His fingers brush mine like punctuation, deliberate and grounding, and for the first time in a very long time, I allow myself to breathe into something that isn’t only a ledger or a fight.
By dawn, the burn-map Divine sends pings green across my phone: routes, dates, shell names—a pattern that looks like a throat we can slit. Carter leans over the screen, quiet, efficient. “Two sites in South Central. One near Vernon. Emerge Auditing owns all three on paper.”
“That’s our entry,” I reply.
“You sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure. I stopped questioning being part of the equation a long time ago.”
He nods. “Then let’s go find the truth.”
“Just another day at the office.”
“Except our office comes with bullets.”
“Perks of the job.”
He reaches out and brushes his thumb across my knuckles, a small, ridiculous ritual we both let stand for whatever gravity it offers.
That night, we pack, check guns, and load routes into our heads. Divine’s voice purrs through the line, delighted and vicious: “Alright, my lovely felons. Time to audit a monster.”
I slip my cut over my shoulders. Carter slings his pack, breathes deep like a man steadying a storm. He gives me a look that almost cracks into a smile. “You ready, Wildcat?”
“Always,” I answer.
We step into the night, carrying the promise of violence and something dangerously close to hope.
13
CARTER
Morning crawls in. Light slices through half-closed blinds and pins the sheets like evidence. Rebel’s hair spills over the pillow, dark and tangled, her skin traced with ghosts of my hands. For a heartbeat, I let myself believe the fire outside these walls burned itself out overnight.
Then reality moves in. The laptop hums from the corner of the table, screensaver flickering with the decrypted mess Divine dumped on us overnight. Rows of numbers, transfers, shell routes, breadcrumbs left by ghosts who thought they were smarter than everyone else.
I pull on jeans, run a hand through my hair, and scroll through the files again. Something’s off. A buried name glints under six layers of dummy corporations.
Dominic Calloway.
Bones.
My stomach knots tight. Every instinct screams no. But numbers don’t lie, only people do.
Behind me, Rebel stirs, a soft groan as she wakes. She rolls onto her side, eyes half open. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say.
“You were watching those files again.”
“Yeah.” My throat feels scraped raw. “Found something.”
She sits up, pulling the blanket around her shoulders. “What kind of something?”
I hesitate. My gut tells me to soften it, but truth’s a blade, once you pull it, you can’t sheathe it again.
So I turn the laptop toward her. “Tell me that name doesn’t mean what I think it does.”
Her gaze flicks to the screen, and everything inside her stills. One heartbeat. Two. Her lips part. “No.”
