The dream unraveled slow, pulled apart by a smell that didn't belong. Harper shifted under the blanket, face pressed to the crook of her arm, waiting for the warmth of sleep to pull her back down—but the air caught in her throat. It carried something oily, burnt, too heavy for the room. She swallowed, once, twice, each breath dragging rough through her chest. Heat clung to the inside of her mouth.
She turned, half awake, eyes still unfocused. The dark looked different—thicker, alive. A faint gray haze shimmered where the window should've been, moving like water. She blinked hard. Her body still wanted to believe it was a dream, but the smell deepened until her stomach lurched. The next inhale came with a rasp, dry as ash, and her lungs rebelled. She coughed, a full-body jolt that snapped her upright.
For a second she couldn't see anything. The room swam. Her hand went out, found the edge of the nightstand, found the cold metal of the pistol she kept there. The air tasted of smoke now, sharp at the back of her tongue. Beneath it, a low creak passed through the walls—something expanding under heat. The sound rolled through the floorboards, faint but certain, like a growl from under the house.
The haze thickened. A strip of orange shimmered under the door, thin at first, then pulsing brighter with every breath she took. Her skin prickled. The heat was coming from the hallway. She pushed the blanket aside, swung her feet to the floor, but her head swam again, the room tilting with each inhale. Somewhere beyond the door, something fell—a short, brutal crash that shook the windowpane. Then a voice, hoarse, calling her name once, twice, closer each time.
She stumbled toward the dresser, vision tunneling around that breathless light leaking across the floorboards. Every inhale scoured her throat raw; every exhale left a sour film on her tongue. She snatched a pair of pants from the chair and dragged them on, the fabric sticking to her damp skin. The air had weight now, pressing against her shoulders, turning movement into labor.
The door handle gave a single metallic click before the whole door shuddered inward. Knuckles filled the frame in a burst of smoke and heat, coat half-buttoned, eyes already stinging. His arm came up instinctively, covering his mouth as he shouted over the roar swelling behind him. "Harper, move!"
Flame light wrapped his silhouette, gold and black and furious. For a heartbeat she saw past him—the hall alive, walls breathing orange, smoke crowding the ceiling in a living tide. The heat punched through the doorway, rolling against her face hard enough to steal her breath. Knuckles lunged in, one hand sweeping her shoulder, dragging her toward him as sparks snapped through the gap between them.
Her feet slid on the boards, bare skin catching splinters as Knuckles forced her toward the window. She tried to turn, to see if anyone else was behind him, but the smoke was already a living thing—thick, rolling, clawing at her lungs. He yanked the curtain down with one hard pull, smashed the butt of his arm against the glass until it gave, shards scattering into the snow outside. The rush of cold was a shock straight to her chest. He caught her wrist, shoved the frame wider with his shoulder, and barked her name again—wordless command, pure urgency.
She hesitated only long enough for the heat to lick her back. Then she crawled through, the sill biting into her thighs, glass crunching under her palms. The night outside hit her like a fist—air so cold it burned. She landed in the snow barefoot, knees folding, a ragged sound leaving her throat as the shock tore through her. Smoke poured after her through the broken pane, curling against her hair and vanishing into the wind. Behind her, Knuckles swung a leg out, boot hitting the drift with a thud, his other hand gripping the frame as the light from the hallway flickered against the frost on the glass.
She pushed up from the snow, lungs heaving, eyes streaming from the smoke that still clung to her. Knuckles caught her elbow and hauled her toward the corner of the cabin, boots plowing trenches through the drift. The wind carried heat even here—wrong, searing, full of sparks. When they rounded the side, the sight hit like impact.
The entire front of the cabin was alive. Fire crawled the porch railings and chewed through the roofline, boards snapping like bones under its weight. The windows glowed white-orange from within, each pulse throwing sparks high into the snow-filled dark. The heat shoved at them in waves, so intense the air seemed to warp.
Beyond it, both vehicles burned—the sedan nothing but a black skeleton under a pillar of smoke, the Suburban's tires collapsing into molten rubber. Gasoline hissed where it leaked across the ice, little rivers of flame winding through the yard. Every pop from the metal frames sounded like gunfire; every gust threw cinders at their faces.
Knuckles' hand came up to shield his eyes, his mouth moving through the roar. Harper could barely hear him. The cold under her feet vanished against the heat rolling from the wrecks, the snow around them turning wet, then steaming. Somewhere in the inferno a window burst, and the sound drove through her chest like a blow.
