Chapter 25 Knox
Knox
The first thing that hits me is the taste. Smoke, concrete dust, hot metal, and blood. It coats my tongue, gets into the back of my throat like I swallowed a grenade that never quite finished going off.
My vision narrows. The ringing in my ears shifts frequency. For half a second, I'm not here.
I'm back in the Humvee behind Harris. Back watching the lead vehicle hit the IED. The pressure wave slamming through my chest, the heat, the air tasting like burning metal and diesel and flesh.
Harris screaming. Rodriguez not screaming anymore.
Then another memory layers over it, the way they always do. Kandahar. The compound. The interpreter's daughter, eight years old, pigtails, sitting in the dirt after they let the family go. Her father already gone because I followed the stand-down order instead of following my gut.
"Knox!" Nash's voice cuts through, sharp and close.
I blink. Garage. Holloway building. Mississippi. Not Kandahar. My hands are shaking. I force them steady, ball them into fists.
Nash is beside me, eyes sharp, assessing. "You good?"
"Yeah." The word scrapes out. "Let's move."
He doesn't look convinced, but there's no time. People are screaming. The work pulls me forward, muscle memory overriding the flashback. But it sits there, heavy in my chest. The taste. The sound. The way bombs don't care who they kill.
The lower garage of the Holloway building is a war zone. Lights flicker between too bright and too dark. Broken glass crunches under my boots. A car alarm screaming somewhere to the left, half-buried under people crying, coughing, shouting.
Victor is on his knees in the middle of it, hands slick and red.
Olivia's blood. She'd been right beside him when the blast hit.
Arden already got her out, half-carried her to a car and peeled away before the dust settled.
Victor stayed. Then I see Leo, Victor's guy with the easy grin and sharp eyes, sprawled near the gate, blood pooling dark beneath his neck.
His hand is pressed to the wound, but it's not enough.
Not with the way the blood's spreading, too fast, too dark.
Arden is already there, crouched beside him, both hands clamping down on Leo's throat as if he can hold the life in through sheer force. His face a mask, emotion locked away, that eerie, unnatural stillness holding while the garage erupts around him.
Leo's eyes are open but glassy. His lips move, but nothing comes out except a wet, rattling sound.
"Knox, right side!" Nash barks.
I tear my gaze away. There's nothing I can do for Leo. Arden already has him.
I turn toward the work that needs doing.
When I glance back thirty seconds later, they're both gone.
Just blood on the concrete. A smear leading toward the back exit.
The body is gone. Arden is gone. What the fuck?
Victor's security guy just took a bullet to the neck, and now there's no sign of either of them.
Just tire tracks and a faint chemical smell that wasn't there before.
I file it. Whatever Arden used to clean up, it wasn't bleach.
Lincoln's dragging a man with a shredded leg toward the stairwell, shouting for anyone who can walk to help. East is hauling a dazed security guard toward cover, cussing under his breath.
A woman is pinned under a collapsed support beam, blood running into her hairline. I crouch, check her airway, and listen. Shallow, but there.
"Hey. Stay with me."
I shout for Kyle, and between us we leverage the metal just enough for her to drag herself free. She screams, but she moves. That's what matters.
Sirens wail somewhere above, too far away and too damn late.
I straighten, lungs burning, ears doing that high-pitched ring they do when your body hasn't decided if you're in shock yet.
Donovan Castiel is sprawled on the cracked concrete like a discarded suit, blood pooling under his back. Victor's bullet hit center mass. The stain spreads with every sluggish beat.
"It's him," Kyle mutters.
"Eyes up," I snap, scanning for threats. "He might not be alone."
"Arden got her out," Victor chokes somewhere behind me. "Olivia—Arden got her out." Relief punches through the noise. I start to ask about Leo.
"Malachi!" Kyle shouts a minute later. "He's still got a fucking pulse!" Everything stops.
Malachi moves through the chaos like it parts around him on instinct, boots steady. Drops to a crouch beside Donovan's body, fingers brushing his neck. I'm at Malachi's side in three strides, inhaling the sour, iron stink of Donovan's blood. Too much. Not enough. I don't know which.
"He should be dead," Nash mutters.
"Yeah," Malachi says, low and lethal. "But he's not."
Rage flashes hot in his eyes, twin to the boil under my skin. We've waited years to put this bastard in the ground. Thought tonight might be it.
"Get me cuffs. Zip ties. I don't care," Malachi growls. "We are not losing him. Not this way."
Nash tosses restraints. Malachi binds Donovan's wrists himself, each pull of plastic a promise. The zip tie bites into torn skin.
