17. Vale #3
She looks at Knox again. “So you’re saying whoever fired at the café wasn’t doing it just to scare me.”
Knox’s voice stays flat. “I’m saying it wasn’t random.”
The room goes quiet.
Lena folds her arms tighter. “That still doesn’t prove it wasn’t staged.”
Havoc’s smile fades a little. “You think we asked the Brotherhood to fire at a café in broad daylight just to convince you of something?”
She lifts her chin. “I think I don’t know any of you well enough to rule anything out.”
Fair.
I push off the door and take a step into the room. “Then rule this out. The Brotherhood doesn’t answer to us like that. They don’t do favors. They don’t perform. And they sure as hell don’t risk exposure just to help us make a point.”
“The only time they made an exception,” I say, “was with Elias Vane.”
Lena goes still. Then her eyes widen. “Wait. The serial killer?”
Nobody answers right away.
That’s answer enough.
She looks between us, stunned now. “You’re saying the Brotherhood took him out?”
Havoc’s grin comes back, slow and ugly and pleased with itself. “He didn’t just end up with his neck twisted in the gorge.”
Lena stares at him.
Knox says nothing.
I keep my eyes on hers. “No.”
She looks genuinely shaken now, trying to fit that into everything else she thinks she knows about the world. “But he broke out of prison. There was a nationwide manhunt. They said he was armed. They said he vanished.”
Havoc lifts one shoulder. “And then he didn’t.”
Her mouth parts slightly. “Jesus.”
“Elias Vane had become too public to handle quietly,” I say.
Lena’s voice comes out thinner now. “So they just… killed him?”
Knox finally speaks. “He was a problem.”
Havoc glances at her. “A vicious one.”
She looks back at me. “And you’re telling me this like I’m supposed to take comfort in it?”
“No,” I say. “I’m telling you so you understand the scale.”
She says nothing.
Good.
Because she needs to hear it clearly.
“So I’m supposed to believe,” Lena says slowly, looking between the three of us, “that you guys are the good guys? That you’re protectors?”
“No,” I say. My voice comes out flat enough to stop the room for a second.
Her eyes come to me.
“We’re wrath,” I say. “We’re deliverance.”
She shudders. It’s small, but I see it. A shift in her shoulders. A flicker under her skin. Fear, yes, but not just fear. Something else. Something that makes her believe that I’m not just feeding her lies.
Havoc looks at me, then back at her. “I meant what I said before. We can help you.”
Knox turns sharply. “You said that to her?”
Havoc doesn’t even bother pretending not to know what he means. “Yeah.”
Knox scowls. “Why?”
Havoc rolls his eyes. “Because apparently I’m a reckless, emotionally unstable visionary who occasionally says useful things.”
Knox’s expression doesn’t change.
Havoc sighs, sarcasm thick in his voice now. “Sorry. Next time I’ll just let her spiral and stare moodily at the wall. Much better strategy.”
“That wasn’t the question,” Knox says.
“No,” Havoc says. “The question was why I told her we could help.” He tilts his head. “Because we can.”
Lena looks at him, wary. “Help me how?”
“You don’t have to be with us,” I say.
That gets her attention faster than anything else.
Knox looks at me now too, but he doesn’t interrupt.
I keep my eyes on her. “But we do need to find out who’s trying to hurt you, kill you even.”
The room goes still again.
Lena’s face changes. Not disbelief this time. Something colder. “Kill me,” she repeats. “That seems extreme.”
“Yes,” Knox says. “but it’s a possibility, and one we have to consider. They had guns, they were shooting at us.”
She lets out a short breath, almost a laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “That seems like a pretty major detail to keep dropping into conversation like it’s nothing.”
“It isn’t nothing,” I say.
“Then stop saying it like you’re talking about coffee and toast. You’re literally saying someone tried to assassinate me.”
Fair.
Havoc pushes off the wall. “Look, call us whatever you want. Monsters. Liars. Bad company. None of that changes the part where somebody opened fire at your café, followed you into an alley, and your name is sitting in places it shouldn’t be.”
Lena folds her arms tighter. “And your answer is what? I stay in a motel with three psychopaths until you solve it?”
“Two,” Havoc says. “Maybe two and a half.”
Knox shoots him a look.
Havoc lifts his hands. “What? I’m being generous.”
Lena doesn’t smile.
I say, “Our answer is that you stay alive long enough for us to pull this apart.”
I can see it in the way she goes quiet, in the way anger gives ground to calculation.
Knox speaks then, clipped as ever. “You don’t have to trust us.”
Havoc huffs a laugh. “Probably shouldn’t.”
Lena looks down for a second, then back up. “And you really think you can do something about it?”
“No,” I say. “I know we can.”
She studies me too long. Maybe she’s trying to decide whether that certainty comforts her or scares her more.
It should scare her.
Havoc looks at her and says, quieter this time, “You don’t have to be with us.”
Then he jerks his chin toward the window, toward the dark outside, toward everything waiting beyond the motel walls.
“But until we know who wants you dead, you probably shouldn’t be alone.”