Chapter 15 Nitro
Nitro
Ispent the next two days welding myself to club business, hands full of steel and solvent, and the dumb inertia of the grind.
I parked myself in the war room, walled in by maps and burner phones, pretending not to scan every surface for an email, a text, any sign that Seraphina might still want to talk, or live, or anything at all.
The TV was always on. Nobody watched except for the rare hockey game or a glimpse of the headlines.
I let it drone, background noise behind the real business: the new heroin supply chain, the problem with the Zuni job, the question of whether to ride out to Santa Fe or let the heat die down.
Augustine ran the numbers, I ran the crew, and we both pretended the world outside our walls wasn’t gunning for our skulls.
It was late—closer to morning than night.
Augustine hunched over the territory map, eating a gas station burrito with the ritual care of a man who thought poison only happened to other people.
I’d tuned him out and tuned the TV up, the sound low enough to be a hum, just below the threshold where you start to hallucinate voices.
I flexed my hands, trying to work the scar tissue on my right, and told myself that if I could just keep moving, nothing else would matter.
A flash of red crawled up the side of the TV, urgent and violent. I didn’t care until I caught the word “Los Alamos” in the crawl. I reached for the remote, but Augustine was faster—he stabbed the volume with one knuckle, and the sound hit like a punch.
“…breaking now, security personnel are searching for Dr. Seraphina Dalton, a leading researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who disappeared from her White Rock residence early yesterday morning…”
The news anchor was a perfect animal—big teeth, hair so inhuman it had to be synthetic, eyes that flicked to the left as if trying to dodge the truth. Augustine swore under his breath, then pointed at the screen with his burrito.
“That your girl?” he said.
I didn’t answer. The TV cut to surveillance stills—Seraphina’s house, porch light snapped on, a flash of movement at the edge of the frame.
Next: a shot of her Honda Civic, parked crooked in the driveway, one rear window shattered, safety glass glittering like snow in the headline banner.
The anchor’s voice grew slicker as the facts got thinner:
“…authorities say Dalton was last seen leaving her laboratory late Monday evening. Friends and coworkers describe her as ‘brilliant, private, and extremely focused on her research.’ Security footage obtained by Channel 4 News shows what appears to be an intruder entering the premises just after midnight. Sources close to the investigation believe this may be connected to a recent increase in cyber-intrusions targeting the Lab, though officials declined to comment at this time…”
I felt my hands clench, nails digging crescent moons into my palms. Augustine watched me, then flicked his gaze back to the TV.
“You know they’re gonna pin this on you, right?” he said.
I stared at the TV. Another still—this one a blurry, time-stamped shot of Seraphina, hair in a tight braid, face so drawn you could have used it to teach anatomy.
I remembered the last time I’d seen her, the night on the blanket, the morning after, the way she had pulled away like I was radioactive.
I remembered the things she’d told me, and the things she’d kept back, and I felt the world shift a degree in the wrong direction.
Augustine crumpled his wrapper, tossed it at the wastebasket, and missed by a mile. He didn’t care. “So what’s the play?” he asked.
I didn’t have one. Not yet. The TV kept talking, but the noise in my head was louder. I replayed every second of our last conversation, every phrase, every warning she’d dropped as a joke but meant as gospel. I imagined the way she’d look if she were scared. I’d never seen her scared.
It had been a while since I killed a man. It was time to kill another. And another.
I stood, cracked my neck, and started pacing the length of the room. “Where’s Seneca?” I said.
“Running recon,” Augustine replied. “Supposed to text if he spotted anything unusual.”
I chewed that over. There was nothing unusual anymore. The club was a nest of ex-mil, felons, men who thought in kill ratios and exit routes, but even they were jumpy. I watched the TV, but I watched the door more.
There was a tremor in the air, a subsonic pressure.
I felt it before I heard the engine—a police Crown Vic, slow-rolling up the drive.
I caught it on the security monitor: two cruisers, lights off, but the shape of the light bars still visible.
I pointed it out to Augustine. He moved to the monitor and squinted.
“Cops,” he said. “Probably the real ones.”
I nodded, but it wasn’t a question.
He grinned, the way you do when you know the punchline is coming for your face. “You want me to stall them?”
I shook my head. “Let them in. But don’t let them get comfortable.”
He left the war room, body language already shifting to “dumb bouncer” mode—loose shoulders, jaw slack, the thousand-yard stare of a man who wanted you to underestimate him.
I stayed by the monitors. Watched the two detectives step out of the cruiser, badges swinging on lanyards like dog tags. The driver was a tall woman with a linebacker’s build, the passenger a man built for paperwork. Neither looked happy to be here.