Figures emerged through the smoke at the far edge of the yard—Kier first, arm thrown up against the heat, Mason close behind with his jacket half over his face, Onyx limping through the drifts with a rifle slung useless at his side. Their faces were streaked with soot and snow, eyes wide and wild in the pulsing light.
Harper's eyes swept the yard—the burning porch, the smoldering vehicles, the figures stumbling through smoke. She counted without thinking: Knuckles, Kier, Mason, Onyx. Four.
Five. There should be five.
Her breath caught. "Where's Brock?"
The question came out small, almost conversational, like she was asking where he'd put the coffee. Then louder, cutting through the roar: "Where's Brock?"
Knuckles moved toward the others, voice rough from the smoke. "You see Lawson?" he shouted.
All three shook their heads, movements short and grim. Kier tried to speak, coughed instead. Mason just pointed toward the burning porch, jaw tight. The wind carried sparks across their shoulders; each ember hissed out against the snow.
Knuckles turned in a full circle, scanning the yard, the treeline, the flaming wrecks. "Brock!" he roared, the sound swallowed by the fire. "Brock, answer me!"
Something inside Harper locked. The space where he should've been—the step, the porch, the dark yard—was empty. Her mind didn't reason, it just broke forward. She tore out of Knuckles' reach, feet slipping in the wet snow, the name already ripping from her throat. "Brock!"
Knuckles caught her around the waist before she reached the steps, the grip brutal, dragging her back hard enough that her breath left her in a gasp. "He's not in there!" he barked, voice hoarse and close to her ear. "He was on watch—outside!"
She twisted against him, still trying to see past the flame, her cry swallowed in the roar of the fire. Knuckles' grip loosened and fell away. Harper stumbled forward a step, breath ragged, eyes burning as she turned in a slow circle. The fire wasn't spreading from the hearth—the pattern was all wrong. The porch burned from the outside in, flames climbing up from the railings, feeding on gasoline slicks that streaked across the snow. Both cars were still throwing off heat like furnaces. This wasn't an accident. This was placed.
She felt the thought form but couldn't hold it, her mind jumping ahead, looking for him. The storm of orange light swallowed everything that could've been a shape, a shadow, a chance. Then Mason's voice tore through it. "Tracks! There's tracks!"
They turned. Mason was crouched near the edge of the yard, staring at something in the snow. "Footprints," he said, voice thin. "A lot of them."
Kier dropped beside him, following the line with his eyes. "Fresh. Multiple sets." He moved forward, crouched lower. "And tire marks. SUV. Heavy."
The words landed like stones in water, each one sending ripples through Harper's chest. Her mind assembled the pieces faster than she could stop it: the fire starting outside, the vehicles torched, Brock on watch alone, the tracks leading away—
They took him.
The world tilted. Her vision tunneled to those tire ruts cutting through the snow, disappearing into the trees. She didn't make the decision to move—her body just went, legs driving her forward before thought could catch up.
The sound that left her throat didn't sound like language—it was animal, raw, torn from somewhere deeper than words. "Brock!" Her voice cracked on the second syllable, going hoarse, but she screamed it again anyway, louder, until her throat burned worse than the smoke had. "Brock!"
She bolted, snow exploding under her bare feet. Her feet were already bleeding, snow packing into the cuts, but she didn't feel it. Didn't feel the cold or the pain or anything except the absence of him—the wrongness of the empty tracks, the silence where his voice should be.
Behind her, Knuckles stood frozen, staring at the tracks. His hands opened and closed at his sides, useless. He'd been inside. Asleep. While Brock was out here alone, while they'd—
"Fuck," he breathed. Then louder, voice breaking: "Fuck!"
Mason's face had gone slack, eyes wide and uncomprehending. Onyx just stood there, rifle hanging loose in his grip, staring at the empty porch like he could will Brock back into existence.
Kier was the first to move, breaking into a run after Harper. "Harper, wait—"
But she was already halfway down the track, nothing in her head but the echo of that word, screaming it again and again until her voice shredded. "Brock! Brock!" The snow ahead glowed faintly with reflected firelight, tire ruts carving twin scars through the crust. Her breath came in gasps that sounded like sobs, steam rising off her skin where the heat still clung.
The tracks stretched ahead of her, clear and deliberate, leading into the dark trees. She could see where boots had churned the snow, where something heavy had been dragged, where the vehicle had backed out slow and careful.