I stand there, breathing hard, staring down at the man who's been a shadow in every shitty story we've uncovered. Human trafficking. Auctions. The way Cornelius died. The ghosts that haunt Malachi's ribs. And I know what's coming before I say it.
"You want me to get Sloane?" Already reaching for my phone.
Malachi's gaze flicks up, sharp. No hesitation. "Yeah. Get her to the basement. She keeps him alive. He talks to me."
There it is. The order that's going to wreck my wife. I step back from the blood slick under my boots. The phone barely rings once.
"Knox?" Thin and wired, the voice she only uses when she's already running triage in her head.
"Yeah, it's me." I move away from the worst of the noise, pressing a hand over my other ear. "We're at the Holloway Building. Bomb in the lower garage. It's bad."
"Are you okay? Is anyone—"
"I'm fine. The guys are fine." For now. "We're helping with the injured, but—" I glance at Donovan, at Malachi crouched beside him like wrath incarnate. "We found Donovan. Victor shot him, but he's still breathing."
Silence. Heavy, weighted. When she speaks again, her tone has gone clinical, automatic. "How bad?"
"Through-and-through to the chest. Lot of blood. Malachi's bringing him back to the clubhouse. He wants you to keep him alive long enough to talk."
There's the faintest scrape, like she's braced her free hand against a wall.
"Understood," she says after a beat. She's too calm. Too controlled. "I'll get the basement ready."
"Sloane—"
"I've got it, Knox." A crack under the calm that only someone who knows her could hear. "Just… come back in one piece."
The call cuts before I can tell her I'm sorry. I grit my teeth and turn back toward the chaos.
"You good?" Nash asks flatly.
"No. But we're doing it anyway."
The ride back is a blur of sirens and red lights we don't obey. Donovan is in the back of the van with East and Kyle. East's forearm is braced on the gurney to keep him from sliding with every hard turn. I'm up front, watching the rearview for tails and the side streets for more bad surprises.
Every bump makes Donovan groan. It grates on my nerves.
"Could just hit a few more potholes," East mutters. "Help nature along."
"That call belongs to Malachi," I snap, more at the situation than him.
My phone buzzes. A text from Sloane. Sloane: Basement prepped. ETA?
I thumb back: 5. And I'm staying with you.
Three dots. Then nothing.
When we pull through the compound gate, prospects are already moving as if we've drilled this a hundred times. One holds the side door open as we haul Donovan out. Another clears the stairwell, calling down that the basement is ready.
Before we head down, I pause in the main room where the girls are clustered; Maggie, Ruby, Frankie, Candace, Darla. Wide-eyed, waiting.
"Everyone okay?" Maggie asks immediately.
"Yeah. We're okay. Victor's okay. Olivia got out. She's hurt, but Arden got her clear before the worst of it." Relief ripples through them. "Leo…" I exhale. "He took a shot to the neck. Arden got him out, but from what I saw, I don't think he made it."
Frankie goes utterly still. Her face drains of color. Her hand, halfway to setting down her mug, freezes mid-air.
"What?" Ruby whispers.
"Gunshot. Throat. Arden took him before we could get close. I didn't see a pulse."
Frankie's phone is already in her hand, fingers white-knuckled. She stares at the screen as if she's waiting for it to tell her I'm wrong.
"Frankie—" Candace starts.
"I'm fine." Her voice is flat. Too controlled. She shoves her phone in her pocket and stands abruptly. "I need air." Frankie's out the door before anyone can stop her.
Ruby starts to follow, but Maggie catches her arm. "Give her a minute."
"She's not fine."
"No," Maggie agrees quietly. "She's not."
I don't have time to stay. Malachi's already heading for the basement with Donovan, and I need to be there for Sloane. As I turn toward the stairs, the front door opens again. Arden steps in, eyes scanning the room.
"Where's Frankie?"
Ruby points toward the door Frankie disappeared through. Arden nods once and heads that way without another word. But as I head down the stairs, I can't shake Frankie's face. Blank, shuttered, breaking underneath.
It smells like bleach, coffee, and barely-laundered denim down here on a normal day.
Today it smells like blood and adrenaline.
Sloane's waiting when we barrel in, already in navy scrubs and sneakers, hair bundled in a knot that's slightly crooked from tying it rushed.
Gloves snap around her wrists, armor built out of latex.
Her eyes find mine for half a second. I see everything in that look. Fear. Fury. Resolve.
"What the hell did you bring me?" she snaps, pivoting toward Donovan as East and Kyle swing the gurney into position.
"The reason we're going to blow this whole thing wide open," Malachi answers, voice rough. "He doesn't die until he talks."