CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
But my eyes are clear. For the first time in months, I can actually see myself in there.
I make it to the kitchen. Fill a glass of water from the tap and drink the whole thing standing at the sink. Fill it again. The water hits my empty stomach, and it cramps, but nothing comes up.
Progress.
Halfway through the third glass, I hear movement behind me.
"You're up."
I turn. Aoife stands in the hallway. Still in my t-shirt, hair tangled from the chair, red marks on her cheek from sleeping against the wood. Her eyes move over me. Slow. Deliberate. Like she's checking every part of me for damage.
"I'm up," I say.
She crosses her arms. "How do you feel?"
"Like I've been hit by a truck. Then the truck reversed over me. Then parked on my chest for three days."
Something shifts in her face. Not a smile. But close.
"You need to eat. And shower. You smell terrible."
"Charming."
"I've been holding a bucket under your face for three days. We're past charming."
I almost laugh. The sound comes out rough and unused, but it's real.
She pushes past me to the fridge. Opens it. Stares at the contents like they've personally offended her.
"Eggs. Bread that's probably still edible. Cheese." She closes the fridge and opens a cupboard. "Tinned soup. Tea." She pulls out the tea and sets the kettle on. "Tea first. Then toast. Nothing heavy or you'll bring it back up."
She's taken over. Moved straight past the mess of me and into something she can fix. Tea. Toast. Tasks with clear answers.
I don't know why that makes my chest tight.
The kettle clicks on. She reaches for two mugs, and I notice it now. The slight tremble in her fingers that she hides by gripping the handles tighter. Three days of no sleep. Her father in a hospital bed. A brother she's barely spoken to. A life blown apart as thoroughly as mine.
And she spent it all in a chair. For me.
"Aoife."
She doesn't turn from the kettle.
"Thank you."
Her shoulders tighten. For a second, I think she's going to brush it off. But she just nods. Once.
"Don't make me regret it," she says to the kettle.
The water boils. She pours it over the tea bags, and the kitchen fills with the smell of something warm and ordinary.
My phone buzzes from the other room.
We both hear it. Both go still.
The encrypted line. The one that only Aidan has the number for.
I set the water glass down and move toward the living room. The phone sits on the coffee table. The screen is lit up. Not with one message.
With dozens.
I pick it up. Scroll back to the beginning.
Three days of messages. All from Aidan.
“William. Check in when you're settled.”
Then, hours later:
“You there?”
“William. Answer me.”
“I need to know you're alive. Both of you.”
The next day. The tone shifts.
“Why aren't you answering? What's going on?”
“Is she okay? Are YOU okay?”
“William, I swear to God if you don't respond in the next hour, I'm sending a team.”
Then a gap. Half a day of nothing. Then:
“I'm assuming you can't answer. I'm assuming there's a reason. If you're compromised, stay dark. If you're not, CALL ME.”
More messages. Shorter. Harder.
“Security sweep on all locations came back clean, but I don't trust it.”
“Something's wrong. Intel is leaking. Can't figure out from where.”
Then the last one. Timestamped forty minutes ago.
“In case you're reading this: Viktor knows we're alive. We've been compromised. You have 12 hours to evacuate. Sending coordinates for new safe house. If you can move, move. If you can't, destroy this phone.”
I stare at the screen. Three days of my brother trying to reach me while I was shaking apart on a bedroom floor.
Three days of silence from this end.
He must have been out of his mind.
I look up. Aoife is beside me, holding two mugs. Watching my face.
"You heard the phone," I say. "While I was out. You heard it buzzing."
She doesn't deny it. "You were in no fit state."
"Aoife."
"What was I supposed to do, William? Prop you up and hold the phone to your ear while you were hallucinating your dead father in the corner?" She sets the mugs down harder than she needs to. "I tried. I couldn't open it. I don't have the code."
She's right. I know she's right. But three days. Three days of Aidan not knowing if we were alive or dead.
"What is it?" she asks. Quieter now.
I hand her the phone.
She reads the messages. I watch the color drain from her. She scrolls through all of them. Aidan's worry, his anger, his desperation. Three days of unanswered texts from a brother who didn't know if we were breathing.
Her hand comes up to her mouth.
"Oh God," she whispers. "William, he thinks we're dead."
"The last message," I say. "Forty minutes ago. He knows we're alive."
She scrolls back to it. Her jaw tightens. Her eyes are wet, but she blinks it back. Sets her mouth in a hard line, like she can hold herself together by force.
"Twelve hours," she says.
"Twelve hours."
She hands the phone back. The tea sits on the counter between us, untouched.
"Then we'd better move." She's already heading down the hallway.
I look down at the phone in my hand. At Aidan's message. At the war that's been waiting patiently outside this house, while I broke apart and put myself back together inside it.
Viktor knows.
Which means someone told him. The mole is still out there. Still feeding information. Still close enough to know that the people who were supposed to die in that explosion are breathing and hiding and twelve hours from being found.
Close enough to know about the safe houses.
And the only people who know about the safe houses are family.
The thought hits me like a fist to the chest. Not an outsider. Not a rival. Not some bought-off soldier at the bottom of the chain. Someone at the table. Someone with the name Murphy or close enough to sit beside one.
One of ours.
I pocket the phone and follow Aoife down the hallway, my legs still shaking, my body still wrecked, my head clearer than it's been in months.
The war isn't coming.
It's already inside the house.