31. Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-One
Maison
It’s a pair of brothers, in the end. Of course it is.
There’s an updated file waiting for me when I step onto the plane, Travis and Keats already lounging in their seats scanning their own copies. Travis looks up at me with a raised brow when I fall into the chair across from him with the file in hand.
I frown at him. “What?”
“Where were you?”
“Sleeping, unfortunately.”
“Not at your house,” he counters. “I dropped Carter off before heading here. Guess who wasn’t there? Who hasn’t been for most of the week, it sounds like.”
I glance over at Keats to find him hiding behind his open file like a kid trying to cheat on a test. I sigh. “How about you tell me what you already know and we go from there?”
“I know you and Nolan are up to something. I know it’s apparently not dangerous.” He narrows his eyes. “I know you think I wouldn’t like it, since it seems you’ve told just about everyone except me.”
“You or Carter,” I mumble, not even sure why I do.
He nods slowly. “I see. So, are you keeping it from me, or keeping it from your brother?”
I look down at the file, my throat tight.
Brothers .
These brothers are named Aaron and Alex. The first to go missing was Aaron, only fourteen at the time, just over two years ago. The second was Alex, the older brother by three years, just this past September. He’d left a note for his parents, writing that if they wouldn’t take finding his brother seriously, he’d do it himself.
It only took four days for all signs of Alex to be wiped from the face of the Earth. No nineteen-year-old from a small town in Connecticut knows how to do that. Even without a paper trail, presumably using cash for everything, there was no digital trail either. He was just gone.
Four days.
“He knew something, you know,” I tell them. “Alex, I mean. Four days is too fast. There’s no way he got deep enough for them to disappear him that quickly, not without a head start. He knew something.”
There’s a moment of silence before Keats says, “Yes. Next page. His brother was hanging out at a bar with a biker club connection. Kid was seeing an older guy there. He got in way over his head. The brother thought maybe they ran away together, but he knew if that was it that he’d have called him by now to tell him he was okay. That long without a word meant something went wrong. Alex went nosing around. Asking questions.”
“Last known whereabouts was at the bar that the club’s president owns. About six hours away from their hometown. Alex had paid for another two days at the motel he was at. Never checked out. Still had his bag in the room.”
I flip to that page, scanning it.
It’s stupid, really. There’s no reason to look so deeply into any of this. Ash already found him. He found both of them, actually. He just needs us to help him go get them.
This is safer to focus on though. Much safer than—“Speaking of last known whereabouts,” Travis muses pointedly. “Where did you say you were?”
“Travis,” Keats chides. “Ease up. Not before a mission.”
Travis sighs, but relents with his hands up. “Sorry. I’m being an asshole. Let’s talk logistics. The last page of the file has the layout of the building they’re in.”
We rendezvous with Ash an hour outside of the town where our target is, at a private airstrip where he has his black SUV parked, his body stretched out on the hood of it with his head against the windshield, one knee bent up, booted foot horizontal, cigarette smoke swirling in the air.
“This motherfucker,” Keats says with a chuckle.
Travis grins. “I already love him.”
“Just wait,” Keats warns. “He only gets better from here.”
Ash hops off his vehicle as we filter out of our small plane, tossing his cigarette to the ground and twisting his boot over it. He picks it up right after, slipping it into his front pocket. His lips quirk. “Litterin' is bad.”
“I thought you quit,” Keats says in response, raising a daring eyebrow.
“If my boy asks, I did.” He tsks. “But there’s just somethin' about a cigarette when you’re 'bout to fuck some shit up, ya know? It’s my pre-game ritual or whatever.” He steps past them and grabs my shoulder. “Been a good week?”
I’m glad for the darkness around us because I’m pretty sure I blush. “Yeah. Yes. Very good.”
He grins, all white teeth and proud dom-vibes. “I’m fuckin' glad, man. It’s good to see you.”
“Good to see you too,” I agree as he pulls me into an overzealous hug. I mess up his hair to save some face. Sometimes you just have to resort to childish measures. “This is Travis. I don’t think you’ve met him yet?”
“I haven’t.” He offers his hand to Travis, who takes it while giving me a suspicious look. They agree it’s nice to meet each other. “I hear you’re good under pressure.”
“I can hold my own,” Travis says with a smirk. “Keats said you want point?”
