“Secondary ping,” Branson continues. “Faint. Intermittent. East. Could be interference. Could be bait.”
“That’s not good enough,” Nightshade says.
“It’s all I’ve got,” Branson snaps. “I’ll call when I have coordinates.”
The line dies.
Silence stretches.
Snow starts laughing again – thin, high. “East, west…who cares? She’s gone. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Maybe she wasn’t taken. Maybe she ran.”
Nightshade is on him in a blink, hand at Snow’s throat, slamming him into a pillar. Snow chokes and giggles like it’s foreplay. I wish I’d killed him, not just broken his nose.
“Say that again,” Nightshade growls.
“You can’t save a ghost,” Snow wheezes, teeth red.
Bones wrenches them apart. Valentine pinches the bridge of his nose like he can squeeze the headache out.
I shake. Not fear. Restraint. The space between impulse and action narrowing until it’s a blade.
Nightshade wipes his knuckles on his jeans. “We move when Branson calls again,” he says. “We need to be ready.”
“When?” Honey asks.
“Soon.”
No one believes him.
Snow opens his mouth again, still smiling, still needling, still trying to press the bruise until it becomes a wound.
I don’t plan it. Planning belongs to people who still think time is negotiable. My hand finds the scaffold pipe Valentineused earlier to test the shutter chain. Weight fits my grip like it was made for me.
A single swing.
A dull, resonant crack. Immediate. Snow’s grin collapses into a wet sound. He staggers into a pallet rack; wood snaps.
Silence whips back.
Snow drops to his knees, stunned, making an animal noise, trying to laugh and failing.
Bones is moving before Snow hits the floor, checking airway, pupils, the angle of damage. Dramatic. He’s not even unconscious.
More’s the pity.
Honey clamps me from behind again – this time two arms like straps – and holds me, not fighting me, just stopping the next thing.
I don’t struggle. The motion’s finished. That’s all my body wanted.
Nightshade looks at me like something sanity-shaped has shifted in his own head and clicked into place.
Valentine’s voice is low and hard. “We can’t afford to fall apart.”
Snow coughs and tries to grin. “That’s all you are?—”
“No,” Nightshade says. Command. “We control the next move.” He turns to me. “Don’t do that again.”
I don’t answer. Can’t. But my stare says:then stop letting him talk.
