Chapter 6
Bane
It has been a week since we all got back from the beach.
Atlas has been running us ragged. The first night back from the beach house was the last full stop any of us has had.
Since then he has put me on inventory two days in a row at warehouses I don’t normally touch, doubled the schedule on three shipping routes up the coast, rerouted a fourth through Pittsburgh of all places, and emailed me at four in the morning Thursday to ask if I had read the report from his guy in Baltimore.
I hadn’t read the report. So instead of going back to sleep and ignoring him, I read the damn report.
Baltimore is a Kline shell. Two layers down.
Which means Atlas's PIs are now confident the Kline organization is bleeding harder into our regional territory than we'd thought, and it means whatever Atlas is putting together is bigger than what he has told any of us about.
He has a way of being three steps ahead and looking unhurried about it.
I haven’t asked him directly what his plan is.
I will. When I’m ready to know.
For tonight I'm in the upstairs library with a beer I've barely touched and a new inventory report I should be reading and the lamp on low. Old leather couch. Embers in the hearth. Margot's asleep downstairs. Last I saw Dad was reading on the back patio.
Max is safe in his room. Probably writing.
I can’t think about him too long or I’ll give up on being productive at all.
But I'm not reading the inventory report.
I'm reading the file my own private investigator sent me on the facility Max and I were imprisoned in.
It's the third version of the file. He sends me a new one every Friday. Each one tells me roughly the same thing, which is that there are still nine omegas in the Kline facility we pulled Max and Wren out of, that the local PD has at least four officers on the Kline payroll, and that anyone who walks in there with a warrant and a federal jacket in the next ninety days will be walking into a setup. I’ve kept a watch on it because I can’t stop.
Atlas doesn't know I have a guy on the facility.
Zero doesn’t either. But if I know my brothers, I’m sure we’re all chasing the same leads and will discover the truth eventually.
I take a sip of the beer. It's still mostly there. I set it down. I put the file back in its folder and toss it onto the coffee table. I throw a new log into the fire and the embers spark and float upward. I stay standing for a minute with my hands on the mantel and watch it.
A floorboard creaks in the hall.
I know it before I turn.
The thread between his sternum and mine has been telling me for about ninety seconds—getting closer, getting closer, here—and I let myself smile at the fire before I school my face and turn around.
He's leaning in the doorway in soft sleep clothes, hair damp at the ends from a shower, looking at me like he's been looking for me for an hour.
"There you are."
"Max."
"What are you doing in here?"
"What does it look like?"
He drifts in the way he drifts now—easier than he used to drift, less calculation in his shoulders, hands not in his pockets.
He walks the perimeter of the room before he comes anywhere near me.
Trails a finger along the spine of a book he isn't going to pick up.
Examines the chess set on the side table that nobody plays.
He hasn't asked me a real question in two minutes and I know exactly what he is doing.
"You want to keep me company."
He pauses at the chess set. Doesn't look up.
"Maybe." He bites the inside of his cheek and looks up at me through his long lashes. My stomach clenches. Fuck, he’s so handsome.
"Get over here, baby."
He's in my space before I'm back on the couch. Slim weight against my side, his shoulder under my arm, his head tucked into the curve of my neck. I sit down with him already attached to me. He folds his legs up onto the cushions and burrows in.
I exhale through my nose. Pick up the beer. Don't drink it. Set it back down.
"Long day?"
"Long week."
"Mm."
"Atlas had me on a call till nine."
"I heard part of it from the kitchen. You were polite. He was using his boss voice."
"He was using his voice."
I let my head tip back against the couch. He smells like the soap from his and the cotton of whatever shirt he's stolen from somebody—Zero's, by the cut of the sleeves—and he's warm and pliant against me in the way he only gets late at night when he's run out of armor for the day.
"What was he on you about?"
"Hawkins."
"...the warehouse guy?"
"The warehouse guy. He had a shipment short last Tuesday. Two pallets. He swears it's a count error on the front end. I don't think he's lying. Atlas thinks he might be. Atlas wants me to ride him until we know."
Max snuggles in closer. "Are you going to?"
"I'm going to talk to the guy who counted the front end. Hawkins isn't a thief. He's tired. He's got a kid at home with something I don't want to ask about and a wife who isn't sleeping. I've watched him work for six years. He's definitely not the leak."
