17. Vale #2
He didn’t look rattled. Not exactly. Men like him don’t rattle easy. But he was hiding something. I know it. I felt it in every pause, every answer that wasn’t one, every time his face went flat a second too late.
“He knows who Lena is,” I say.
Beside me, Havoc lets out a quiet breath. “You think?”
I glance at him. He’s leaning against the concrete wall like none of this matters, but I know him better than that. His eyes are sharp. Annoyed. Interested.
I nod once. “There was recognition on his face.”
Havoc says nothing.
“We didn’t give him more than her first name,” I go on. “Not a last name. Not a detail. Nothing he should’ve been able to use.” I look toward the open door, toward the slice of red light cutting into the hallway. “And still he reacted.”
Havoc’s jaw shifts slightly. “Yeah.”
“The name means something to him.”
I start to say more, but my phone buzzes in my pocket. The sound cuts through the leftover noise from the club. I pull it out, already irritated, then see Knox’s name on the screen.
Havoc watches me answer.
I put the phone to my ear. “What?”
Knox doesn’t waste time. His voice is clipped, tight in a way that makes my spine straighten before he’s even finished speaking.
By the time the call ends, the hallway feels smaller.
Havoc pushes off the wall. “What happened?”
I slide the phone into my pocket and look once toward the club floor, toward the bar where the Shepherd disappeared.
“We’ll deal with him later,” I say. “We have to go.”
* * *
Knox is waiting outside the motel room when we pull in. Leaning against the railing on the second-floor walkway, arms folded, face unreadable.
The motel itself looks worse up close. Faded paint. Cigarette burns on the metal rail. One flickering yellow light near the ice machine. The whole place smells like old rain, bleach, and cheap carpet that never really dries.
Havoc gets out first and slams the car door. “How did you even get her here?” he asks as we head up the stairs.
“Yeah,” I say, my tone dry. “You were supposed to stay back and do research.”
Knox doesn’t move from the railing. Doesn’t answer either. He just looks at both of us like we’re already wasting his time. “Are you done?” he says.
That shuts it down for a second. Not because either of us is actually done, but because Knox has that look on his face. Flat. Controlled. Tired in a way that usually means he’s one sentence away from getting mean.
He pushes off the railing and walks to the door, unlocking it without another word.
We follow him in.
The room is small and dim, one lamp on near the bed, the curtains pulled shut. Cheap carpet. Cheap bedding. Cheap motel art bolted to the wall. Lena is sitting on the bed when we walk in, back straightening the second she sees us. Her eyes move to me first, then Havoc, then Knox again.
She didn’t know we were coming. That much is obvious.
I stop just inside the room and the smell hits me.
Sex.
Not faint. Not imagined. It’s in the air, mixed with stale detergent and old cigarette smoke and the motel’s damp, shut-in smell. Sweat, skin, something warmer underneath it. Fresh enough that it hasn’t had time to disappear.
I don’t react. But I know Havoc catches it too.
I don’t even have to look right away. I know because the whole energy beside me changes.
Then I do glance over, and there it is. That manic look settling over his face, quick and bright and a little wild, like he’s just been handed something he absolutely shouldn’t enjoy this much.
He doesn’t say a word. That’s what makes it worse.
Lena sees him see it. A flush rises high on her face, not quite shame, not quite anger, but something tight and immediate.
Her chin lifts, like she refuses to be the one uncomfortable here.
Knox, for his part, doesn’t look at either of them.
He shuts the door behind us and moves a little further into the room like the smell doesn’t exist, like the bed isn’t rumpled, like none of us can read what happened in the space between him standing outside and Lena sitting there now.
But the room knows. And now so do we.
Havoc drags a hand over his mouth, still silent, still wearing that expression. His eyes flick once from Knox to Lena and back again, amused in a way that promises trouble later.
I decide immediately I hate all of this.
Lena folds her arms. “What?”
“Nothing,” Havoc says, too smoothly.
Which means absolutely something.
Knox shoots him a warning look. “Don’t.”
That only makes the corner of Havoc’s mouth twitch.
I look at Lena again. She’s trying hard to look unaffected, but I can see the tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers tuck into her elbows, the way her gaze won’t stay in one place for long.
Then I look at Knox, who still has that locked-down expression he wears when he wants to pretend he’s made of stone.
It would work better if the whole room didn’t smell like him and her.
Havoc exhales through his nose and finally says, “Well. This is interesting.”
