17. Chapter seventeen
Chapter seventeen
Kieran
I ’m going fucking crazy.
It’s been almost five days since I saw him. Since Max and Tass went up north. With every day that passes, every night I lay in his bed and hope and pray and beg that he’ll come home, my anxiety gets worse.
I’m a mess. A fucking ghost. I keep my ears open for any gossip as me and Sami walk through the city to my work.
If I’m polishing glasses that don’t need polishing, I tune in to the surrounding conversations.
Any whisper I can grab, I grab. Anything about Watchers, about Joyeus, about that facility… I hang on it.
But I hear nothing.
Yeah, I went back to work, even though Max was clear about me staying put. It’s the smart play. If I disappear, it’ll look suspicious. Maybe the other workers wouldn’t care, but Joyeus would. She always does.
Ever since she’s been back, I swear I feel her cold eyes on me, like she somehow knows. Knows about the investigation, knows about the carnage in my room, knows I killed someone.
So I keep up the routine. Keep my face easy. Wipe the counter the right way. Smile when people ask stupid questions and laugh at their lame jokes.
And all the while I’m dying inside. Dying to see him, hear from him. Dying to pack up a bag and go after them north, to face the lands beyond the wall alone.
And it terrifies me how willing I am to actually do it.
It would mean breaking my promises. To Max that I would stay put, and to Sami that I’d let him and Roe handle it.
They sent up a search party yesterday. A squad of Watchers they trust to keep it on the down-low.
Quiet, under wraps. They said they’d handle it properly.
It should be enough. That should be enough.
It isn’t. I know it isn’t.
So here I am, packing a bag after another sleepless night. I don’t care anymore. I’m not waiting for another godsdamned day. I’m going to search for them myself.
I’m rifling through Max’s many cabinets and supplies, pulling out spare bandages, a roll of tape, a neat stack of throwing knives, some fresh bread with olive oil which he loves so much…
anything that might help, and toss it in one of his backpacks.
If I show up with that “ratty old thing” he’d probably laugh, and shit, it does almost fall apart at the seams.
Max’s apartment… is something else. It’s not the luxurious hideout I half-imagined after seeing that cliff mansion, but it’s big. And clean. And, weirdly enough; light and airy. It has lots of windows with a perfect view of the beach.
It’s also full of shit I’ve never even seen in real life before: tools I don’t know the names of, boxes of spare parts, stacks of books that look like they belonged to another century.
There’s a system to it. Everything packed away, neat and organized.
He’s methodical in a way he hides from the rest of us.
And it fits, at least from what I know of him.
The funniest thing is the row of rubber ducks on the little windowsill in his bathroom. Tiny, colorful ducks from the old world, lined up like a stupid army, and I can’t help but smile every time I spot them.
Somehow I think Tass has something to do with that.
She’s here, her presence scattered in those ducks, in the bag of strawberries in the humming old fridge, in a pair of shoes in the hallway that are way too small for him.
Thinking about shoes… I wiggle my toes in the sneakers Max bought me months ago. I threw them at his head at the time, meddling ass, but found them stuffed in the closet in his bedroom. Figured they would be the better choice if I have to hike all the way up north.
Or have to run from Walkers. He’d never let me hear the end of it if my flip-flops made me trip and I got bit because of it.
Fuck, I hope he’s okay. That she’s okay. My gut says they walked into something at that facility that went sideways—loud, wrong, fast—and the image keeps looping behind my ribs until my chest tightens.
A hard knock on the door snaps me out of it just as I zip the backpack closed.
Frowning, I get up from where I was crouched before the dresser and go to open the door. Max wouldn’t knock, obviously, and I think Tass would just barge in whenever she pleases.
No one else knows Max lives here, that I live here. No one, besides…
I pull the door open and recognize him the second my brain has time to register. He’s taller in person, the kind of tall that makes people straighten without thinking, every part of him carrying a slow, intense kind of authority.
Weathered light-brown skin. Mediterranean, if I had to guess. A proud nose, that dark wavy hair tucked behind his ears, beard trimmed close.
Commander Roe.
He doesn’t drape himself in a cloak like the rest of the Nine when they want to remind us they’re untouchable.
No, he’s in full combat gear, the same black uniform his Watchers wear, only on his head that red beret again, bright as blood, marking rank, authority, ownership. No mistaking what it means.
Behind him is Sami, and the way he bows his head, how one of his dreads comes loose from the tie at the back of his head, how his shoulders droop like he’s been hit.
I’m going to fucking faint.
Roe’s eyes lock onto me, and my heart fucking sinks further. My hand clenching on the frame. There’s something in those brown orbs. Pain. Sorrow. So much fucking sorrow. A sharp, stunned hurt, like the truth is still landing.
I already know the shape of what he’s about to say before he opens his mouth, and I start to shake my head.
“We found a body.”
My heart cracks. My stomach lurches. My fist slaps hard over my mouth because otherwise the sound that wants to tear out of me will.
