Just the screech of a train pulling in somewhere below and the tinny crackle of overhead announcements.
I buy a ticket in cash. Pick a line at random. Then I step away from the machine and make myself breathe.
In. Out.
My palms are damp.
I hate this already.
Not the leaving. The shape of it. The old instinct coming back too easily. Head down. Move fast. Don’t get attached to any one exit. Clock every face twice. Know where the cameras are. Know who’s looking too long.
It slides over me like I never stopped doing it.
I tell myself that’s good. Useful.
It doesn’t feel good.
It feels like something I fought too hard to crawl out of.
I head toward the lower level, boots hitting the concrete stairs too fast, and slow myself before I start drawing attention.
The air changes the farther down I go.
Cooler. Staler. Thick with metal and damp concrete and the electric stink of old tracks.
The lower level opens up in strips of bad fluorescent light and shadow. Columns. Benches bolted to the floor. A yellow edge near the tracks already blackened with grime. People scattered in pockets, most of them half-lost in their own phones or staring blankly ahead like this place has already scraped the life out of them for the day.
Normal.
Busy enough to disappear in.
For one brief, stupid second, I could still turn around. Go back upstairs. Go back to the car. Go back to him.
My pulse doesn’t care.
I shift the duffel higher in my grip and keep moving, eyes scanning without looking like I’m scanning.
A train screams somewhere farther down, the sound bouncing off tile and concrete until it feels like it’s inside my skull.
Then I see him.
Dark jacket. Thick shoulders. Standing near a column with his head turned just slightly, like he’s waiting for someone.
My body goes tight.
He lifts his gaze.
Not enough to be obvious. But enough.
A cold, ugly understanding slides into place.
Gabriel’s men.
Of course.
This is what he wanted.
Get me out of Maksim’s house. Get me alone. Let me think I’m making my own choices when I’ve been walking straight into his hands since the second I answered that fucking phone.