Her legs gave out.
She hit the ground hard, knees sinking into the churned slush, hands clawing at the tracks as if she could pull him back out of them. Her fingers dug into the frozen earth, nails scraping, and a sound came out of her that wasn't a scream anymore—just a broken, keening sob that had no words left in it.
The tire tracks stretched into darkness. Empty. Final.
He was gone.
Kier reached her as she collapsed, but she didn't feel him. Didn't hear him saying her name. All she could see were those tracks—dark scars in the snow that led away from everything she had left.
The cabin burned behind them. The vehicles crackled and hissed. And somewhere in the darkness, Brock was gone, taken by people who knew exactly how much it would destroy her to lose him.
She screamed his name one more time, the sound swallowed by wind and flame and the terrible, empty silence that answered.
Kier knelt behind her, hands braced on her shoulders, the weight of him the only thing keeping her upright as the fire devoured the night.
─•────
Sound came back before thought. A low, rhythmic growl under him—engine noise, road vibration bleeding up through the floor. His ribs ached with every bump. The dark pressed close and absolute; cloth rubbed his face each time he breathed. He tried to lift his head and the motion ripped pain through the base of his skull, a deep, wet pulse that turned his stomach. Something bit into his wrists when he moved. Plastic. Tight enough that his fingers had gone numb.
Brock drew a breath through the hood. The air stank of rubber and fuel, men's sweat, the faint ammonia bite of whatever they'd used on him. It set his throat on fire. He coughed once, a dull animal sound that vanished under the low rumble of the road.
Memory came in shards—the flash of trees, the weight from the left, the smell on the rag. Then nothing. Now this. He tried to flex his hands, felt the zip ties cut deeper. His ankles were locked, his legs folded awkward beneath him. He shifted an inch; the cable linking his wrists to the cargo ring caught, tugged, held. No give at all.
The ache in his chest spread with every inhale. He could taste blood at the corner of his mouth, metallic and stale. A sound escaped him—half-groan, half-breath—and vanished under the growl of the engine.
Voices leaked through the dark. Two close, one farther forward. Calm, practiced, trading short sentences over the noise of the road. He couldn't catch words, only the rhythm—men who weren't afraid of him.
He let his head fall back against the mat, pain flashing white behind his eyes. The movement sent a roll of nausea up his throat. He swallowed it down, forced himself still. He had no sense of direction, only motion—steady, deliberate, the kind that meant they were a long way from stopping.
Time fell apart into fragments—engine hum, breath, pain. He drifted in and out, the line between waking and blacking out a thin, uneven blur. Every so often the Suburban hit a patch of ice, the jolt snapping his body forward against the restraints until the zip ties dug new fire into his wrists. Once, a voice nearer to him muttered something and laughed low, the sound running through him like current.
He didn't know how long it went on. Minutes. Maybe an hour. The rhythm of the road changed—turns sharper, tires crackling through gravel instead of snow. The air grew stiller, heavier. Then the engine eased back. A gate groaned open somewhere ahead, metal dragging against frost, followed by the wet thunk of tires crossing a drain.
They didn't stop. The engine climbed again, higher pitch now, a long curve that pressed his shoulder deeper into the floor. Downward. He felt the drop in his gut before the sound confirmed it—a concrete ramp, the acoustics closing in, noise tightening until the hum of the motor filled his skull.
Cold air replaced the fuel-stink as a door somewhere slid open ahead of them. The vehicle leveled out, then rolled to a final halt. Silence fell so complete it rang. He knew that silence. Knew the echo off concrete, the hollow depth that came only from underground.
He was home again, in the worst way.
The hatch released with a soft hiss and the first rush of air knifed through the hood—cold, mineral, heavy with exhaust. Voices closed in. Boots scraped metal, a hand hit the latch at his wrist anchor, a short plastic crack and he was free from the D-ring but not the ties.
"On three."
They didn't count out loud. Gloves hooked under his arms, another grip at his knees, and the world tilted. His shoulder hit fabric and muscle, his stomach turned as his weight swung between them. Every step sent vibration through his ribs, the dull concussion of boots on concrete layered with the distant buzz of fluorescent lights. The air here smelled of oil and concrete dust—underground air.
They moved fast. A door wheezed open somewhere ahead, the hydraulic piston groaning before slamming back into its seal. The sound echoed close, then again a few seconds later. He tracked them by noise: hinge, hallway, elevator chime, the mechanical sigh of descent. Each stop bled together until even the motion felt circular, endless.
