Chapter 20 - Nitro
Nitro
Twilight hit the compound like an old debt coming due.
The bikes were all stabled, the day's last echoes dying in the parking lot as men drifted to their cigarettes, their cards, their unfinished business. The chapel’s neon cross glowed against the dusk, its humming transformer outlasting any claim to holiness.
Out on the porch, I sat beside Seraphina on the warped planks, boots tapping the hollow where a termite colony had once held court.
Her head was bowed, but she watched the treeline with a sniper’s patience.
I didn’t know how to start. I’d survived the wars, the kidnappings, the press conferences, and all the clever little games of men with guns, but now the air between us was more fragile than anything else in the county.
My right hand worked a cigarette back and forth, not lighting it.
The pack was already empty—habit, not hope.
She didn’t break the silence, but I felt the pulse in her, the awareness that the next word could shatter the whole peace.
“They’re going to eat you alive, you know,” I said, finally.
She lifted her chin. Her glasses were gone—contact lenses today—but the effect was still the same: absolute clarity, zero illusions. “Who?” she asked, and I could hear the old, dry scorn in it. Like she’d already run the numbers and found the threat negligible.
“Everyone. The lab. The government. Those guys with the cheap haircuts on the Sunday morning shows. You gave them something to talk about.” I tried to smile. “A real hero’s arc.”
Her jaw tensed, just a little. “The only thing I did was not die.” She shifted on the step, her skirt catching on a splinter. “And testify. Which was mostly just telling the truth.”
I let the quiet come back. The sky above us bruised into indigo, the cicadas swapping shifts with the crickets. I didn’t want to ask her the next question, but I had to. “Do you regret it?”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she reached into her jacket and pulled out a letter, the seal broken, the paper worn soft at the corners. She handed it to me, the way you hand someone a live round. “Read it.”
The signature at the bottom caught the last of the light: U.S. Department of Energy, with the kind of subtext that could get a man’s teeth broken. I read the first line, then the middle, then the last. When I finished, I stared at the paper a while longer, trying to process the data.
“You’re cleared,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
She nodded. “Not just cleared. They doubled my budget. And…” She trailed off, watching the light fade behind the ridgeline. “And I get a security detail.”
I grunted. “Congratulations. You’re officially a high-value asset.”
She laughed, but it was a hollow sound, the kind you make to keep from crying.
“They’re still calling it a ‘personnel retention incentive.’ I’m supposed to keep doing the work, only now I have to answer every email, every phone call, as if someone’s bored handler in Virginia is reading it.
” She took back the letter, folded it precisely, then tucked it into her shirt pocket.
“They finally recognize the importance of protecting my work from foreign interests.”
The way she said it, I heard both the pride and the contempt. The old Seraphina would have left it at that. But she looked at me, and her face was wide open for the first time since I’d met her. “It means I get to keep you, too.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. My left hand twitched on the railing, knuckles shiny from where the skin hadn’t yet come back. “I never wanted to be protected,” I said. “It’s not my nature.”
“Neither is following orders,” she replied. “But here we are.”
We watched the dark flood in. A lone headlight stitched the highway below, then vanished behind the cutbank. I could feel the world getting colder, both in temperature and intent.
She nudged me, gentle. “I saw what you did at the station. With the Russian. With Damron. You could have run. Instead, you stayed until the end.” She bit her lip, thoughtful. “That’s not how your stories usually end.”
I shrugged, feeling the old ache in my shoulder. “Maybe I’m rewriting the script.”
She smiled, and this time it was almost real. “Or maybe you’re just tired of dying for everyone else.”
The porch boards groaned under my boots as I stood. I didn’t want to say the next thing, but I owed her the truth. “They’ll never stop coming for us. Not really. As long as the club runs, as long as your work matters… there’s always going to be another angle. Another predator.”
She looked past me, into the void. “I know.”
“I don’t want you to regret this.”
Her eyes came back to me, hard as flint. “I regret nothing.”
We let it hang. I tossed the unlit cigarette onto the dirt. Seraphina watched it spiral down, then reached for my hand, tracing the new scar with her thumb. “Does it hurt?”
“Always.”