With the topic brought to the mission, the mood of our group changes. Ash is already heading to the driver’s side of the vehicle as he says, “Yeah, I’ll take that.”
“We’ll put Maison in that tree you marked with the long-range rifle,” Keats says, hopping into the passenger side as Travis and I take the back seat. “Travis is best at talking, but he’s good with tactical, too.”
“Out of practice, though. I’d use Keats as your second if I were you. Unless you changed your mind on infiltration? I can talk my way inside, I bet. I could give it a damn good shot, at the very least.”
“No offense to either of you, but Maison isn’t sittin' in a fuckin' tree.” He laughs, sounding almost incredulous. He hasn’t started driving yet. Instead, he turns to look at me like I’ve gone insane. “You’re my second. Why the fuck wouldn’t you be?”
I can practically feel Travis’s confusion as I shrug. “I can be. That’s fine.”
“Maison is a little…out of practice,” Travis says carefully, probably trying not to offend me. “More than me. I think he’d be—”
“Out of practice? Jesus. Talk about high standards. What’s it been for you, a few months?” He shakes his head, starting to drive like this is too ridiculous for him to even give his full attention any longer. “Not includin' the recent work you’ve done bringin' your op to a close. That’s why you’ve gone black, I figure.”
Travis looks at me, brow furrowed. “Months?”
Ash continues, ignoring him. “I might be mostly out of the game these days, but I know for a fact you were involved in that mess in Miami this past May.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, prickling at the thought that I wasn’t covert enough.
“You mean, if I didn’t recognize your signature?”
“I told him,” Keats admits. “Let it slip when he called to ask if you could be a part of this. He was worried you were out of the game. I said you’d been on hiatus, doing something for your long game op. Said you’d probably be happy to be back in the thick of it. That you hadn’t gotten your hands very dirty since Miami.”
When Travis speaks this time, it’s loud and hard. No one ignores him. “Are you telling me that you’ve been doing ops all this time?”
I can’t look at him. “Yes.”
“But—how?”
“There were a lot of loose ends the op left. I cleaned them up.” I shrug. “And when I had the time, I followed stray leads. A place here or there that wouldn’t cause too much attention if taken out. Some mid-range traffickers. A small auction or two. I helped a few guys fulfill rescue contracts, sort of like this one. That’s how I met Ash, actually.”
“Fun fact, Maison helped me save my best friend’s husband—not his husband at the time, of course. He was in the same traffickin' ring that my own husband came out of.”
I kick the back of his seat. “You didn’t fucking tell me that . You got hitched?”
“I was goin' to invite you, but Keats said you were still dark!”
“Okay, fair.” I snort a laugh. “Plus, you know, the whole we’ve had sex thing might have been a bit awkward, I suppose.”
Travis sputters.
Keats turns to look at him, annoyance flashing in his expression. “Did you really think he just sat on his ass for the last decade? He has more dirt on his hands than both of us combined, most likely.”
“I don’t know, old man,” Ash counters. “You’ve been around a pretty long time.”
Keats flicks Ash in the ear and tells him to just drive the damn car before continuing. “I let him bullshit you because he thought you needed to feel like the powerful one or whatever the fuck, but it’s over now. That bullshit before about you already being a monster and wanting to keep Maison’s hands clean by doing things yourself? You’re wrong. His hands are as dirty as yours. Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean he hasn’t been dragged through the same kind of muck as you, Trav.”
Travis takes a moment to process his words, looking out his window as he does. It’s a long enough time for Ash and Keats to shift gears, talking through the finer details of our plan.
“Carter doesn’t know,” Travis says quietly. It’s not a question. He trusts that if Carter knew, he’d have told him. A sharp guilt twists in my chest as I realize Nolan could trust me in that way, but Hunter can’t. How could he, when all I keep doing is shut him out?
“No,” I confirm. “Carter doesn’t know.”
“Why?”
I shrug helplessly. “He needed me to be his villain, I think. He needed to see you as the hero and me as the one who got him hurt in the first place. And he wasn’t wrong, really. It was just easier to let him see me that way. It’s not like the shit I did before would erase what happened to him. I mean, he couldn’t care less about what happened to me that last night at the compound, and that was ten times worse than any other trauma I experienced during other missions.”
“He cares, Maison. Jesus—of course he cares.”
“Maybe. Yeah. In his own way.”