The lift slowed. Another corridor swallowed them—colder now, quieter, the kind of quiet that only existed in rooms meant to hold screams. A keypad beeped, another hydraulic sigh. Then the temperature changed again; the air grew still, flat, dead.
They didn't lower him. They threw him.
His body hit concrete with a crack that drove the air from his lungs. Shoulder, ribs, hip—each impact a detonation of pain that lit up his spine. Before he could even gasp, a boot slammed into his gut, folding him in half. Another kicked his legs straight, pinning them. A third drove into his kidney, white-hot and vicious.
He tried to curl, Instinct overriding thought, but hands grabbed him—rough, merciless—and flipped him onto his back. A boot came down on his chest, crushing the breath he'd just clawed back.
"Look at this piece of shit," someone spat. "Thought you were too good for us, huh?"
A fist cracked across his jaw before he could answer, snapping his head sideways. Blood filled his mouth, hot and metallic.
Gloved fingers hooked the drawstring under his jaw and ripped the hood off. Light stabbed into his eyes—white, sterile, merciless. He couldn't see through the glare, couldn't focus on anything but the silhouettes looming over him.
A hand fisted in his hair and wrenched his head up, forcing his face toward the light. "Welcome home, traitor."
Another blow. Then another. Fists, boots, the dull crunch of bone meeting concrete. They weren't trying to kill him—not yet. This was message. This was payment. Every man he'd crossed, every order he'd defied, every Syndicate enforcer who'd bled out because of his choices—it all came due now, delivered in fists and steel-toed boots.
When they finally stopped, he lay gasping on the concrete, blood pooling beneath him, ribs screaming with every shallow breath. The hood lay discarded beside him, soaked dark.
"Clean him up before Roth gets here," someone said. "Can't have him looking too fucked up yet."
Rough hands grabbed him again, hauled him upright just long enough to slam him into the wall. His vision grayed at the edges. A wet cloth dragged across his face—cold, stinging, wiping away enough blood to make him presentable.
Then they let him drop.
He crumpled to the floor, zip ties cutting deeper into his wrists, every nerve lit with pain. The door hissed shut behind them, hydraulic and final.
He rolled to his side, breath grating through clenched teeth, and forced his knees under him. Every movement dragged against the restraints, plastic grinding into skin already raw. The floor was slick with dust and cold sweat. He braced his bound hands against it, pushed, and got halfway up before the nausea from his skull wound threatened to drop him again. Another breath. Another shove. He made it upright, back to the wall, head hanging between his shoulders.
The room swam in the sterile light. Concrete walls the color of bone, drain in the corner, single steel door with its narrow inspection slot. A smear of darker color broke the uniform gray beneath him—old, rusted stains embedded deep in the pores of the floor.
The recognition didn't come gentle. It hit like a fist to the sternum, drove the air from his lungs in a single shocked exhale. He'd been here before. Not here as in this wing, this level.
Here. This exact room.
The holding cell.
Her holding cell.
Some of it hers from that first night—though he hadn't been there to see it. Knuckles had brought her down, left her zip-tied and bleeding on this concrete. She'd spent hours in the dark, alone, with nothing but stone and her own blood for company. By the time he came the next morning to drag her before Vex, those stains had already set.
His gaze traveled up the wall. The eyelets he'd used after bringing her back from Vex's office. Chained her there. High enough that she couldn't sit comfortably, couldn't lie down. Just stand or hang.
He remembered coming down to take her to the interrogation room—the way she'd looked up when the door opened, eyes hollow, wrists raw where the cuffs had bitten deep. She hadn't begged. Hadn't screamed. Just that terrible, defeated silence.
And then later—after he'd strung her up, after he and Knuckles beat her, after he had tortured her. He'd left her on this floor for weeks with nothing but a threadbare blanket, planning the destruction of everyone she'd ever called family while she lay here listening to the pipes and her own breath.
She'd taken that blanket and made it a fortress. Every time he came down after that, she was the same: a small shape curled beneath thin fabric, pulled tight over her head like she could hide from the cell itself. From him. From what he'd done to her.
He'd stopped seeing her as a person then. Just a problem under a blanket. A body that hadn't broken yet.
Until—
It hit with brutal clarity—her pinned to this same floor, three men on her. One with a knee in her spine, another with his hand twisted in her hair, the third pressing a knife to her throat while her voice tore the air. He could still see the thin line the blade had opened along her neck, the smear of blood down her collar, the raw scrape across her cheek where they'd driven her into the concrete.
