hadn't smiled.
"I request sanctuary," he'd said.
The words hung in the air between us, heavy and strange.
I'd stared at him, waiting for the punchline.
It didn't come.
"If you go," Micah had said, "good. I'll see you soon. If not, best of luck."
We'd shaken hands. His grip was firm, deliberate. Then he'd walked out into the night, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