“Maison—”
“Not to break up this…whatever the fuck this is, but we really need to hit this place sooner than later,” Ash interrupts. “It gets fuckin' busy after midnight.”
Travis looks like he wants to argue, but thankfully, he decides against it. We stand in unison, heading to the back where Ash has a shit ton of goodies for us to choose from.
It’s just as he’s grabbing an ammo pack that Travis pauses, looks at me, and says, “You know I have to tell him, right?”
I grab a pack of my own and sigh. “Yup.”
We’re all in place with three minutes to spare, according to Ash’s ideal timeline. I settle in, eyes scanning the area, my un-mic’d ear taking in as much as I can. The area is definitely seedy, complete with the cliche neon green sign for a bar down the street that casts everything in a sickening glow.
The mic in my ear suddenly shifts from everyone’s steady breathing to Ash’s husky Southern voice. “What’d we got, K?”
“A standard security detail—one in the front, one in the back. Cameras on the corners. You with us, Ace?"
"I'm here," Ace says from his spot at his desk in the Big House. I'm not surprised they roped him into this, too. It's not the first time he's helped me on a side project.
"Where are you at with that system?” I ask him.
“Give me five,” he says in his distracted voice that always means stop bothering him.
Keats continues his update on the situation. “I’m tagging fifteen heat signatures inside.”
“Schematics showed a main room, then a hall with three rooms on each side and a bathroom at the end.” Travis isn’t exactly telling us this, since we all saw the layout. He’s working something out, doing it verbally instead of just in his head. We all give him a minute. Sure enough, “Those signatures in the main room should be hostiles. A setup like this, the vics don’t usually leave their rooms. Customers go to them. Probably one to a room, likely six total. Twelve if you count their guests. The three in the main area are either all in charge of things, or one is running the show and the others are waiting for their turn.”
“Are the windows secured?” I ask. They weren’t when Ash did his recon the week before, or his recon two nights ago, but things change. We need those windows. Well, for our first plan, at least. I was hoping to avoid any of the other ones.
“The ones to the south are,” Keats announces.
Travis adds, “Northside looks good too.”
“System is down,” Ace says.
“Alright. We’ve got two signatures heading out of rooms one and five. Let’s strike now. Maison, take one, I’ll take five. Travis, you’ve got the front. You remember the word for if shit feels like it’s going south?”
“Rough.”
He picked the word himself. As strange as it sounds, the word can be used in so many ways that it’s perfect for a code. You can’t be saying pink or elephant if shit hasn’t gone all the way south yet. That’s a recipe for a blown cover.
“If we’re going to do this, we have to go. Those two in the main area might be for one and five,” I warn.
Ash gives the order. “Move to second positions.”
I half-rise from my prone position and grip the ledge I was hiding behind to lower myself down the side of the building. It’s a short enough drop, only jarring my ankles for a few seconds before the sting fades. Keeping my rifle on my back, the safety off on the Glock in my hand, I creep down the alley toward the first window. The light inside of the room is dim where it shows through the thin slit of the cheap curtains.
I press my thumb just beneath the frame and nudge. The window gives a quarter of an inch. “Unlocked,” I announce.
“Mine too,” Ash says a breath later. “Everyone ready?”
“Ready,” I confirm. Travis and Keats follow.
“Be smart. Be safe. Let’s bring ’em home, boys. Three, two, one—breach.”
I push the window up, slowly enough to be quiet, fast enough to manage possible reactions. It’s easy to heave myself into the room then. Someone whimpers to my left as my feet meet the wooden floor. I shift my Glock back to my dominant hand and turn. It’s a girl. Maybe a woman, on the younger side. She’s pale and sickly thin, a silk slip hanging off her frame, dirty with bodily fluids. Her eyes flicker to the door.
“Shh.” I tuck my gun into its holster, keeping the safety off in case I need to draw it quickly. “We’re here to help.”
“No one helps,” she says in a cracked voice.
“ I do,” I promise her. “I’m Maison and this is exactly what I do. You want to get out of here?”
Her wide, terrified eyes go to the door again. Then the window. “How?”
“We’ve got a guest on the move,” Keats warns, tracking a heat signature. “Headed down the hall.”
We can’t guess which room. I put my finger to my lips and settle against the wall where the door will swing. She watches me but says nothing. I realize from this point of view that she’s shackled, her left ankle to a ring on the concrete wall.
