Good. He understands now.
I hit him once in the stomach, then grab the back of his neck and slam him face-first into the top edge of the door. His knees buckle. I don’t let him fall. Not yet. I drive him into the side mirror, cracking it loose, then twist his arm behind his back until his shoulder threatens to tear. He groans, breath breaking.
“Who sent you?” I ask.
He spits blood toward the pavement. “Fuck you.”
I slam his face into the door again. “Wrong answer.”
Behind me…
Nothing. No movement. No panic. No voice.Just dead weight where she went down. It presses into my spine harder than anything in front of me.
I keep my eyes on the driver. “Who sent you?”
He coughs. “We’re just paid to grab.”
Grab.
The word hits wrong.
My vision sharpens until the edges of the street seem cut from glass. “Grab who?”
He hesitates.
I increase pressure on his arm.
He grunts. “Girls. Names. Descriptions. That’s it.”
Cold slides through me. Not random. Not street trash. A list. And she’s on it.
I don’t let that thought finish. Finishing thoughts takes time. I slam him down over the hood of the van and strip a zip tie from his own pocket. He tries to buck once, but his arm is already trapped and his face is smashed against cold metal. I cinch his wrists hard enough to make him curse through clenched teeth.
The second man groans from the pavement.
I look at him. “Move again,” I tell him, “and I’ll make sure you can’t.”
He stops.
Smart. Finally.
My gaze cuts behind me. And for the first time since the van door opened, I let myself look at her directly.She’s on the ground. Not standing. Not watching. Out cold.
Her body lies twisted slightly where I eased her down, coat pulled wrong, one arm bent under her, the other slack at her side. Her hair spills across the pavement, catching the streetlight in a way that feels wrong for a place like this. Too still. Too quiet.
Alive, but out of it.
Something inside me shifts. Not relief. Relief is soft. This isn’t. This is something darker, sharper, taking shape without asking permission.
Mine.
The word doesn’t come like a thought. It lands like law. Unconscious or not. Doesn’t matter. They touched her. And now they’re done.
One of the men on the ground groans again, and the moment snaps.
I turn away from her before I look too long, before something in me makes a decision I can’t walk back. The street is no longer quiet. Lights are starting to flicker in upstairs windows. Someone shouted after the gunshot, distant and panicked. We have minutes before this becomes a spectacle. Maybe less. The man goes still under my boot.
The driver’s face is pressed into the hood, breath broken, wrists cinched tight behind him. The other two aren’t getting up anytime soon. The van sits open behind them, engine still running like nothing just happened.
