Page 42 of Property of Prophet

“Thank you,” Prophet says. “Not for the cut, for all of it.”

I stand up before I have to work out what to do with that, cross to the shelf where the sat phone has lived for five years in its waterproof case, and take it down. The case is cold in my hands, the plastic dense and utilitarian, a piece of equipment I’ve kept charged and ready for a situation I’ve always told myself would never arrive.

I hold it out across the table.

“You’ll want to make the call yourself.” I hold the phone out.

He takes it. His thumb runs once along the edge of the case. A gesture so small and private I almost miss it, a man finding his footing before a call he’s been waiting weeks to make without knowing it.

“My president, Blade,” he says. “We’re out of Crystal Creek.” The names come out of him as others have, remembered rather than chosen. Crystal Creek is a coastal town, and if the weather holds, it’s two days from here.

He dials. The Iridium network does its slow, satellite-assisted work, and in the silence of the cabin, the stove, the wind at the eaves, and Bear’s breathing, we wait for the world to pick up.

Chapter Fourteen

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Prophet

The sat phone feels like a fucking brick in my hand. I haven’t heard Blade’s voice since before I fell. I don’t know what hearing it will give back to me.

Lily stands at the counter with her back to me, giving me privacy without leaving, so I make the call.

Then a woman’s voice. Clear, businesslike, the voice of someone who answers phones for an MC and has learned to make nothing in her tone a variable a stranger can read.

“Crystal Creek.”

“I need Blade,” I say.

Silence, then, “Who’s calling?”

“Tell him it’s his chaplain.”

Another pause, longer. Then the line goes quiet in the specific way of someone pressing hold rather than setting a phone down. I wait. The weight of the cut on my shoulders does something I didn’t expect. It settles me. The leather is already warm from my skin. The patches sit where they’ve always sat. The body knows this weight even when the mind has lost the rest.

Then, “Yeah.”

One word, low, familiar. And I’m back at the table, Blade at the head of it. Ranger, Fury, Vex, and my chair. My brothers.

Tessa’s face. Alive. That’s the part that rises last and stays longest.

I keep my voice level. “Blade,” I say. “It’s me.”

“Prophet?”

Fuck.

“Yeah.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” A chair scrapes on his end. Someone says something I can’t make out. “Where are you?” he says finally.

“Alaska. Miles off any road. I can give you coordinates.”

“Give them to me.”

I read them off the sat phone’s display, and he takes them without comment. He’s always been the man in the room who doesn’t ask for what he already knows, and he already knows enough. I’m alive, I’m calling, I need something. The rest is logistics.

“I’ve got a situation,” I say. “Something’s been hunting me since I fell.”