Keats has just a second to warn, “One,” and then the door is swinging open and a man is stepping in. I let him approach the bed, his stupid ass not even looking behind him as he lets the door close with a single push.
He says, “Aren’t you a pretty little—” and I’m bringing my arms around, one hooking around his neck, a hand clamped over his nose and mouth.
The woman cries out, but I don’t worry. A reaction like that probably doesn’t draw much attention in a place like this.
“Handled,” I say into the mic as I carefully lower the body to the floor. “I’ve got a restraint. Plan B?”
“Plan B,” Ash agrees.
Muffled, I can hear Travis saying, “—don’t mind waiting,” as he pretends to be a customer looking for a good time.
“I know you’re probably all kinds of hurt, but is there anything life-threatening? Are you bleeding heavily? Anything emergent?”
She blinks at me for a moment, like she can’t fathom how I can be asking such questions. Then she looks down at herself, taking stock. “No. No, I—no. Nothing—nothing emergent?”
“Okay, I have to go—”
“Don’t leave!” she cries. “Wait, no, I can be hurt. I’m hurt. Don’t leave me!”
“Shh. Hey.” I hurry over to the bed, not taking offense when she flinches. I crouch beside it, hands still up. “I’ll only be a few minutes. I’m not leaving the building, I promise. I’ll be back for you. I will, okay? I have to help the others.”
She starts crying harder. “P-promise?”
“I swear to you. Okay? I’m coming back for you, I swear.”
“O-okay.”
I give her what I hope is an encouraging smile, then turn toward the door.
“Is the hall clear?” I ask over comms.
Keats responds, “All clear.”
“Heading to room two.”
I hear Keats ask, “Ash, still good in there?” as I sneak out of room one and draw my gun.
Ash sighs. “Give me a minute.”
I’m not entirely sure I want to know what he’s up to, as long as he’s safe.
“Breaching room two,” I whisper, my hand on the door.
I take a breath, then turn the knob and slip inside. The man has his back to me, but he picks up on my presence immediately. He turns with a, “What?”
I smash the butt of my gun against his nose.
He cries out. I flinch, knowing a man’s cry might be more suspicious here. Then again, they’ve got male victims here too, so maybe not.
It doesn’t matter. There’s no time to care.
I lunge forward, getting a hand around his throat, my gun against his temple as I force him to stumble back until he’s pressed to the wall. He struggles, kicking out and hitting me in the shin. I growl in frustration, squeezing his throat until I hear something crack. Anything he tries to say comes out as a wet wheeze. His hands scrabble at my wrist, trying to pry me off. The idiot doesn’t even try reaching for the hand with the gun, even when I start moving it toward his core.
The vic starts sobbing just after I pull the trigger, the silencer keeping the kill quiet as the life blinks out of the man’s eyes. One second he’s there, a fucking monster, a rapist. The next, he has a bullet in his heart.
“Room two clear.” I quietly guide his body to the floor and turn to the woman. I put my hand up as she quickly backs away from me, moving until the chain on her ankle is yanking in a way that must be painful.
I try to talk her through it. To tell her she’s safe and I’m not here to hurt her. I ask her if she wants to go home, but that just makes things worse.
I end up having to leave her sobbing furiously on her bed, not having the time to waste.
“—rough ride,” Travis says conversationally, but his tight voice gives away his anxiety, even if the use of the code word didn’t.
Fuck .
“Heading to room three,” I say right after. I can’t help but dart my eyes toward the door where Ash is still working on his first victim. Worry gnaws at me, but I know he’d kick my ass if he knew I was letting myself get distracted. We all have jobs to do. Until he says otherwise over the comms, he’s got it handled.
The third room is when shit really hits the fan.
It’s a guy this time. He’s bound to the wall instead of the bed, his back raw, lines seeping pink-tinged fluid. The man hurting him whips around. A cane is in his hand. He lurches, but not toward me.
His hand slams down on a device built into the top of the side table.
“Alarm!” I shout in warning, no longer needing to be quiet anyway.
He tries fighting me. I yank the cane out of his hand, snap it in half, and shove both ends into his gut. He doubles over with a choked, sobbing sound.
