I locked my gaze to his and let it hit, sharp and consuming, a second wave that took my knees. I cried out and he caught me, hauling me down hard and holding me there as the tremor ripped through. He followed me into it, a rough sound breaking free against my throat, hips driving once, twice, and then he was gone with me, heat spilling, body shuddering under mine while I clenched around him and rode the aftershocks until neither of us could move.
Water stilled. Our breathing didn’t. I let my forehead fall to his and laughed, wrecked and happy, while his hands stroked slow circles into my back like he was thanking the universe for finding me in a bathtub.
“Eyes,” I said, borrowing his word. He dragged them back to me, stayed there, obedient and wrecked, and something wild and soft at the same time bloomed in my chest.
“Someday,” I murmured, because it had become a charm against the dark, “we’ll be terribly ordinary.”
“Impossible,” he said, laughing once, breaking, and then the laugh turned into a curse and a groan, and I felt him give in, body shuddering under my hands, a release he tried to swallowand couldn’t. I kissed him like I could drink it, like I could keep it, like it would keep me.
We stilled. The water calmed around us like it had learned something it intended to remember. He tucked me in, chin to my crown, his palm smoothing down my spine, the slow petting of a man who can’t believe he gets to. I tucked my face in the warm hollow of his throat and breathed like a person again.
We washed each other after, soap and small kindnesses, his big hands gentle in my hair, my fingers careful over the red ribbon the fence had left on his forearm. Towels, slow rubs, the hum under my skin turning from flame to ember.
We dressed in pieces. He checked the windows. I checked the line, listened to the tiny metal whisper. It told me nothing. The kettle sighed. The night pressed its forehead to the glass.
“Washer?” I asked, our shorthand for the perimeter tell.
He frowned. “Too quiet.”
He took a step toward the door, unhurried, that deceptive calm, and my mouth opened to say hey right as the window exploded.
Light first, white, obliterating, then sound, a fist after a slap. The room jumped sideways. The tub clanged like a bell. My ears filled with winter.
“Down!” he shouted from the end of a tunnel. My body obeyed even while my eyes were still blinking snow. Hands to ribs, chin in, elbows close, the posture he’d drilled into me until it lived in my bones. He slammed into me a heartbeat later, covering, his weight a shield, his breath the only thing that made sense.
Boots. A second flash. The door burst inward, wood shrieking. Voices, not loud, efficient. A knee hit my spine, not cruel, just competent; a zip tie bit my wrists one tooth too far. I tasted plaster. Cap rolled, took someone low, another high; a short, ugly sound said he’d put one down. Then threeboots decided to help. He grunted, not surrender, inventory. He moved again. Someone hissed in pain. Pride, mine, even then.
“Bag,” a voice said, and canvas dropped over my head. Air went stale. The bag sucked to my mouth when I breathed, and I had to make a decision not to panic. I made it. Panic came anyway in a sharp, bright stab and then my training, his training, kicked it in the teeth.
“Don’t touch her,” Cap snarled, too far and too near. A wet sound answered. Rage burned up my throat; I swallowed it because rage gets you killed in small rooms.
“Clear,” someone called by the door.
“Move,” another at my ear.
They hauled me up. My toes skimmed wood, then found porch, then cold night. I made the small resistances that don’t cost you blood, dead weight, a foot wrong, a twist at the wrong time. A fist landed between my shoulders, professional. The bag flashed white again. My wrists screamed.
“Cap!” I tried to throw him my voice. It hit the bag and splashed back at me.
“Enough,” the watcher’s calm cadence said, and the world obeyed him.
Van-dark swallowed me. Rubber mats, oil, bleach. Hands on the back of my head like I was a problem to be solved. I catalogued: hinge squeal right, floor sloped to wheel well, a bolt head near my left knee. Math, because math is a religion that doesn’t care who you pray to.
He shouted my name once and it hit the bag and came to me wrong, scraped and broken. I answered anyway. A hand shoved my face down. The bag went damp where my breath hit it. The doors slammed. The engine coughed alive.
Canvas swallowed me. The bag stank of damp canvas and bleach and someone else’s breath from some other night. When Iinhaled, it sucked to my lips; when I exhaled, it pushed back like a hand.
Zip tie teeth bit the bones in my wrists, one clicks too far. I rolled my hands to put the plastic across the meat, not the tendons, dug the sharp tail between them to keep it from cinching tighter. Breathing, the cadence he’d drilled into me until it lived in my ribs, four in, hold, four out. Don’t give panic room to decorate.
Rain smell vanished. Rubber and oil took over. They shoved me sideways, and a ribbed mat rasped my cheek through the bag. Van floor. Not a sedan. The left door’s hinge squealed high, cheap. The right door thumped closed with a lower note, heavier latch, different alignment. They don’t match. I put that in the pocket where I keep things to spend later.
“Head down,” someone said, bored and close. A palm pushed the back of my skull as if he were putting bread back in a bag.
Cap snarled my name from the room-that-wasn’t-a-room, too near, too far. The sound hit the bag and broke. He made another sound, the wet kind. I swallowed rage. Rage is expensive. I needed small money.
The engine coughed, caught, held. Big, lazy idle, four cylinders that had seen too many winters. Manual, not auto, the upshift thunked into second with the kind of chew you only get when a man learned on someone else’s clutch. We rolled. The floor vibrated under my ribs. I pressed my tongue to the back of my teeth and counted.
Left, my shoulder slid toward the wheel well. Right, back the other way, sharper. Speed bumped; the rear axle hopped; a clatter of something metal in the cargo ring. We hit smooth again, fresh asphalt, the hum higher and meaner. They weren’t talking. Professionals or men who think silence makes them that.