She traced the line a second time, slower. “Good,” she said. “It means you’re still alive.”
I almost kissed her, but the moment was too raw for it. Instead, we sat side by side, watching the headlights come and go, each one a threat or a promise, never both.
“I have to go home,” she said at last. “There’s a site visit in the morning. Some DHS committee.” She made a face. “They’ll probably ask for a tour of the damage. They always do.”
I nodded. “You want company?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “Not yet. But maybe tonight, after.”
“Call me,” I said, and meant it.
She smiled, stood, then started for the lot.
Her Civic waited at the edge of the gravel, the only import in a sea of battered American iron.
I watched her go, the tight lines of her back, the way she kept her hands visible, as if expecting to be watched.
She got in, started the engine, and let it idle for a moment before easing onto the drive.
The tail lights glowed a sickly red as they vanished into the trees.
I sat on the porch until the cold set in. The club was dead quiet now, the only sounds the distant bark of Augustine’s dog and the faint, metallic clink of Damron cleaning up the armory. The world was between cycles, not quite dead, not quite reborn.
I thought about the letter, the new scar, the way her eyes darted to every shadow beyond the porch. She was right—the only thing left was to take it one day at a time, and never trust that the peace would hold.
I rolled my shoulders, let the ache remind me who I was, then lit a fresh cigarette and watched the smoke drift into the dark, hoping it would find her out there, wherever she was going.
***
Seraphina’s place was out past the ghost subdivisions and halfway up the old Forest Service road, a glass-and-concrete nest built into the scree.
When I hit the final bend, I saw her Civic parked tight against the curb, but another car—silver, unremarkable except for the newness of the tags—was nosed up behind it, like a rat sniffing at a trap.
I killed the lights and coasted. The moon was high, sharp as a scalpel, the stars scattered in a nervous perimeter.
I cut the engine, rolled the last twenty feet in neutral, and thumbed the kill switch.
Then I sat a minute, listening for anything the night might confess: a cough, a footstep, a misplaced engine tick.
There was nothing, until a door slammed at the house.
Not hers—the sound was too forceful, too deliberate.
I slipped off the bike, leaving the helmet, and scanned the driveway.
The unfamiliar car had government plates, but the rental sticker on the window was a dead giveaway for cheap federal muscle.
I moved to the treeline, sticking to the dark, and circled around to the rear of the house.
The deck was lit from inside, but the curtains had been drawn, a gesture of hope rather than security.
I saw the silhouette of a man pacing the length of the porch, then stopping just short of the door.
He had the build of an athlete gone to seed, suit jacket riding high on the shoulders, something in his hand that caught the light like a promise.
Seraphina stood just inside, motionless. Her hair was down, a river of black over the pale line of her collarbone. Her arms were at her sides, but one hand gripped her phone. She was either waiting for backup or stalling for time, and I was betting the latter.
I checked my pockets. Nothing but a folding knife, a lighter, and a roll of electrical tape. The hand cannon was back at the club. I was running light, which made the odds clean and simple: get in, make noise, hope for chaos.
I moved along the deck, knees bent, boots silent on the duff. The man at the door didn’t look up. He was talking—low, controlled, the cadence of a man who’d spent time in rooms where talking was a prelude to violence.
“…doesn’t matter if you changed the protocol,” he said. “You know how these things work, Dalton. It’s always about leverage. You’re too smart to play the damsel, so don’t start now.”
He raised his hand, and the shape resolved into a pistol. Not a big one—a compact, something meant for close-in work. He leveled it at the glass, just above Seraphina’s head.
She didn’t move. Her voice was cool, precise. “You won’t shoot. The code is worthless if I’m dead.”
He barked a laugh. “You think you’re the only one who can finish it? You think the Russians didn’t already pull your backups?”
She swallowed, the gesture minute but visible. “Then why are you here, Dr. Holloway?”
That froze me. The man’s head cocked, amused at the reveal.
“Because, Seraphina,” he said, “I’m the one they send when the first string fails. And right now, you’re the only asset left standing.”
He stepped closer. The gun was steady. My hands went slick. I crouched, found a chunk of rock in the duff, and weighed the odds.
I waited for the next line.