No, no, no, no, no.
“They found a shallow grave on the main road north,” he goes on, all business, but there’s a crack in his voice that guts me. “Around halfway through. They, they, uh…”
He rubs his face. My pulse hammers. I can’t move. Can’t speak. Can’t make the air do what I need it to do.
“There was a tag…” he finally says, broken, and raises his hand.
My eyes flick to his tight fist. The chain is there, curling around his fingers like he’s clutching on so it won’t fall. He holds it like it’s proof and a wound at the same time.
The metal catches the light for a second and my stomach flips.
Bronze. Not gold.
Tass.
Oh, fuck. Tass.
Grief hits like a freight train. My chest caves, the world goes muffled, and the air feels too thin to breathe. My throat seizes and I choke on a sound that wants to tear out of me. I want to drop to my knees, to scream until something breaks.
Tass. Wonderful, amazing, Tass. The virus finally claimed her.
Then, stupid and sharp, relief slices through: it’s not him. It cuts clean and tastes like bile and shame. So much fucking shame.
They war inside me. The raw, breaking grief that wants to swallow me whole, and that horrible, selfish relief keeping me from completely collapsing.
I’m crying, and I hate myself for every wet, ridiculous sob.
A hand clamps on my shoulder, heavy and grounding, and I look up through blurry vision. Roe swallows; a single tear tracks down his cheek and he wipes at it like he’s half-ashamed it showed. Seeing this rock of a man, this damned commander, looking like that makes something in me fold even more.
“I’m so sorry,” I breathe, and I mean it. “I… Tass is—” My voice breaks off; the rest won’t come.
“I know.” He nods, solemn. “Thank you.” He steels himself, rights his shoulders and steps further inside, his rough hand producing a fucking handkerchief. Clean and pressed, smelling faintly of smoke. He presses it into my hand like it’s both an order and mercy.
“We can’t find Max,” he says. “We’re pretty sure she turned and he had to…”
End it. He doesn’t need to say the words for my heart to collapse.
I take a big gulp of air, trying to calm myself as I wipe my damn cheeks. “What do you mean you can’t find Max?”
“We found some traces at the grave… but he covered his tracks. He’s not up north, and I have a feeling he never arrived there in the first place.”
“The tag was hanging on this,” Sami supplies as he finally comes inside, next to Roe, Whisper in his hands.
The devastating look on his usually happy, carefree face makes me throw myself at him and hug him close, Whisper almost stabbing me through the ribs. I bury my face in his shoulder and squeeze until he grunts.
“Thank you,” he croaks, and I only let go after that, hands still shaking.
“Tass,” Roe says, swallowing. “I mean, my daughter… she said once Max has a place somewhere on the west side, where he goes when he, you know…” I almost hiccup a sobbing laugh as he twirls his finger around his temple. “I don’t know where it is, but I was hoping you do.”
He’s trying to lighten the mood, to stay strong, to not crumble right then and there.
It’s in the set of his shoulders, the tick in his jaw.
But the way Sami glances at him, the way his hand claws at his commander’s arm, grounding him, shows he’s got at least one person to help him through this.
If that’s even possible. If you can come back from this kind of pain.
I wipe the last of the tears away and force my voice flat. “I know where it is. I’ll go get him.”
“It’s not safe,” Roe says. “It hasn’t rained for a while. If it’s coming…” His words trail off, warning and worry tangled.
“I’m going.” It’s not a question, and they know it. “And I’m going alone.”
“Out of the question.”
“He wants to keep it hidden,” I say. “And if he’s doing what I think he’s doing, then there aren’t any Walkers in the near vicinity, anyway. I’ll take my chances.”
Roe looks at me, then at Sami. “Then we’re coming with you as far as we can. We’re going up north, so we can drop you off. That’s an order, Kieran Freyr.”
“You can’t order me.” I cock my head. “I’m not a damned Watcher.”
He narrows his eyes. “I can see why he likes you so much.”
My cheeks heat. I don’t know if it’s the look or the thought of Max liking me, but it sticks in my throat.
Roe steps closer, voice low. “My men found something at the research facility. Something important. We need to move now , before Joyeus gets wind of it.”
I nod and grab my bag, make sure my dagger is in its sheath, and do a quick final sweep through the kitchen for some extra supplies before I shoulder it. If he hasn’t eaten for this long…
The strap digs in and the weight steadies me more than I expected. Sami shoulders his own pack without a word. Roe checks the radio, then nods at us before we leave the apartment. There’s a tidy hurry to them that makes the whole thing feel unreal.
We take off. Out into the street, past the harbor, following the main road that runs north before I have to cut west toward the cliffs, where Max’s house is.
I’m focused, every step counted, but under that focus my stomach is a stone, grief pounding into me with every beat of my heart.
Tass. Poor Tass.
I’m terrified of the state I’ll find him in, scared of how this loss could break him, and fucking sick with fear at the thought there might be no trace left of the Max I love.