Wanting to preserve my bullets, I kick the bastard in the stomach, right between cane pieces, and follow him to the ground. He doesn’t have time to orient himself before I’ve pulled out my knife and jammed it into his throat. With a harsh yank to the left, the skin opens with a slick, sucking sound, blood spurting out to cover me in enough liquid to have me blending in on any 80s horror movie set.
I grab a fistful of the dead man’s shirt and yank until the cheap cotton tears. I use it to wipe my eyes clear before pushing to my feet. I turn to face the victim already trying to escape his chains. He freezes when I step toward him, his blue eyes wide, his dark hair messy. My heart tugs. Carter.
Except it’s not Carter. Of course it’s not.
It’s Aaron.
“I’ve got target one,” I announce, eyeing the cuffs around the young man’s wrists. I ignore anything the guys say in return, giving Aaron my focus. I put my hands up to show I’m not a threat, keeping my voice gentle. “My name is Maison. We’re here to help. Do you have any major injuries? Anything emergent?”
“Who are you?” he asks instead of answering. He’s sucking in heaving, wet breaths. His body is trembling hard enough to make his chains rattle. “Who are you?”
A monster.
A bad guy.
Someone who ruins everything.
Not tonight, though. Tonight I’m, “The guy who’s going to get your ass back home.”
He sucks in a shuddering breath, eyes starting to close before popping wide open in panic. He blurts, “My brother!”
“We’re getting him,” I promise. “I’ll be right back, okay? I have to go help. You’re sure you’re okay?”
He nods eagerly, which isn’t a surprise. They’re brothers, after all.
Of course it comes down to brothers.
“I’m heading to room six,” I tell the guys.
“Fuck room six,” Travis says, followed by a grunt of pain. “Need— fuck— need back up.”
I exit the room, ready to go flying down the hall for help. Room six’s guest is outside, though. So is room four’s.
One of them has a gun.
Fuck .
I charge him, his gun going off as I make impact, mine following just a second later. Adrenaline crashes through me as the other man comes at me from behind, wrapping an arm around my throat. I grip his forearm and immediately rock back into his hold before bringing my legs up to kick off of the asshole I just shot. I push off his body as hard as I can, sending me and my choker flying back.
He loses the upper hand.
I put a bullet between his eyes, then turn and add two to the other man’s head before he can recover from wherever the fuck my first bullet hit.
“Trav?” I ask, panting heavily. There’s blood trickling down the side of my face. I’m not sure if it’s mine.
“Ash has him,” Keats updates. “You clear?”
“Yeah.” I look around myself. The walls of the hallway seem to be tilting inward. The lights are dimming. “Yeah. I’m—I’m fine.”
“I’m coming with the bolt cutters,” Ash tells us. “Trav’s watching my back. Keats, we still clear outside?”
“For now. Not sure who got notified when that alarm went off. We might have company soon.”
“We’ll hurry. Mais, can you handle getting the survivors out while I—”
And then the funniest thing happens.
I don’t hear him anymore. I don’t hear any of them.
Something sharp and awful is blooming in my arm, heat trickling down to my fingers.
I remember suddenly, vividly, Hunter standing in the glow of the kitchen lights, asking me if he could use the safeword, asking me if I’d stay then.
The last thing I think is I shouldn’t be here.
Then the world goes black.
Everything fucking hurts when I wake up. My head is swimming, ears ringing, mouth full of cotton, my forearm radiating with a near-searing pain. There’s something on my face. Something wet. I flinch back from it, managing to pry my sore eyes open. It takes a moment for the world to register. Then I see Keats’s face.
He smirks, pulling his hands away. He’s holding a wet wipe. “Well, good morning, pumpkin.”
“Fuck off,” I grumble, my voice sounding like it’s been put through a fucking blender. “What happened?”
“It was my fault. I was tracking what I thought could be two hostels approaching the building. I stopped watching the heat signatures inside. Did one of the guests catch you in the hall?”
“Both of them,” I say, remembering now. “The two guests came out at once.”
He winces. “I’m sorry.”
“That shit happens. You couldn’t have been watching everything.” I grimace when I try to adjust my body, pain shooting up my arm. I go very still and it thankfully fades. Not by much, but by enough. “The brothers?”
“Safe. Ash is bringing them back to their parents.”
