A door at the far end of the hallway was ajar. Ren remembered the partial layout of the floor because he had memorized it during the few times Reznov had walked him through the wing: that door led to a utility room with a back staircase descending to the kitchen.
He reached it. Pushed with his shoulder. Looked in.
Empty. Just a linen cupboard and, at the far end, a service staircase spiraling down in a narrow helix.
He took the steps two at a time, feet light, back grazing the wall, the piece of wood held out in front. The staircase ended at a small landing with a metal door opening into the service area. He pushed it open a centimeter.
The kitchen was destroyed. Pans on the floor, a body, one of Reznov’s guards, face down beside the central island with a dark pool spreading beneath his torso. Ren didn’t look twice.
He crossed the kitchen in a crouch. The main noise was coming from the sitting room, on the other side of the swing door. More shots, more glass, the dull sound of bodies colliding with furniture. Ren went the other way, toward the back door that connected the kitchen to the garage through a service passage.
He stopped dead.
A hooded figure blocked the passage.
Black from head to foot. Tactical vest, cargo trousers, boots, a balaclava that left only a strip of pale skin visible around the eyes. Large. The body filled the corridor from wall to wall.
Ren raised the length of wood. The splintered point aimed at the intruder’s throat.
The figure went still.
And then Ren saw them.
The eyes.
Gray. A pale gray that looked almost transparent under the emergency light. With reddened edges, irritated, as though they hadn’t slept in days, or as though they had been crying, or as though the two things were the same. He knew them. He had seen them above him, beneath him, beside him in the dark of a room that smelled of raisins and walnuts.
The piece of wood trembled in his hand.
“Brody.”
The name came out broken. Barely a breath that evaporated between them.
The gray eyes crinkled at the corners. Brody reached up and tore the balaclava off in one pull. His dark hair fell across his forehead, sweat-damp, flattened. There was a cut on his left cheekbone that was bleeding. His skin was paler than Ren remembered, almost gray in that light. But alive. With his jaw clenched and his shoulders tense and his breathing labored, but alive, upright, whole.
Ren lowered the wood.
He didn’t run to him. He didn’t throw himself into his arms. He stood there with his feet rooted to the floor and his knuckleswhite around the wood and his eyes fixed on Brody’s as though looking away might make him disappear.
“I watched you die.”
Brody took a step toward him. Just one.
“I didn’t die.”
His voice came out low, scraped, as though he’d been using it to shout for too long. Ren saw then that he was moving carefully, that his left hand was braced against the wall, and that beneath the tactical vest something bulged across his chest in a way that wasn’t normal.
The bullet wound. Bandaged, patched, held together by whatever was keeping him on his feet. But there.
“Let’s go.”
Brody extended his right hand toward him. Palm open, long fingers stained with something dark.
Ren let the piece of wood fall. The sound it made against the floor was insignificant compared to the chaos still roaring on the other side of the walls. He put his hand in Brody’s and the alpha’s fingers closed around his with a force that made his knuckles crack.
The scent of raisins and walnuts hit him like a wave.
The steel of the gun was warm when Ren closed his fingers around the grip. Brody had been carrying it against his back, under the vest, and the metal had retained the heat of his body like a second skin. Ren checked the weight, adjusted his grip, slid his thumb across the safety. He didn’t thank him for the gesture. There was no need.
