36. Havoc
Havoc
Knox drives like the road has personally offended him.
He doesn’t speed carelessly. That’s not his style.
He simply takes every gap before it exists, cuts through the thinning traffic with both hands locked on the wheel, and treats red lights as obstacles to be assessed rather than obeyed.
Vale is in the passenger seat, one hand braced against the door every time we turn hard, his bruised face giving nothing away except for the set of his jaw.
I sit in the back with the address clenched in my hand and every nerve in my body stretched tight enough to sing.
None of us says much.
There’s nothing useful left to say. We already went over it before we got into the car, once we had the address and knew we were moving without support, without backup, without trusting a single channel beyond the three of us.
Knox doesn’t show fear in ways ordinary people would recognize. He becomes more exact. More economical. His silences harden. But I’ve known him long enough to hear the strain under it, and I know Vale hears it too because he doesn’t needle him once the whole drive.
The address takes us out past nicer streets, past places still lived in, and leaves us in a section of town where houses stand far apart and most of them have already started losing the fight against weather and neglect.
The one we want sits near the end of a broken lane behind a sagging fence, its windows boarded in places and open in others, one side of the porch caved low enough to make the whole front look lopsided.
Knox has barely eased the car toward the curb when I’m already opening the door.
He doesn’t tell me to wait.
That, more than anything, tells me how far gone we all are.
By the time Knox and Vale come around the car, I’m already at the edge of the property, studying the broken porch, the side windows, the line of dead grass where someone has been walking more often than the rest. There are tire marks near the back, faint but recent.
One upstairs window has a sliver of movement behind it, or maybe it’s just a curtain breathing in the draft.
Either way, I want inside badly enough that my teeth hurt.
Knox stops beside me and follows my gaze. “Back entrance,” he says.
“Two likely,” Vale adds, looking past the house toward the overgrown side yard. “One obvious, one not.”
“Let’s take the more obvious one.”
Knox looks at me, and for a second there’s the old familiar calculation in his eyes, the one that measures how much trouble I’m about to cause and whether he can use it.
Then he nods.
Good.
Vale moves first, peeling off toward the side of the house.
Knox angles the other way, taking the rear without breaking stride. I wait until they disappear from my peripheral vision, then cross the yard openly.
No attempt to hide.
No point.
If someone is watching, I want them watching me.
The porch groans under my weight when I step onto it.
I let it. My thumb brushes once along the grip of my gun.
Through the cracked front window, I catch only darkness and the stale shapes of abandoned furniture, but the house doesn’t feel empty.
Places with people in them have a pressure of their own. This one is holding its breath.
I think of Lena somewhere inside, scared and furious and probably making some bastard regret underestimating her even now. The thought puts a smile on my face that has nothing to do with amusement.
Then I stop waiting.
The front door is old, the frame weaker than it looks, and surprise is only useful if you spend it before anyone has time to think. I drive my shoulder into the wood hard enough that the latch gives on the first hit and the door flies inward with a crack that carries through the whole house.
The room beyond is brighter than I expect.
Bare walls. Concrete floor. One overhead light. Lena tied to a chair near the center of it, blindfold gone, face pale except for the angry mark across one cheek.
And the man beside her, unmasked, with a knife in his hand.
Too close.
The angle is wrong. Lena is between us just enough that I can’t take the shot without risking her, and the bastard knows it. His head snaps toward me, but by then I’m already moving.
I go straight at him.
There’s no reason to be clever when speed will do.
He jerks Lena’s chair sideways with one hand and brings the knife up with the other, trying to make me slow down, trying to turn her into a shield.
I don’t give him the chance. I hit him before he can settle his stance, shoulder into his chest, and we go down hard enough to rattle the chair beside us.
The knife flashes once near my ribs.
I catch his wrist with both hands and slam it into the floor.
He’s stronger than he looks. Older too, but not slow.
He twists under me, gets a knee between us, and drives it up hard enough to shove me off-balance.
The blade scrapes close across my side as I roll away, close enough to sting, not deep enough to matter.
He comes after me immediately.
Good.
That means his attention is where I want it.
I get one hand around his forearm before he can swing again and punch him in the mouth with the other. He answers by driving his elbow into my jaw, and for one bright second the room tilts sideways.
Then Knox is there. He comes in from the back of the house exactly as planned, catching the kidnapper from behind before he can press the advantage. Knox hooks an arm around his throat and yanks him back while I kick the knife hand hard enough that the blade skitters across the floor.
The man fights like he knows what he’s doing. He uses his weight well, drops low, tears free of Knox’s hold with a move that looks trained, and swings for me again with his bare fist before I can close the distance. I block most of it. Enough lands to split my lip.
I catch his wrist with both hands and force it away from my ribs, but he’s stronger than he first looked and better trained than some amateur with a grudge should be.
He twists under me, drives a knee up, and gets just enough space to rake the blade along my side before I slam his hand against the floor.
He looks up at me with real hatred in his face and says, “You don’t even remember what you did.”
I punch him in the mouth. “What I did?” I say. “You’ll have to be more specific. I’ve had a busy life.”
That seems to enrage him more than the hit. He bucks hard, throws me off-balance, and gets an elbow into my jaw as he scrambles up. I roll with it, come back to my feet, and meet him before he can get near Lena again.
“You ruined everything,” he spits.
I block the next swing, catch him across the ribs with my forearm, and blink at him. “Do I know you, dude?”
For half a second, he simply stares at me.
Then something in him snaps.
The next attack is less controlled, all the fury he had been keeping leashed finally breaking through. He comes at me like he wants to tear my throat out with his hands, and that tells me I landed closer to the truth than I meant to.
I grin despite the blood in my mouth. “Apparently not well enough.”
He swings again. I duck, drive a fist into his stomach, and Knox catches the man from behind, locking an arm around his throat and dragging him back before he can recover.
The bastard doesn’t go down easily. He drops his weight, wrenches free with a move too practiced to be luck, and turns on Knox with a strike that would have broken a less prepared man’s nose. Knox deflects it, answers with one of his own, and I come in from the side before the man can reset.
Across the room, Vale doesn’t join us.
He goes straight to Lena.
He’s at her chair before the second blow lands, one hand at the restraints, the other steadying her when she jerks at the sudden movement.
“Vale,” she says, breathless, and there’s too much in that one word for me to examine right now.
“I’ve got you,” he tells her.
He starts on her wrists first, working quickly despite the bruises still dark across his face. Lena is trying not to look at us and failing. Her eyes keep cutting toward the fight, wide and furious, like she wants to help and knows better than to make herself another problem.
The kidnapper sees Vale reach the knot.
That’s when he changes.
Until then, he’s been trying to beat us. Now he tries to get back to her.
He feints toward Knox, pivots out of my reach, and goes for the chair with a burst of speed that tells me taking Lena mattered more than escaping ever did.
“Vale!” I shout.
Vale has just gotten her hands free when the man lunges for her.