She'd been right here. In this exact spot. Terror and pain carved into the same floor he was sitting on now.
He'd ripped them off her, beaten them down, thrown them out. The sound of her breath, the look in her eyes—he'd never outrun it. The sheer, animal terror of her realizing it was him standing there, not a savior, just another man she couldn't trust.
He'd told himself he saved her that night. That it meant something.
But the truth was simpler, colder:
He'd put her here first.
Everything that happened to her—the chains, the interrogation, the blanket she hid under, the three men who found her alone and defenseless—all of it traced back to one decision.
His.
The Syndicate hadn't just put him in her cell.
They'd put him in the evidence of every choice he'd made.
And now he was the one zip-tied on the floor, breath scraping shallow, staring at stains that wouldn't wash out.
Stains he'd helped make.
He closed his eyes. The room tilted and steadied, breath scraping thin against his ribs. Every nerve in his body throbbed with the rhythm of his pulse, each one a reminder he was still alive when he shouldn't be. The silence pressed close, heavier than the pain. He let it. Let it settle. There was nothing left to fight except himself.
─•────
Snow whispered against the ruins. What had been the cabin was now a black husk, ribs of timber glowing dull under the sagging roof. The flames were nearly gone, only smoke left—thick, sweet, heavy, hanging low to the ground. The air reeked of wet ash and gasoline.
They'd moved what was left of themselves to the treeline. The phone sat half-buried in the snow beside Knuckles, its red light pulsing weakly—Calder's voice still ghosting in their ears: Hold position. We're coming. That had been twenty minutes ago.
No one spoke. Mason stood a few yards out, scanning the road, rifle hanging loose in one hand. Kier crouched near the fire's edge, jacket pulled tight, face turned away from the glow. Onyx sat against a fallen trunk, eyes open now, jaw tight, fingers tapping against the band of his rifle sling.
Harper sat a few feet from the rest, knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around them like she could hold in what was left of her warmth. Snow had crusted over her bare feet, skin gone colorless where it met the ice. She didn't seem to notice. Her hair was stiff with soot, her shirt torn at the shoulder, fabric frozen where meltwater had refrozen again.
The cold should have been unbearable. It wasn't. Everything in her felt slowed, distant, the edges dulled to a single hollow ache. The last of the firelight reached her in faint pulses, washing her face in orange that never stayed.
Knuckles had tried to get her nearer the trees for shelter; she'd only shaken her head and stayed where she was. Now he watched her from the corner of his eye but didn't move. Nobody did.
She stared at the black shell of the cabin until her vision blurred, until the smoke and snow became one color. Somewhere in the distance a branch snapped—a clean, singular sound—and every head lifted at once.
Engines. Low and slow.
Mason's rifle came up fast, Kier pivoting behind the burned sedan's frame. Onyx pushed off the trunk, movements stiff but purposeful. Knuckles stayed where he was, weapon half-raised, eyes locked on the dark road cutting through the pines.
Harper stayed where she was. The thought crossed her mind—what if it wasn't them? What if the Syndicate had circled back to finish what they'd started, to erase the last witnesses.
The idea didn't stir fear. Only a flat, exhausted calm. She had nothing left to give them. Let them come.
The engines drew closer. Headlights lanced through the trees, beams flashing off drifting smoke.
Two Expeditions broke through, matte paint ghosting under the fire's dull light. They rolled to a stop at the edge of the clearing, idling against the wind.
For a long beat, nobody moved. The Vultures stayed in their vehicles. Brock's crew stayed in their positions, fingers on triggers, eyes tracking shadows through tinted windows.
Then a door opened.
Gage stepped out—coat open, gloves off, hands visible. He didn't reach for the rifle slung across his back. Didn't make any sudden moves. Just stood there, breath fogging white, eyes moving from the caved roof to the crew strung along the trees.
His gaze lingered on each face, counting. Then stopped.
"Where's Lawson?" His voice carried across the snow, quiet but sharp.
Knuckles' jaw locked. The words came out rough, scraped raw. "They took him."
The silence that followed was its own answer. Gage's expression didn't change—no shock, no pity—but something shifted in his stance. A recognition of what that meant.
"Syndicate?" Rook asked from the second vehicle, stepping out now, rifle low but ready.
"Yeah." Mason's voice was hollow.
