13. Havoc
Havoc
Taking her out is a bad idea.
Knox is right about that, which is annoying all by itself.
It would be safer to keep her inside the complex where the gates are locked, the cameras work, and every person within shouting distance belongs to us or knows better than to ask questions.
It would be smarter to keep her where I can predict the angles, where Vale can keep staring at her like she’s a prayer he shouldn’t want, and where Knox can pretend this is still just a problem to solve.
Safe. Sane. Contained.
Which is probably why I don’t do it.
I never liked cages much, even when they were built for good reasons.
Lena stands beside me in Vale’s shirt, her face pale but set, like she’s one bad word away from bolting and knows it. Knox is still watching me with that flat look that says he thinks I’m making a mistake. He’s right.
Still doing it.
“I said I’d take her,” I tell him.
“That isn’t the part I don’t trust,” he replies.
I grin. “You wound me.”
He doesn’t smile.
Vale stays quiet. He’s been quiet since the room, since the wall, since he left too much of himself on her to hide it now. He looks at Lena once, then at me. There’s no argument in him.
I jerk my head toward the door. “Come on, sweetheart.”
She follows me because right now following me looks more like freedom than staying. Funny how that works.
We move through the hallways in silence.
The building wakes slowly around us, low lights and concrete, the hum of vents overhead, doors that stay closed because people in places like this know when not to step out and ask questions.
Lena keeps close enough that I can feel her nerves without touching her.
Every few seconds her gaze flicks to a turn, a window, a stairwell. Measuring. Still looking for a way out.
Good.
At the final security door, I stop and pull a black strip of cloth from my pocket.
She sees it and goes still. “No.”
“It comes off when we’re clear,” I say.
Her throat moves when she swallows. “You said you were taking me home.”
“I am.”
“That is not comforting.”
“Most of what I say isn’t.”
I lift the blindfold. She doesn’t step back, but her shoulders go tight enough to crack.
For one second I consider not doing it. Then I remember exactly where I’m taking her from and how much it matters if she starts talking to the wrong person about this place.
“Close your eyes,” I tell her.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m getting there.”
“Cute.”
She does close them. I tie the blindfold gently, more carefully than she probably expects from me. My knuckles brush her hair, the shell of her ear, the soft skin behind it. She shivers the instant I touch her.
That gets my attention.
So does the way her breathing changes.
When I finish, she lifts a hand like she’s going to rip the cloth right back off. I catch her wrist before she can.
She tenses.
I lean in, mouth close to her ear. “Relax,” I murmur.
That word goes through her like a current. I feel it in the way she stills, in the tiny breath she draws in, in the involuntary shiver that runs down her body. God, she’s responsive.
I let go of her wrist and guide her forward with a hand at her lower back.
Outside, the morning air is cooler than it was earlier.
The complex sits far enough from the city to feel like its own private country: concrete walls, wire fencing, cameras nested in the corners, long gravel drives, low industrial buildings giving way to stretches of scrub and open land.
Not pretty, exactly. Useful. Hidden. Expensive in the way secrecy always is.
She can’t see any of it.
Probably for the best.
My car waits near the side lot, black paint eating the light, windows dark, engine already warm. She slows the moment her shoes leave the concrete and hit gravel, careful now, listening to the sound of space around her.
“We’re outside?” she asks.
“No, this is a very breezy hallway.”
“Asshole.”
I open the passenger door and help her in.
She stiffens when my hands land on her waist, then settles once she’s in the seat.
Relief hits her the second the door shuts and the car encloses us.
Funny thing, that. She feels safer in a locked vehicle with me than standing inside the place where she was supposed to be protected.
I round the hood, get in, and close my own door. The second we’re moving through the outer gate, I nod toward the blindfold. “You can take it off.”
She rips it down immediately. The look on her face when she sees the car is almost worth the entire argument with Knox.
Relief. Real relief.
Because it’s a car. Because it’s daylight. Because for one split second this looks almost normal, and normal is the one thing she’s been starving for since the harbor.
She glances out the window, expecting buildings. Gets open land instead.
Her relief falters. “Where the hell am I?”
“Not the city.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.”
