“Warehouse seven,” he chokes out. “Other side of the yard.”
My pulse slows. “Who’s guarding it?”
“Four men,” he replies quickly. “Maybe five.”
I straighten slowly. Warehouse seven. Inside this train yard.
I glance toward the open doorway, where the cold night air continues to spill into the warehouse.
Rowan is still here. And this time Ivan isn’t between us.
11
ROWAN
The corridor outside our room has gone quiet in a way that feels wrong. Earlier, the corridor had been full of movement. Boots passed our door often enough that I could almost count the minutes by them. Men muttered to each other in low bursts, doors opened and closed farther down the hall, and every sound felt rushed. But the pattern has changed.
Now the quiet comes in strange pockets.A door slams somewhere deeper in the warehouse, and then nothing follows it for several seconds. Voices rise sharply, then vanish. An engine starts outside and keeps running. Another starts it not long after, the lower note of it vibrating through the concrete floor beneath my feet. The men who do pass our door move faster than before, and none of them linger.
I sit on the edge of the cot and listen harder. The room smells like too many things layered on top of each other. Old concrete, cold dust, antiseptic from the supplies they threw at us after dragging us back here, dried blood, sweat, and the faint metallic scent that still clings to the air after gunfire.
Lila repositions on the opposite cot, and the thin mattress creaks beneath her. She has one hand pressed carefully against the bandage at her side, not because the wound is bleeding heavily again, but because pain has a way of making people guard themselves without thinking. The fluorescent light overhead washes the color out of her face, leaving her skin almost gray against the pillow. The dark crescents beneath her eyes look deeper now than they did an hour ago.
She notices me looking.
“It’s still holding,” she mutters, her voice rough around the edges. “You can stop staring.”
“I’m not staring.”
Lila arches a brow, though the effect is dulled by exhaustion. “You’ve looked at the bandage three times in the last minute.”
I let out a slow breath and rise from the cot. “That’s not staring. That’s checking whether you’re about to pass out.”
“You’d know if I was about to pass out.”
“Would I?”
She opens her mouth like she’s ready to answer, then closes it again and leans her head back against the pillow. A small line appears between her brows as the pain catches up with her. She doesn’t make a sound, but her fingers press more firmly against the bandage before relaxing.
I move toward the door and stop near the wall, close enough to hear the corridor better without making it obvious what I’m doing. The metal frame is colder here. The draft that slips beneath the door lifts the hem of my shirt slightly before disappearing again.
I still haven’t heard Ivan’s voice. He likes the effect of being present. Even when he isn’t speaking directly to us, the atmosphere changes when he’s nearby. Guards stand straighter, conversations cut off faster, and the tension outside the room turns more watchful, more alert. I haven’t felt any of that in a while.
Behind me, Lila changes position again, more slowly this time. “You notice it too?”
I glance back at her. “The hallway?”
“And outside.”
I turn my attention back to the door. Another round of footsteps moves quickly past, followed by the squeal of metal wheels rolling over concrete somewhere farther away. Then a voice barks an order I can’t make out, too muffled by distance and walls, but the tone is enough.
“Yes,” I answer. “Something changed.”
Lila drags a hand through the loose strands of hair that have slipped from the mess at the back of her head. “That doesn’t automatically mean anything.”
“No,” I agree, “but it doesn’t feel random either.”
I walk back toward the table and pick up the half-empty bottle of water sitting there. The plastic crackles faintly under my fingers. The water inside is lukewarm and tastes stale, but I drink it anyway.
