Chapter 9 Nitro
Nitro
Ikilled the engine twenty yards before her driveway, coasting the Softail through the last stretch of sand and loose gravel with the clutch pulled in.
The headlight cut a pale tunnel through the pine trunks, and I watched the shadow of her house flicker between them like a mirage—one story, clapboard, windowless on the approach side.
Seraphina Dalton did not believe in curb appeal or vulnerability.
I left the Harley behind a stand of ponderosa, rolled it onto the kickstand, and let the night reclaim the noise.
The temperature had dropped since sunset, bringing the resin smell of sap and the silent threat of frost. I waited a full minute, letting my eyes adjust, listening for anything out of place.
Coyotes bickered somewhere to the west. An owl called. Nothing else.
Seraphina answered my call on the first ring.
“I’m coming up the drive.”
“Okay,” she said, and ended the call.
I walked the last few steps to her porch, boots silent on the dirt.
The porch light was off, but the interior lamp glowed behind a narrow slit in the blackout curtain.
I imagined her on the other side, pacing, waiting, analyzing my approach the same way she’d analyze a malware payload.
I knocked once. A lock disengaged. The door cracked open the width of a vertebra.
“You’re late,” she said.
I shrugged. “Wanted to make sure I didn’t have a tail.”
She peered past me, saw only the empty woods, then stepped aside.
I slipped through, keeping my body angled in case she’d decided to arm the perimeter with something less predictable.
The house was small but dense. There was a desk to the left, computers stacked two high, a couch, and a battered coffee table to the right, a kitchen just a galley cut behind the main room.
No décor, unless you counted the books and the strings of cat-5 cable that hung from the ceiling like industrial tinsel.
“Nice place,” I said.
“It’s a rental,” she replied. “I rotate every six months. This one was supposed to be unlisted.”
“You trust the realtor?”
She gave a snort. “I trust nobody, especially not the people who own houses.”
That made me smile, so I let it. “You want me to sweep the perimeter?”
She bristled, as if the question was an insult. “Already did. Twice.”
I didn’t answer. I just started my circuit because that was the only way I could get comfortable.
She trailed me at a distance, arms folded, the shape of her frame lost in a hoodie two sizes too large.
At each window, I pressed the sash, tested for give.
I checked the seams of the door, the hinges, and the deadbolt.
My hands worked out of habit—left for fine, right for force.
Scar tissue snagged on the wood, but I ignored it.
When I finished, I stood in the center of the room and let my eyes roam. Only one approach made sense—the front, straight up the gravel. No basement. No attic. The roof was too steep for easy access. She’d picked well, but I’d have done it better.
She hovered near the couch, watching me with the look of a woman running calculations she didn’t want to share. I pointed to the desk. “You want to sit there, or on the floor?”
“Couch is fine,” she said, and dropped onto it, pulling her knees up like she was bracing for recoil. She reached for a blanket, hesitated, then left it where it was.
I crossed the room, dropped beside her, making sure my back was to the wall and my eyes had a full sweep of the windows. I set my piece on the coffee table—Glock, slide locked, one in the chamber—and let it sit there, a mute statement. She eyed it but said nothing.
We sat in silence. She fiddled with her hair, then her glasses, then nothing.
The only sound was the house settling, the wind through the needles, the muffled thump of my own pulse.
I watched the front window, every fifteen seconds shifting my gaze to the left, then back.
Old habit from a thousand nights in watchtowers and OPs, where forgetting a quadrant meant dying.
“You’re tense,” she said.
“Always am.”
“You think they’ll come tonight?”
“If it’s Russians, probably not. They don’t like the dark.”
She glanced at me, then out at the woods. “So it’s just you and me and the coyotes.”
I nodded, unsure if she meant it as comfort or warning. She pulled her feet onto the couch, toes burrowing into the upholstery. “You ever get tired of this?”
“Paranoia?”
“The waiting. The readiness.”
I let my head rest against the wall, eyes never leaving the window. “No. If I do, that’s when they get me.”
“I feel the same way.”
The clock on her desk ticked each second, too loud for the space.
She shivered, but not from cold. I watched her profile—a nose that belonged to a mathematician, lips pressed flat, hands in constant twitch.
