The radio clicked once more. “Mercer, do you copy?”
My shirt waited on the chair, charcoal and folded over itself, civilized enough to make the morning look manageable.
I swung my legs off the bed and stood. The floor was cold beneath my feet, my shoulder burned where I had taken too much impact the night before, and the cut on my arm pulsed under the bandage with a dull insistence that made every ordinary movement feel borrowed.
The engine kept running below.
I reached for the shirt.
My hand stopped before I touched the fabric.
Juliette sat up behind me. The sheet rustled against her skin.
The command was simple. Shirt on. Radio up. Vehicle out.
My hand stayed where it was.
“Nick.”
One word. No pressure. No rescue. Bloody inconvenient woman.
I picked up the radio.
“Hold the vehicle,” I said.
A brief silence answered.
Sarah’s voice came back flatter than before. “For how long?”
I looked at the window, where dawn pressed pale and thin against the glass. “Ten minutes.”
“Copy.”
The radio went dead.
Behind me, Juliette drew the sheet higher under her arms. “That will start gossip.”
“Sarah already knows.”
“Sarah knows everything.”
“Sarah suspects everything. Different skill set.”
“Useful one.”
I turned. Juliette sat in my bed with a bruise darkening near her collarbone, her hair in wild disarray, and her expression locked down so tightly it made my hands ache. She looked like she could leave bleeding and make it look like a calendar item.
I had made a profession of getting people out safely.
This morning, safety looked too much like cowardice.
“I put you on the first vehicle.”
Her fingers tightened once in the sheet. Nothing else moved.
“I know.”
“It was the clean version.”