"...does Atlas know that?"
"Atlas knows what Atlas knows. Atlas wants me to be sure. Which is fair. I'd want me to be sure if I were him."
He hums. His hand finds the button on my shirt and starts picking at it absently.
"You sound less mad than you usually do when he Atlas keeps you working late."
"Mm. I'm tired, Max. He doubled my routes. I don't have the energy to be mad at him on top of running them."
"How's that going? The doubled routes."
"Brutal. The dispatchers are good. The drivers are good.
I have a guy in Charleston who I think is about to quit if I don't give him a weekend off, which I am going to give him on Saturday.
Two of the trucks need new tires before next month and Atlas hasn't approved the spend yet, which he will, but I'd like him to do it before I have to chase him about it.” I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“The route through Pittsburgh is going to need a second man on it because that warehouse manager hates working alone after dark and I don't blame him. "
"...Pittsburgh's the new one, right?"
"Pittsburgh's the new one."
"Why Pittsburgh?"
"Because it's the cleanest stop between us and Cleveland and we needed Cleveland three weeks ago."
"...okay."
He picks at the button. I let him.
Then his hand snakes around the back of my neck and his thumb digs into the long muscle at my shoulder. I close my eyes.
God, that feels good.
I can’t help but keep going.
"And on top of all that I'm checking in on Zero every couple days.
Has to be done, Maxie. He does the ugly end of what we do.
Atlas points him at things and he handles them, and Atlas tries to keep a leash on him about how and who, but Zero doesn't take a leash.
Never has, you know that. So when Atlas runs him hard for a week straight on something rough, somebody has to put eyes on him after, and that somebody is me. "
"How is he? I saw him the day before yesterday but he told me he had an assignment that might take him a few days."
"Tired. Mean. Effective. The standard Zero menu when Atlas is using him for the rougher stuff."
His thumb digs deeper. I close my eyes.
"Is he—"
"He's fine, Max. He's not going to do anything stupid. I'd know."
"You'd know?"
"I'd know. He's too proud to make me clean up after him. He'll come up against something he can't bring himself to do, and instead of doing it badly he'll come find me."
"And if he doesn't come find you?"
"Then I find him."
I let my head tip back against the couch. His thumb keeps working at the muscle along my shoulder. My entire body relaxes a bit more.
"Zero, when he goes dark, has a routine.
Has had it since he was nineteen. He drinks too much.
He uses too much of whatever someone's offering.
He finds a stranger to take to bed for a night and is out of their apartment before the coffee's done.
That's been his version of decompression for a decade. "
"...sounds exhausting."
"It's effective. He's not stupid about it.
He doesn't drive when he's like that. He doesn't go anywhere he hasn't been before.
He's careful in the ways he's careful and reckless in the ways he's reckless, and he's never given me a reason to come pull him out of anything I couldn't handle in an afternoon. "
"...you've had to pull him out of things?"
"I'm the youngest, Maxie. Of course I've had to pull him out of things.
It's how the order goes. Atlas does the strategy, Zero does the damage, and I clean up the corners and lie to Dad about the bills.
" I huff. "Once when he was twenty-two I had to drive to West Virginia at four in the morning because he'd ended up at a card game in a basement and ran his mouth at the wrong guy.
I bought him out of it with cash and an apology I did not mean.
He bought me breakfast on the way back and we never talked about it again. That's Zero."
"...West Virginia."
"West Virginia."
"At a card game in a basement?"
"Don't ask the rest, baby."
He laughs into my throat. I keep my hand moving slow up and down his back.
"Anyway," I say. "That's the cycle. He works himself dark, he does his version of decompression, he comes back. Nothing I haven't seen ten times."
He's quiet a moment. His hand keeps moving at my neck.
"...you sure he's okay this time?"
I'm quiet a beat too long.
He lifts his head off my shoulder. His hand doesn't leave the back of my neck but it stops working for a second.
"Bane."
I exhale.
"None of his usual doors are open to him right now."
"...what do you mean?"
"He won't drink heavy around the house because of you. He hasn't touched anything harder than a beer or wine in two months that I know of. And he is sure as fuck not bringing strangers home to a house with you in it."
"Bane—"