Augustine met them at the door, let them through, and led them to the war room without fanfare. I watched them the whole way—tracking posture, eyes, the way the taller one scanned corners before stepping into a room. They were good, or thought they were.
When they entered, I stood, hands flat on the steel table. “You got a warrant?” I said.
The man answered. “Not yet.”
The woman just looked at me, sizing up my height, weight, and threat level. “Seager Culberson?”
I nodded. “Everyone calls me Nitro.”
She didn’t write it down. “We need to ask you about Seraphina Dalton.”
I nodded at the TV, which was still running her face in a loop. “What about her?”
“She’s missing,” the man said. “Last seen with you, two nights ago.”
I let my face go neutral. “Is that a crime?”
“Not yet,” the woman said. “But it’s interesting, given your history.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got a lot of history.”
She didn’t smile. “Where were you between midnight and two a.m. yesterday?”
“In bed,” I said, and let the implied “alone” hang.
The man glanced at his notes. “You’re aware she had security cameras at her house?”
“Everyone in White Rock has security cameras,” I said. “It’s a hobby.”
He nodded. “So you wouldn’t mind coming down to the station and reviewing the tapes with us?”
I flexed my hands. “Am I under arrest?”
“Not yet,” the woman said again.
I let the silence go. Augustine watched from the corner, arms crossed, waiting for me to give the sign. I didn’t. Not yet.
“What do you think happened to her?” the woman asked.
I looked her dead in the eye. “I think she was working on something important. I think people noticed. And I think the only reason she’s not dead already is because whoever took her wants what she knows.”
The woman’s expression didn’t change, but the man leaned forward. “You have a lot of enemies, Mr. Culberson.”
I laughed, short and sharp. “I don’t have enemies. I have competition.”
He didn’t like that. He checked his notes, then looked up again. “If you see or hear anything, you call us. Immediately.”
I nodded.
They left, footsteps echoing down the corridor. Augustine waited until the door shut, then exhaled. “You think they’ll come back?”
“They always come back,” I said.
He grinned, the scars on his face going white with tension. “What’s the plan, boss?”
I stared at the TV, at the looping image of Seraphina, her smile an act of war.
“We find her first,” I said.
The fluorescents hummed above, cold and relentless, and the news anchor kept talking, but the only sound in my head was the grind of gears, and the slow, certain click of a safety coming off.
“You okay, brother?” Augustine asked.
“I shouldn’t have left her,” I said, but the words were lost in the blood in my mouth.
Augustine lingered at the edge of the room, just out of reach. He had enough sense not to speak, not to get close. I could feel his eyes on my back, the silent accounting of what came next.
I hit the wall and the skin split all the way across the knuckles, a raw latticework of white and red. The pain was real, immediate, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
I thought about her face the last time I saw it: pale, drawn, angry and vulnerable at the same time.
I remembered the way her voice caught when she said my name.
I remembered the gravel I’d kicked up leaving her driveway, the way my heart pounded out a code of regret even as I told myself it was better this way, that she was safer without me.
I was an idiot.
The blood dripped down the wall now, slow at first, then in a rhythm. I stared at it, unable to look away. “They came for her,” I whispered. “The Russians. Or whoever was paying them.” My head buzzed with the details, all the things I’d ignored in the hope that the world would just let her go.
Augustine crept a step closer, not touching, not speaking. He knew the rules.
“I left her alone,” I said, louder now. “I left her wide fucking open.”
He grunted. “You did what she wanted.”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “What she wanted got her taken.”
My hand throbbed, the pain climbing up my arm, through my shoulder, into my jaw. I wiped it on my jeans, leaving streaks, then looked up at Augustine. He saw the decision in my eyes before I spoke.
“I’m going after her,” I said. “Tonight. I don’t care if it gets me killed.”
He nodded. “You want help?”
“No.” I flexed the hand, watching blood bead at the knuckles. “I need you to keep the club out of it. I don’t care what you tell Damron, just keep everyone away.”
Augustine smirked, a quick twist of the mouth. “You’re gonna come back.”
I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe in anything except the cold certainty that the world was about to eat me alive. Seraphina’s face crossed my mindseye again, and it crushed me. Yeah, time for some mine to die.
I pressed my forehead to the wall, eyes closed. “I won’t let them hurt her,” I said, and this time the words felt like truth.
When I opened my eyes, Augustine was gone. The war room was empty, blue light flickering over the stains on the concrete. The only thing left was my blood on the floor, a map of everywhere I’d already failed.
I let it pool there, a warning to myself and the world. Then I grabbed my jacket, wrapped my ruined hand in duct tape, and headed out into the dark.
I made it two steps before Augustine stopped me, and we headed back inside.