22. Knox #2
Lena keeps her eyes on mine. “If you’re going in there, I’m going in there.”
Havoc leans against the car, folding his arms. “I like her.”
Vale says quietly, “She’s right.”
I look at both of them, then back at her. She’s not backing down. I can see it. Even if I dragged her back to the car, she’d make me work for it, and I’m not stupid enough to start a scene out here over pride.
I let out a breath through my nose. “You stay close.”
Lena’s jaw tightens. “Fine.”
I point at her before she can mistake that for victory. “And if I tell you to stop, you stop.”
She doesn’t answer fast enough for me to like it.
“Lena.”
“Fine,” she says again.
Havoc pushes off the car and claps once, too cheerful for the setting. “Lovely. Family outing.”
Vale gives him a look.
Voss just turns toward the house and says, “Try to keep your people quiet in there.”
I step forward before anyone else can answer and head for the front door, the others falling in behind me.
Voss lets us in through the front door.
The house looks normal at first glance. Too normal. Clean counters. Shoes by the entry. No signs of a struggle. No police tape, no broken furniture, no drawers dumped out. If you didn’t know better, you’d think the owner had stepped out for errands.
Havoc looks around once and says, “Police been here?” It sounds casual, but it isn’t. He’s asking whether they know the guy is gone.
Voss answers right away. “No.”
Havoc nods once. “So they don’t know what happened to him.”
“No,” Voss says. Then he glances at me. “You were perfect. They may never find him.”
Lena turns sharply at that, but nobody explains it.
Voss shuts the door and keeps his voice low. “But police are not the ones looking for him.”
That gets all of our attention.
Vale says, “Who is?”
Voss doesn’t answer. He looks at Lena instead, clearly unhappy that she’s here and even less happy that this conversation is happening in front of her. “You brought her,” he says.
“She came,” Havoc replies.
Lena folds her arms. “I’m standing right here.”
Voss looks at her once. “That’s part of the problem.”
I say, “Show us.”
He takes us down a short hallway to a room at the back of the house. Probably meant to be a study. Desk, shelves, printer, locking file cabinet. Practical room. No wasted space.
I stop in the doorway. For a second, I don’t think my brain takes it in properly.
Then it does.
Lena makes a small sound beside me.
The room is lined with photographs. Not framed.
Not arranged with any normal person’s taste or order.
Just pinned up across one whole wall and spilling onto another.
Dozens of them. Maybe more. Lena leaving the café.
Lena carrying groceries. Lena unlocking her apartment building.
Lena in line somewhere with coffee in her hand.
Lena laughing with two women I assume are her friends.
Lena on her fire escape. Lena in her kitchen.
Lena sleeping.
My stomach turns cold.
Some of the pictures are close enough to feel intimate. Too intimate. Shot from angles no stranger should have had. Through glass. Through narrow openings. Across streets. From inside places he should never have been.
Havoc’s smile disappears.
Vale goes absolutely still.
Lena doesn’t say anything at first. She just stares, face draining slowly, eyes moving from one picture to the next like her mind is refusing to catch up because catching up would mean admitting this is real.
Voss steps past us and reaches for the desk. “There’s more,” he says. He opens a folder and lays out a single page on the desk surface.
It takes me one glance to understand what I’m looking at.
A contract. Her name typed clearly. Descriptors. A photo clipped to the front. Terms. Amount. Conditions.
Vale is the one who says it out loud. “Jesus.”
Lena looks at the page, then at me. “What is that?”
Havoc answers, but there’s no humor left in him now. “It’s a kill order.”
Her face changes in a way I’ve never seen before. Not just fear. Something deeper than that. The human mind realizing it has been downgraded to an objective.
She takes a step back. “No,” she says. “No.”
Voss reaches again, this time for a monitor tucked into the far side of the desk. The screen is black until he wakes it. Then a grid appears.
Camera feeds.
The room gets smaller around us.
Lena sees it at the same time I do and stops breathing for a second.
Her apartment. Different angles. Different rooms. The front door. The kitchen. The hall.
The bedroom.
There’s one pointed right at her bed.
No one speaks. The image just sits there on the screen, cold and grainy and unforgivable.
Lena makes a strangled, disbelieving sound, one hand flying to her mouth. Vale turns toward her immediately, but she doesn’t seem to notice him. She’s staring at the monitor like if she looks long enough it will rearrange itself into something less monstrous.
It doesn’t.
Havoc says, very quietly, “How long?”
Voss’s face is hard as stone. “Long enough.”
I look from the contract to the wall of photographs to the live proof that someone has been inside her home, watching her sleep, and something old and violent in me locks into place.
Beside me, Lena whispers, “Oh my God.”
And then her eyes catch on something in the bottom corner of the screen, and she goes completely still.
“What is that?” she asks.
No one answers.
Because from where I’m standing, I can’t quite see it yet.
But whatever it is, it’s enough to make the blood leave her face.