For a second, nobody says anything. The silence sits in the room with all the other things nobody wants to name.
I stay by the door because it feels like the right place for me. Not too close. Not too far.
The room is too small for this many people and too full of things nobody is saying.
Lena on the bed, arms folded, chin up. Knox standing a few feet from her like he’s trying to look calm enough for both of them.
Havoc leaning against the wall with that unreadable half smile of his, watching everything, missing nothing.
And me, standing there feeling something ugly turn over in my chest.
Possessive.
The word hits hard because I hate it the second I think it. Hate what it says about me. Hate how natural it feels anyway.
Everything about me is fucked up. Everything about this life is.
Part of me wants to blame Havoc for it. For all of it.
Wants to tell myself he pushed me into Lena in the first place, that he got in my head, wound me up, aimed me at her because that’s the kind of shit he does when he’s bored or curious.
But standing here now, with the smell of her still in the room and the memory of her body still too easy to pull up, I know that’s bullshit.
He didn’t make me fuck her. I wanted to.
I liked it.
More than liked it.
And what bothers me most is that it didn’t feel dirty when it happened.
Didn’t feel wrong. Didn’t feel like I was taking part in one more rotten thing in a life full of them.
It felt good. Real. Simple in a way almost nothing ever is.
For those minutes, with her under me, everything made a brutal kind of sense.
Which leaves me nowhere to put the blame except where it belongs.
On myself.
Knox clears his throat, dragging the room back to the present. “All right,” he says. “Enough.” His tone is flat, controlled, meant to cut through the tension before Havoc starts smiling too hard or Lena starts pushing back just to prove she can.
I say, “We went to the club. Found the Shepherd. He gave us nothing useful, officially.”
“Officially,” Havoc repeats.
Knox ignores him.
I continue, “We asked about the file. About why Lena was on it. He told us to stay away from anyone listed unless the Brotherhood asks for them directly.”
Lena’s eyes narrow. “Why are you even asking about me? I told you?—”
“You don’t know anything, right, right,” Havoc says.
“But we’ve got this itch, little lamb. There’s something about you.
” He drags his gaze all over her and I can see her shudder.
“Well, something tells me you aren’t here on your own.
So, something must have happened.” He looks at Knox who sucks in a breath.
“I lied. I left right after you guys did and I went down to the place where she works.” He glances at me and Havoc. “I went there to talk to her. Kept it quiet. In and out. That was the idea.”
Lena’s arms tighten over herself.
“But before I could get anything out of her, the place got hit.”
I frown. “Hit how?”
Knox keeps his voice flat. “Not random. Not some idiot with a gun. Controlled. Quick. Enough to blow the place open and send everyone running.”
I look at him. “And you think it was about her.”
“I know it was,” he says. “I got her out the back, and we were followed into the alley. She fired at one of them,” he adds.
Havoc’s mouth twitches. “She did?”
Lena’s face hardens. “Glad that’s funny to you.”
“It is a little,” Havoc says.
Knox ignores that. “Point is, they followed us out of the café and into the alley. That was not random.”
Lena is still frowning, still watching him with that guarded, skeptical look. Then she says, “How do I know this isn’t just another one of your manipulative techniques?”
The room stills.
Her eyes move from Knox to me to Havoc. “You could have had someone from the Brotherhood attack us.”
Havoc laughs first.
I do too, quieter but no less real.
Even Knox’s mouth shifts, just slightly.
Lena looks annoyed now. “What?”
I push off the door and look at her. “The Brotherhood isn’t our lapdog.”
She stares at me.
Havoc pushes off the wall, still smiling, but there’s nothing light in it now. “The Brotherhood doesn’t operate like that.”
She frowns. “Like what?”
“Out in the open,” he says. “Making scenes. Drawing attention. Using public chaos. Unless they absolutely have to.”
Knox says nothing. Doesn’t need to. Havoc has it.
Havoc goes on, voice easy, almost conversational. “Whatever they do, they do in the shadows. Quiet. Covert. They avoid attention. That’s the point.”
I nod once. “We don’t like witnesses.”
Lena looks between us. Still guarded. Still suspicious. “So what,” she says. “I’m supposed to believe the shooting at the café and the alley just happened to line up with all this?”
“No,” Havoc says. “You’re supposed to understand that if the Brotherhood wanted you taken, you wouldn’t be standing here arguing about it.”