Nico steps around Griffin and thunders down the stairs. DJ and Benji run after him, but Griffin stands still.
“Griffin,” I say, grabbing his shoulder. “Did you punch Nico?”
For a second, I think he’s going to deny it, but then his shoulders sag. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because of what he said to you yesterday,” Griffin exclaims. “Why the hell do you think?”
Zoey widens her eyes like she thinks she shouldn’t be here for this conversation.
I get the distant feeling that I should be happy about this. That I should feel validated that someone else thinks what Nico said was out of line, but instead, all I feel is this weird surge of anger.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”
His head tilts like a confused dog trying to understand a command. “Eden, he threatened tokillyou.”
Zoey mutters something under her breath, her chair creaking.
“I know he did, but—” But what? I don’t even know what I’m saying, only that imagining Griffin punching Nico makes a sour taste cling to the roof of my mouth.
Griffin didn’t have an ulterior motive in defending me. He did what a good friend would do. I just wouldn’t know, because I’ve never had someone who’d do that for me before. Still. I can’t help but feel like I’ve fractured the team at the worst time possible.
Nico drives. I ride in the passenger seat, and don’t think I look at him even once the whole way to Pittsburgh.
Zoey calls once we get into the city.
“Coordinates haven’t moved in ten minutes.” Her voice crackles through the speaker of Nico’s phone, which has been jammed into the cupholder. “It’s in a business park.”
It’s the dead of night, that time when the city feels like it’s holding its breath. The streets and sidewalks are empty. A chain-link fence wraps around the abandoned building, woven with ivy and sagging in places. A tarp flaps in the wind near the loading dock. Maybe someone’s makeshift shelter, but I don’t see anyone around.
Our vehicles are parked on the curb, engines ticking as they cool. Griffin, DJ, and Benji climb out of Griffin’s pickup, gathering on the empty sidewalk. Zoey insisted on staying behind so her connection would be more reliable, in case she needed to get us any more information.
“I doubt Morrow knows she exists with how little she comes out of her room,” DJ had said while we were suiting up, as if that would make me feel better about leaving anyone on their own. “She’s got Bob to protect her, anyway.”
Nico addresses all of us, “Eden and I will take the main entrance. We go in and see what we’re dealing with. If we’re not out in twenty minutes or we call for backup, DJ and Griffin, you come in hard and fast.”
Griffin’s jaw clenches, but Nico’s talking in his don’t-fuck-with-me team leader voice that would make me walk off a cliff if he told me to.
Benji gets into the van to run comms. Nico climbs into the back, pulling equipment out of the bags and crates connected to the van walls. He sheathes a flashlight into a holster on his belt and passes me one, which I put in my pocket.
“You have your earplugs?” he asks, slipping a glass jar and one of those mini ghost vacs into his pack.
I pat my pocket. “I’m not putting them in unless I have to. I need to be able to listen if I’m going to help.”
He pauses, then nods.
Even this tiny validation from him makes my chest warm, which is annoying when I’m supposed to be mad at him. Iammad at him. But it’s hard to hold onto that anger when we’re about to walk into a trap, and even if it’s illogical, even if he said he’d kill me, there’s no one I’d want to walk into this obvious trap with more.
He offers me an earpiece, which I hook into place. A second later, Benji’s voice crackles through: “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” I say.
“Same,” Nico says, testing his own.
Nico straps a shotgun to his back. He reaches for another, pausing with his hand on the barrel. “You want to carry one of these?”
I nod, and he hands it to me. The metal is cold even through my gloves. I check the chamber, then grab a handful of salt rounds from the bucket, my fingers steady despite everything.