Gage exhaled slow, the cloud of it curling pale between them. His eyes cut to the burned-out cabin, to the tire tracks already filling with fresh snow, to the scattered gear and bloodstains half-buried in white.
"Then we need to move," he said. "Now. Before they realize they missed the rest of you and come back to fix it."
No one argued. There was nothing left to argue for.
Rook moved first, yanking the rear hatch open. "Load up. We'll sort the rest when you're not sitting targets."
Mason and Kier moved like automatons, boots crunching through crusted snow. Onyx pushed off the trunk, movements deliberate, careful—like his body was still remembering how to work.
Harper stayed where she was.
Knuckles crossed the distance between them, stopped a few feet away. Firelight caught on the soot streaking his face, the exhaustion carved into every line.
"Harper." His voice came low, rough from smoke and something deeper. No order. No question. Just her name, and the weight of everything it carried.
She didn't look at him. The wreckage still held her eyes—orange and black and the shape of a doorframe that no longer led anywhere.
If she left, Brock wouldn't know where to find them. If she left, she was abandoning the last place he'd been. If she left—
"Come on," Knuckles said, softer this time. "We're leaving."
Her hands were shaking. Not from cold. From the effort of holding still, of not screaming, of not running into those ruins to search for something—anything—that proved he'd been real.
Then something in her body gave—a small, exhausted tremor—and she pushed herself upright. The motion was stiff, mechanical, her bare feet slipping against the snow. Pain shot up her legs as blood tried to return to frozen flesh. She didn't make a sound.
Knuckles caught her elbow when she swayed, steadying her. His grip was firm but careful, like he was afraid she might shatter.
"I've got you," he murmured.
She let him guide her toward the truck, each step a small agony her body registered but her mind refused to process. The heat from the open door hit her face—too warm, too sudden, wrong after the numbing cold.
Gage watched them pass, eyes tracking Harper's bare feet, her torn clothes, the way she moved like something already broken. When Knuckles met his gaze, something passed between them. An understanding. A debt.
"We'll get you somewhere safe," Gage said quietly.
Knuckles just nodded. Safe was a word that didn't mean anything anymore.
Harper climbed into the back seat, movements slow and distant, like her body belonged to someone else. She folded in on herself, hands clasped tight in her lap to stop their shaking. The heat from the vents brushed her face but couldn't touch the cold buried in her bones.
The cold that whispered: He's gone. They have him. And you left.
Onyx took the passenger seat beside Rook, checking his rifle out of reflex more than need. Mason slid in behind him, then Kier, jaw tight, eyes locked on the lane ahead—on anywhere but the burning cabin in the rearview.
The doors shut one by one. Dull thuds swallowed by wind.
Knuckles was the last in. He looked back once—at the ruins, at the smoke, at the tire tracks leading away into darkness. His hand pressed flat against the window, fingers splayed wide.
Then he turned forward and didn't look again.
Both engines turned over. Headlights cut through the smoke as the Expeditions rolled toward the trees—two dark shapes leaving the fire behind, carrying what was left of them into the frozen dark.
Behind them, the cabin's skeleton glowed orange against the white. Snow began to fall again, soft and relentless, already starting to bury what had happened here.
By morning, there would be nothing left but ash and silence.
And the shape of a man's absence, carved into every person who'd survived.
─•────
The cot sagged in the middle, canvas stretched thin over a metal frame that creaked with every breath. The fabric had the rough give of old tarp, cold against her shoulder blades. The blanket carried the faint trace of old soap and dust. She lay still anyway, staring at the ceiling—yellowed plaster cracked into a map she didn't recognize.
The room held four other cots, all empty. Their frames threw long, crooked shadows across the floorboards, lines that met at her feet like they were pointing to her. Somewhere down the hall, a pipe ticked in the walls, water moving through the house's tired bones.
It was quiet here, in a way that didn't feel safe yet. The air hung warm and still, heavy with damp wood and detergent. No smoke. No gasoline. No burning wood. Just stillness.
They'd called it a safehouse—a word that meant very little anymore. The building had probably been beautiful once, back when East Halworth still pretended at civility. Wide stairs, stained glass, brass doorknobs polished by better hands. Now the wallpaper peeled in long curls, the paint blistered at the window frames, the floors scuffed by boots instead of shoes.
