Epilogue
The van smelled like salt and old coffee and the copper edge of his own blood.
Kai lay where the bastards had dropped him, no doubt expecting him to die, half-curled on the ribbed floor mat, cheek against cool metal, listening to the island breathe on the other side of thin sheet steel—the hush of surf, a scooter whining past, someone laughing too loud like midnight was still theirs to waste.
He’d lost too much weight in not enough weeks.
Fever left a glass rattle in his chest and bones.
The two knife wounds low on his right side were pooling warmth under him and he didn’t want to think about what that might mean.
He pressed his hand against his shirt there for a moment, then drew in a harsh breath at the sharp pain that move brought and grimaced at the blood that came away on his hand.
Both sides of the law wanted him. The kind that wore badges and the kind that didn’t.
He might be on the big island, but the place he was holed up was small, and the map of safe places he could run to in his head was even smaller.
Even if he were able to escape from here, every place he might go had a danger attached to it, and a camera above the door.
Hogan was here. On island.
Kai knew it. He could feel Hogan on the island like a hand over his chest trying to set his heart back to a better count.
He wanted to get to him. He’d been afraid to bring heat to Hogan’s door, but it was too late now.
This particular heat was hunting all of them. Kai, the Pathfinders, Bravo, everyone.
He should have sent another encrypted packet and stayed quiet. He should have done a lot of things.
Instead, he reached for the phone that by some miracle was still in his jeans back pocket. He guessed that the guys who’d beaten the shit out of him and threw him into this fucking van figured he’d be dead before he could call for help anyway.
It trembled in his hand. He stared at the lock screen and almost opened the app that would tumble numbers and make this nothing if anyone else found it. Instead, he closed it and hit the name he’d buried where he couldn’t miss it.
“Come on,” he told the ring. “Pick up, Ace.”
The line clicked. “Kai?” Hogan’s voice carried concern. Just his name, and Kai’s chest hurt in a better way.
“Hey,” Kai said. It came out soft and sideways. His tongue didn’t want to do the work. “You sound worried. You worried about me, Hogan?”
“Where are you?” No hello, no lecture. Hogan had always been good at the parts that mattered.
“Inside something that used to deliver packages and now delivers regret,” Kai said. He breathed through a spike of hurt.
“You’re slurring your words,” Hogan said, too steady to be calm. “How badly are you hurt?”
“Personal best.” He let the joke, with any luck eliminating the fear in his tone but wasn’t certain he had succeeded. “It’s okay, though.”
“Kai.” That tone, the one that kept people from dying just by refusing to accept it. “Listen to me. I need three things—what you smell, what you hear, what you see.”
Kai shut his eyes and did what he was told because it was Hogan asking. “Salt. Coffee that’s been a little burnt but roasted nearby. Hot engine. Rust.” He waited. “Scooters. One with a missing baffle. Ocean. Wind through—pandanus?—something with dry leaves.”
“Good,” Hogan said. “Eyes.”
“Slatted shadow on the floor. Light through boards. No streetlight inside, just spill. Blue flyer stuck to the windshield of the van about a half-marathon that already happened. Dashboard has a saint charm that keeps hitting the plastic and I hate it.”
“I’ll buy you one you don’t hate,” Hogan said. “Stay with me.”
Kai laughed and it hurt. “You always say that like it’s easy.”
Another breath. The phone felt heavy now. He shifted his head to hold the phone and the world tilted on its axis, and nausea roiled within him.
“Here’s the thing, Ace,” Kai said. He should have saved it, but suddenly there wasn’t any time left to carry it anymore.
“Before—before you lost pieces of yourself. We had ... a run. Short, but we burned hot, brighter than we were careful for. You don’t remember and that’s on me.
I didn’t come to you to help you find it, or let you keep it. ”
Silence on the line, and then Hogan’s voice moved lower, the way it did when he flew into weather and was worried. “Tell me anyway.”
Kai swallowed blood and air. “You called me trouble and I called you a liar. You taught me a breathing count that silenced the voices in my head for a spell. I taught you how to disappear in a city that didn’t want to let you.
We didn’t fix each other. We just—fit together.
For a minute. I think about it when I’m trying not to do stupid shit. I’m failing at that part tonight.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t fail at shit,” Hogan said. “You’re going to do exactly what I tell you and then you’re going to keep breathing until I find you. That’s the job.”
Kai let his eyes drift to the roof and pretended the rattling van skin was a sky. He was so tired. “Maybe we’ll meet in my next life,” he said. “We can meet where the ground is even and nothing’s hunting us.”
“No next life,” Hogan said, sharp as a hand on a collar. “This one. I’m not finished with you in this one, Kai, so you can just shut that shit down.”
Kai nodded because the phone couldn’t catch it, and it felt good pretending Hogan could see him. “My Ace,” he said, not careful about it. “Always so bossy.”
Hogan exhaled into the line, seeking calm. “Open the side door of the van. Keep the phone on. Throw something out, leave me something bright to find you. If you can’t, you breathe and talk to me, and I’ll find you anyway. I’m on island, Kai. I’m close to you, I can fucking feel it.”
Kai blinked at the handle. He reached up, turned it and pushed the door open, but the runner stuck, then jumped.
Night air slid its fingers under his shirt.
The t-shirt at his side went warm again.
He didn’t look. He had no energy left to throw anything out, and if the bastards came back, they would see that he had at least been awake, but he couldn’t give a shit.
“Good,” Hogan said in a voice that sounded softer. Or maybe Kai was imagining kindness. “Now, keep talking.”
“I should’ve encrypted this,” Kai said. “I didn’t. I wanted your voice.”
“You have it,” Hogan said. “You’ll have the rest of me when I get there.”
The phone slid against his cheek and he caught it back.
“Hey,” Kai said, words slipping. “If I go quiet—”
“You won’t,” Hogan said. “Hold the fuck on.” The order landed the way orders do when they’re promises wearing a uniform.
Kai smiled at nothing. “Copy that,” he said, because he knew Hogan wouldn’t want to hear anything else.
The van rocked in wind, or he did. He let the sound of Hogan’s breath hold the space open a little longer. The phone grew heavy again. The world lifted, turned, and let go.
Hogan’s voice chased him as he slid under. “Stay with me, Kai. I’m coming. This life, and the fucking next. Don’t you fucking leave me.”
It wasn’t a bad thing to hear for the last thing, if it had to be. He decided it didn’t. Then the dark came up, soft this time, and he let it.
The End
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