"Who?"
"Crystal!I'm meeting Crystal?—"
"Wrong."I press the barrel harder into his skull.My finger's on the trigger.The safety's off—has been since I left my room."There's no Crystal here."
"Room eight—she said room eight?—"
"You calling me a liar?"
"No!No, I just—she told me?—"
I pull him up by his hair and slam him against the door again.He's sobbing now, hands scrabbling uselessly against the wood.Something dark rises in my chest.This is what happens to people who come for what's mine.This is what?—
"Jagger!"
The door opens inward, and he stumbles forward.I barely catch him before we both go down.Adena's standing with her gun in her hand, eyes locked on mine.
"What are you doing?"Her voice is steady, but I can hear the tremor underneath.
"He was trying to get into your room."
"I wasn't!"The man's practically screaming now."I'm looking for Crystal!Please, I just want?—"
Adena assesses the man quickly and winces."Jagger, he's looking for a working girl."
I stare at her.The words don't process right away.Everything's moving too fast and too slow all at once.
"You have the wrong motel," she says to him."Go, and don't even think about calling the cops."
The man's shaking.Can't tell if it's from fear or cold or both."The numbers—I couldn't see—I'm sorry?—"
My grip on him loosens.Just slightly.The gun's still pressed against him, but my finger eases off the trigger.
"Get out of here."My voice sounds hollow.Distant."Now."
He doesn't wait.He just scrambles away, slipping twice on the wet concrete before he climbs inside his car.
I'm drenched.Adena's still in the doorway, still watching me."Go back to your room."
But I can't move.I stand there with the gun hanging at my side, rain washing the blood off the concrete, off my hands.
The adrenaline is curdling into something sick and heavy.I’m so paranoid, so used to violence, I looked at a terrified nobody and saw a kill shot.
Adena closes her eyes and whispers a prayer.When she reaches for my hand, my instinct is to pull away.
Instead, I let her lead me inside before I can do something worse.
Twelve
Adena
Jagger hasn’t spoken since we left the motel—not even a casual comment to make the silence feel normal.He just drives, eyes fixed on the road, hands steady but tense on the wheel.
He looks exactly how he’s trained to look: just a man trying to convince himself that he didn’t make a mistake.
I check that Mercy is where I left her and breathe out my third silent prayer of the morning.
If the truck is wired for sound, anything spoken out loud becomes evidence, and what happened at the motel isn’t something either of us can afford to acknowledge.