She was scanning every outcome, trying to decide if I was a solution or a variable.
She decided on neither and said, “You can turn on the TV if you want.”
I shook my head. “Light draws focus.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible.”
“I’ve heard.”
We sat. The darkness outside pressed in, but I found a kind of peace in the standoff. The house was a box, sure, but it was a defensible box. If they came, I’d know before the first step hit the porch. That was all I could ask.
She leaned forward, elbows on knees, staring at the digital clock now. “I should warn you, I’m not a good host.”
“I’m not a good guest,” I said, and the joke landed, soft but true.
Her face relaxed, maybe a half millimeter, then the mask was back. “Do you want coffee?”
“Not if it means getting up.”
She snorted. “You’re lazier than you look.”
“I prefer ‘economical.’”
Another silence, this one less oppressive.
She shifted, and her knee pressed against my thigh, accidental at first but then left in place.
I let it happen because the contact anchored me.
She turned to look at me, glasses catching the faint glow from the desk.
“You really think they’ll come for me here? ”
I nodded. “Eventually.”
She considered that, then said, “Good.”
I didn’t ask why. I already knew the answer.
A branch scraped the siding. I tensed, hand hovering near the Glock, and she noticed. “It’s just wind,” she whispered.
“Wind doesn’t kill people,” I said, but didn’t move.
She leaned back, folding her arms tight, and let her head drop onto the couch. “Maybe it should,” she said. “Would make things simpler.”
I glanced at her, then at the clock, then back to the window. The world outside had gone pitch; nothing to see but my own reflection and the potential for violence.
I thought about the last time I’d felt safe. I couldn’t remember the year, let alone the place. But this wasn’t bad, as holding patterns went. Two survivors, a gun, and a house full of silence.
“You want first watch, or should I take it?” I asked, but she was already asleep, or pretending to be, her breath gone slow and even.
I watched her for a minute, then checked the front window again, eyes tracing the ghost of movement in the trees. Every sense on edge, every muscle coiled for the next bad thing.
This was home, in its way.
After an hour, she shifted. Her foot found the ground, her leg stretched along the cushion, and her knee knocked gently against mine. She didn’t apologize. She just let the contact stay, building by half-inches as if the entire universe was holding its breath.
She wasn’t asleep—her hands fidgeted too much, working at the hem of her hoodie, the sleeve, the elastic at her wrist. Once she rubbed at the inside of her elbow, and I caught a flash of childhood scar, neat and white, the kind that doesn’t come from a fall.
She noticed me noticing, and let her hand drop.
“What’s it like?” she said, voice near-whisper.
I scanned the window, then her, then the floor. “What?”
“Knowing there’s a bomb under the table. Waiting for it to go off.”
I considered that. “It’s not the bomb I worry about. It’s the man who put it there.”
She exhaled, almost a laugh, but not quite. “You think too much.”
“Not enough,” I said, then paused, because that was truer than I meant it to be.
Another minute, another hour. The moon angled over the trees, casting a shifting grid of light through the blackout curtains.
The house made a slow, aching sound—settling, expanding, or maybe just remembering its own violence.
She turned, and this time her shoulder pressed into the sleeve of my jacket, the edge of her glasses digging into my jaw.
She said nothing, and neither did I. It was the kind of silence you only get with people who have seen the worst of the world and are still unconvinced it’s finished with them.
After a while, she lay her head back, turning to face me. Her eyes were shadowed, unreadable behind the thick lenses. “You ever get close to anyone?” she asked.
“No,” I said, because it was easier than the long answer.
She pursed her lips, like she didn’t believe me, or like she did, and it scared her. “Me neither.”
I shrugged. “Not your style?”
“Never had time. Or a reason.” She hesitated, then, “It’s always been easier to work with code than people.”
I looked at her, really looked, and let the words fall. “You’re more than code.”
She tensed, as if I’d offered her a diagnosis instead of a compliment. “That’s the scariest part.”
For a long time, I watched the window. Then I watched her, and I wasn’t sure which was more dangerous. I could feel her pulse through the hoodie, a stutter under my hand where it had settled against her upper arm. I wanted to pull her in, or push her away, or maybe both.