30. Havoc #2
The kid stops a few feet away, close enough to be heard, far enough to bolt.
He looks at Knox first, then at me, then Vale, and says, “Message.”
Knox is already on his feet despite the paramedic’s protest. “From who?”
The initiate swallows. “Apostle Andrew.”
I suck in a breath. Not because I know the man well. Because the title is enough.
Lena looks at me sharply. I don’t explain.
The kid reaches into his pocket and holds out a folded slip of paper. I take it before Knox can, mostly because my hands are faster.
Inside is a location and a security code. Nothing else. No explanation.
Knox says, “What is this?”
The initiate steps back. “I was just told to deliver it.”
“You’ve met him?” I ask.
He hesitates. “Not directly.”
Lie, maybe. Or maybe not. Initiates are often used precisely because they genuinely do not know enough to be useful under pressure.
I fold the paper once, slowly. “What’s at the address?”
The kid shakes his head. “Didn’t tell me.”
“Why us?” Lena asks before anyone else can.
The initiate looks at her for one second too long, like he recognizes something he shouldn’t, then says, “Wasn’t for me to ask.”
And then he’s gone.
The paramedic near Knox says, “You know that kid?”
None of us answers him.
I look down at the paper in my hand again. Location. Security code. That’s it.
Vale is staring after the initiate like he wants to tear the night open and drag answers out of it.
Knox looks even harder to read than usual, which is saying something.
Lena is watching all three of us now, blanket tight around her shoulders, eyes narrowing as she realizes this just changed the shape of things again.
I say what all of us are already thinking. “Well,” I murmur, “that clears up absolutely nothing.”
No one disagrees.
The paramedic comes back to Knox with a monitor clipped to his finger and a look I don’t like at all. “You need to go in,” he says. “Now.”
Knox still has the oxygen mask hanging loose around his neck. “No.”
The paramedic doesn’t even blink. He’s probably dealt with men like this before. “Your vitals are not looking good.”
“I’m sitting up. Talking. Breathing.”
“Badly,” the paramedic says. “And your oxygen saturation dropped twice while I was standing here. You inhaled a lot of smoke. We need to rule out airway injury and carbon monoxide exposure.”
Knox gives him the kind of look that usually makes people rethink their careers.
This man does not rethink anything.
Vale is leaning against the side of the ambulance now, bruised to hell, one eye swollen, wrist wrapped, looking like he should probably be in a hospital himself and still somehow the calmer one of the two. “Knox,” he says.
Knox doesn’t take his eyes off the paramedic. “No.”
Vale pushes off the ambulance a little, slower than he means to because of the ribs. “Havoc and I will follow through.”
That gets Knox to look at him.
Vale jerks his chin toward the slip of paper in my hand. “We go to the location. You go to the hospital. Lena goes with you.”
She stares at him. “I what?”
Knox says, at the same time, “Absolutely not.”
I snort once. “Look at that. Finally, agreement.”
The paramedic looks between all of us like he’s getting more than he bargained for from what should have been a routine fire scene.
Knox straightens, which is a mistake because I can actually see the effort it costs him. “I’m not leaving you two to walk into something blind.”
Vale says, “You are if you’re coughing your lungs out in ten minutes.”
“I’m fine.”
The paramedic actually laughs at that. Not kindly. Just briefly, like the lie insulted him. “You are not fine.”
Knox ignores him. Vale doesn’t.
“You nearly dropped in the lot,” Vale says. “That was before you tried to pretend smoke inhalation is a personality trait.”
That would almost be funny if Knox didn’t look like somebody had sanded down the inside of him.
I fold my arms. “He’s right.”
Knox turns his head. “Don’t.”
“Why?” I say. “Because you hate hearing it twice?”
Knox opens his mouth to argue again, but the medic cuts straight through him.
“If you wait and your airway swells, you’ll stop being difficult and start being dead.”
That quiets the whole group.
Not because anyone suddenly loves hospitals, but because that sounds too possible.
I look at Knox properly then. Soot all over him. Eyes reddened. Skin still too pale under the grime. Breathing slower now, but not easier. I hate that I can see it. I hate more that Vale clearly saw it before I did.
Vale says, more quietly, “You go in. They check you. That buys us time.”
Knox’s jaw tightens. “And Lena?”
Her name lands in the middle of all of it.
I glances at Lena, then at Vale. “She goes with him.”
“No,” Knox says.
Vale says, “Yes.”
The two of them stare at each other for a second that feels older than the night.
Then Vale says, “We’ve just learned two useful things. First, none of us trusts anyone else to watch her. Second, we’re safer when we stay together than when we split four different ways and hope for the best.”
I nod once. “Hate it. Agree.”
Knox drags a hand over his face, then regrets it when it smears soot deeper. “If she goes to a public hospital?—”
“She goes with us,” Vale says. “Not alone. Not with strangers. With us.”
The emphasis matters, and Knox hates it but understands it anyway.
The paramedic says, “Ambulance leaves in two minutes.”
I look at the slip of paper again, then at Vale. “We get Knox fixed up first. Then we can check the address, circle it, not go in dumb. See what this Apostle wants.”
Vale nods once. “Exactly.”
Knox looks at Lena then. Really looks at her. Like he’s trying to calculate risk and distance and timing and whether she can be kept alive in a fluorescent emergency room while the rest of the world keeps moving without us.
She crosses her arms. “I’m not thrilled either, in case that helps.”
It doesn’t. But he almost reacts.
Almost.
I say, “Look at it this way. You get oxygen, a chest X-ray, and Lena gets the exciting experience of discovering whether hospitals are somehow worse than motels.”
She says, “At this point I’m open to being surprised.”
Vale’s mouth shifts slightly at that, then settles. He looks tired enough that even almost-smiling seems expensive.
Knox still isn’t giving in.
Lena looks like she thinks everyone else is being grim and impossible and she’s tired of feeling like cargo. “Maybe I’m the secret killer weapon.”
All three of us look at her.
She shrugs. “Maybe that’s the twist. Maybe the Brotherhood’s been overthinking this and what they really need is a Sisterhood built entirely around me.”
I laugh first. A real one.
Vale huffs a breath that hurts him and makes him stop.
Even the paramedic looks confused enough to almost smile.
Knox closes his eyes for half a second, his version of surrender. When he opens them again, the fight in them has changed shape. “You stay with one of us at all times,” he tells Lena.
She blinks. “That’s your acceptance speech?”
“It’s what you’re getting.”
“Touching,” she says. “Now let’s go. Let’s get you fixed.”