She turns in the seat to look at me, Vale’s shirt bunched around her thighs, hair still a mess, mouth still a little bruised from everything that happened before I brought her out here. She looks exhausted. Pissed off. Alive in a way I can’t stop watching.
It would make more sense to lock this down, keep her under watch, wait for the next move to come to us. That’s what Knox would do. That’s what any sane man in my position would do.
But I never liked waiting.
And I definitely never liked safe.
I want to know what she does when the door opens and no one is physically blocking it. I want to know whether she runs, whether she lies, whether she goes home and pretends none of this happened, whether she looks over her shoulder for us every ten seconds or every thirty.
I want to see what the lamb does next.
So I drive.
The drive is quieter than I expected.
She sits beside me, close enough that I can feel the heat of her without touching her, and for once she isn’t fighting me, isn’t glaring, isn’t trying to claw her way out of her skin.
She’s tense, though. I can see it in the way she holds herself, hands folded too tightly in her lap, shoulders pulled in like making herself smaller might help.
It won’t.
I glance at her for a second, then back at the road.
I still don’t understand it.
She isn’t my type. Or at least, she shouldn’t be.
Too quiet on the surface. Too mousy. The kind of girl most men would overlook until she looked up and said something with teeth in it.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? She does have teeth.
Under all that caution and wide-eyed shock, she’s got this stubborn little streak that keeps pushing through, even when it would be smarter for her to keep her mouth shut.
I don’t know why that gets to me.
Maybe because it surprised me.
Maybe because she surprised me.
I remember the way she came undone earlier, how she fought it even then, how her body gave away things her mouth wouldn’t. I remember the look on Vale’s face too, and I have to tighten my grip on the wheel for a second to stop myself from thinking about that too hard.
That annoys me more than it should.
She turns her head and catches me looking. “What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
She gives me a look that says she doesn’t believe that for a second. Good. She shouldn’t.
Streetlights slide over her face in intervals, lighting her up and then taking her away again. Every time I look over, she seems slightly different. Softer in one moment. More guarded in the next. It does strange things to my head.
Part of me wants to know what she’d do if I pushed. Part of me wants to know what she sounds like when she stops pretending to be brave. Part of me wants to shake myself for even caring.
“You ask a lot of questions,” I say.
“That’s because nobody tells me anything.”
I smile a little. “That’s not true. I tell you things.”
“Not real things.”
“Safe things.”
She turns more fully toward me now. “So you admit it.”
“I admit I’m not stupid.”
That seems to irritate her. “You expect me to just sit here and accept whatever vague answer you feel like giving me?”
“I expect you to keep trying.”
She stares at me for a second, then looks out the windshield. “Fine. What exactly is the Brotherhood?”
There it is.
Straight to it.
I drum my fingers once against the steering wheel. “Depends who’s asking.”
“I am.”
“I noticed.”
She exhales through her nose. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She goes quiet, waiting me out. Smart move. Most people rush to fill silence. I don’t mind it. But after a few seconds I decide to give her a little.
“The Brotherhood isn’t one thing,” I say. “That’s the first part people get wrong. It’s not some club with matching rings and dramatic speeches.”
Her mouth twitches despite herself. “You do seem like the matching-rings type.”
I laugh.
God, she’s annoying.
And hot.
“It’s a network,” I say. “Layers. Cells. People who know different pieces of the same machine. Most of them don’t know the whole shape, and that’s on purpose.”
She listens closely. I can feel it.
“And the Apostles?” she asks.
“Higher up.”
“That tells me nothing.”
“It tells you enough.”
She gives me a flat look. “It really doesn’t.”
I sigh, like she’s the difficult one here. “The Apostles are the ones who send things down. Orders. Corrections. Punishments. Direction, when they feel like being generous.”
“And Andrew?”
At that, I glance at her again. “Andrew is a name,” I say. “Maybe a person. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that when something comes from an Apostle, people listen.”
Her eyes narrow. “That’s convenient.”
“For them? Very.”
“For you too, apparently.”
I shrug. “Sometimes.”
She folds her arms. “And where do you fit in?”
That one makes me grin. “You really want a chart?”
“I want one honest answer.”
I think about that for a second.
Then I give her one.
“I’m useful,” I say.
She looks unimpressed. “That’s not an answer.”