When they arrived, the Vultures had been polite enough—curt nods, measured eyes, not sure what to make of them. Someone had shown them to the kitchen, pointed to the upstairs bath, dropped a pile of borrowed clothes on the table. The fabric held the chill of storage, the faint mineral tang of detergent. The fit was wrong—shoulders too wide, sleeves too short.
She'd showered until the hot water ran out, until the skin on her arms flushed red from heat. When she came down again, her hair damp, they'd already split them up—men in one room, her in another. Nobody had asked if that was what she wanted, and she hadn't found the strength to correct them.
Now she lay in a house that didn't belong to her, listening to a city she didn't know anymore breathe through the window cracks. Every noise—the creak of the old wood, the hum of the furnace—felt like something she should be reacting to, but her body wouldn't move.
The cot groaned as she turned her head toward the far wall. A faint rectangle of light spilled under the door, the only proof the rest of the house still existed. Somewhere beyond it, Knuckles was probably pacing, Mason and Onyx not sleeping, Kier muttering to fill the dark. She could almost hear them. Almost.
But she didn't get up. Didn't call out. The silence pressed down until her chest hurt, until her own heartbeat was too loud in her ears. She pulled the blanket tighter around herself and stared at nothing, too tired for sleep, too hollow for anything else.
Her mind wouldn't stop. Every time she tried to empty it, his name filled the space again—Brock, and nothing after. The Vultures had said nothing beyond safehouse, nothing about what came next, and she hadn't asked. Questions felt useless when there were no answers.
She didn't know where they'd taken him. Maybe the compound, maybe some warehouse out past the freight lines where no one ever looked twice at a truck idling too long. Maybe they'd already dumped his body in a ditch somewhere, the snow closing over him while she lay here pretending to rest.
Her throat tightened. She turned her face into the blanket and breathed through the fabric until the sound of her pulse dulled.
Torture was easier to imagine than death. It meant he was still breathing, still somewhere to be reached. She could picture it too clearly—hands on him, the way they'd try to break what wouldn't bend. They'd want him alive long enough to make an example of him. They'd want him to hurt.
She flinched, pulling the blanket closer, the coarse weave biting her cheek. The furnace kicked on below, a slow metallic groan through the pipes, and for a second it sounded like a voice—a low, distant cry swallowed by walls.
She pressed her palms over her ears. It didn't help.
Time folded. The light under the door dimmed and went out. Pipes groaned, then settled. Somewhere below, footsteps moved once, faded.
Harper wasn't sure how long she'd been awake when the handle turned. The door opened just wide enough for a shape to slip through, a draft of colder air following him in.
Knuckles didn't speak. He closed the door behind him and stood there for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. Then he dragged one of the spare cots across the floor until its legs scraped against hers and sat down on the edge, elbows braced on his knees.
The room held its breath.
She didn't look at him, but the weight of him there broke something loose in her chest. All the hours she'd spent holding it in—through the fire, through the drive, through the forced calm of strangers—cracked open at once. The sound that came out wasn't even a sob at first, just air escaping wrong, then another, until it built into the kind of crying that emptied her lungs and gave nothing back.
Knuckles flinched like the noise hit him. Then he moved, slow and unsure, one hand finding her shoulder, the other sliding behind her neck, guiding her up. She came with the motion, limp, the blanket dragging off the cot. By the time she reached him she was already collapsing, her face pressed into his chest, her fists clutching his shirt like she was trying to anchor herself to something solid.
He folded around her. One arm locked across her back, the other fisted in the blanket tangled at her waist. She was shaking so hard it made the frame beneath them tremble; each gasp shuddered through him like an aftershock.
He didn't tell her to stop. Couldn't. The effort of holding her upright felt like holding himself together. His jaw clenched, breath breaking shallow, grief rising until it burned behind his eyes. He bowed his head until his forehead rested against her hair, the smell of smoke and cold air still trapped in it.
For a long time neither spoke. The only sound was her breath hitching against his chest and his own heartbeat hammering back at it, the two out of rhythm but bound together all the same.
"I know," he said finally. The words scraped out of him, thin and broken. "I know."
That was all.
Her sobs dragged down into silence by degrees, each one smaller than the last, until the only thing left was the uneven rhythm of their breathing. He stayed where he was, holding her as her weight went slack against him. Neither moved. Neither tried.
The house creaked around them, old wood groaning with the wind. Somewhere outside, a siren climbed and fell, distant and uncaring. Inside, the two of them stayed locked together on that narrow cot—grief and exhaustion pressed into the same fragile space, neither of them strong enough to let go first.