“And Trav?” I ask, suddenly remembering he was in trouble just before I got hit. I try to sit up again. Keats pushes me down as Travis appears over his shoulder. “Oh thank fuck.” I close my eyes, relaxing back and trying to breathe without it feeling like the oxygen is needles in my chest. My throat goes tight, my stupid chin wobbly. “If I’d lost you, Carter would have…”
Carter would have never forgiven me.
“Carter is going to kick your ass,” Travis says.
I open my eyes, frowning at him. “Why? I didn’t let you get hurt. You’re fine, right?”
Travis flicks my forehead. “ You got hurt, you fucking idiot.”
“Oh.” I laugh as well as I can in my circumstances, closing my eyes again. “He won’t care.”
“Mais—”
“Wait, I’m hurt?” I look around, confused. The movement makes that pain come back in my arm. I squint down at it. There’s a wrap from just above my wrist to an inch or so below the crook of my elbow. “Oh.”
“ Oh , he says,” Travis mutters, shaking his head. “ Oh . Fucking hell.”
Keats shoots him a dirty look. “Shut up. Go finish packing our gear.”
Travis gives him a two-finger salute. “Aye, aye, asshole.”
“How does your arm feel?” Keats asks. “You need something for the pain?”
“No. I’m good.” I squint at my arm some more. “What even happened?”
“It was a graze. We flushed it out pretty good—you had some shirt in it. You have to keep an eye on that, yeah? Don’t let it get infected.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. It ain’t my first GSW, I got it.”
“Give him the meds anyway,” Travis grumbles. “He’s a fucking asshole martyr. No way that shit isn’t hurting. The first dose definitely wore off.”
“You were supposed to leave,” I say in return.
Both Travis and Keats ignore me. I catch sight of Keats flicking a syringe. I scowl at him. He doesn’t seem very intimidated. “I hate need—”
He jams the needle into my bicep before I can finish my complaint, injecting the fluid into me. I am very angry with him. Perturbed, even. The audacity of this asshole. Who does he think—oh man, that feels good.
Keats laughs, giving my cheek a pat that feels weird, fuzzy kind of, like he’s not actually touching my skin. “There ya go. All better.”
“Better,” I agree, my eyes falling half-closed.
“See, now would be the time to ask him,” Keats says.
I squint at him before realizing he’s not talking to me. He’s talking—and looking at—Travis. Travis gives him a deadpan look in response. “While he’s high? That’s cheating.”
“Probably a better chance of him saying yes,” Keats counters.
I try to care about the conversation, but really I’m just sort of wondering how soon I can see Nolan and Hunter again.
“I’m not asking him when he’s high off his ass,” Travis argues.
“Ask me what?”
“Can he marry Carter?” Keats answers.
Travis gasps, looking outraged. It’s funny. I laugh. He groans. “For fuck’s sake, Keats! You can’t just say that!”
“Why? He won’t be any more honest than he is now.” He turns to look at me again. “So? Can he?”
“That’s easy.” I reach for Travis, but he’s too far away. I pout and make grabby hands. With a roll of his eyes, he leans down until I can pat the top of his head a few times. “He loves you. Crazy lots. Sooo much. He’ll say yes.”
“I’m not asking if you think he’ll say yes,” Travis admits. “I’m asking your permission, buddy. To ask him.”
“Oh.” I frown again. “I am very tired.” I close my eyes. “I should call Nolan.” I sigh. “You’ll take care of him, won’t you, Trav? My baby brother? For always?”
“For always,” Travis echoes, his voice sounding weird suddenly. Lower. Hoarse. Maybe he’s tired too? “I promise you, Maison.”
I give him a thumbs up, not having the energy to open my eyes. “Coolio.”
“Alright, druggie. Let’s get you off the plane and in the car. Time to go home.”
“No. No, not home.” I wave my hand in the general direction I think they’re in, wanting them to stop. “Hunter’s. Bring me to Hunter’s.”
Keats laughs, patting my thigh. “Sure thing, buddy. We’ll get you to your guys. Just stay awake long enough to get in the damn car, yeah?”
All that really registers is that I’m going to get to see my guys. Soon, even. If we’re about to be in the car, it means we’re close.
I have just enough time to hear Travis say, “Hunter…Meridian?”
Then everything is black again.
It’s not as scary this time. Hunter and Nolan are there, waiting for me in the dark abyss of drugged sleep. I smile when I see them. I say, “I fucking missed you.”