Chapter 9 #2
I make a show of groaning and Wren laughs—a real one, surprised out of her—and I watch the last of the white-knuckle leave her hands.
"Would it be all right if I washed up somewhere first?” Wren asks, wringing her hands in front of her. It occurs to me that she might need a moment to herself. A moment to compose herself.
"Of course. Powder room's down the hall, first door on the right. Take your time—there's no rush in this house tonight."
Wren disappears down the hall. Margot turns to me.
"She's lovely, Maxie."
"You haven't even really talked to her."
"I'm a mother. I can tell." She hugs me with one arm. "She's nervous."
"Yeah."
"I'll be nice."
"You're always nice, Mom."
"I'll be deliberately nice."
She kisses my cheek and heads back to the kitchen. I stand in the foyer for one beat.
The bond rooted deep in my body is doing two things at once.
Atlas is a low steady pulse from somewhere northwest, the soft far-distance hum I have been carrying for a week now.
Bane is closer, in the house, in his office down the back hall, and the bond with him is doing something specific—going tight at the edges in a way that means he is on a call or concentrating.
Margot wants me in the kitchen setting the table. I should go to the kitchen.
I head upstairs instead, the bond dragging me straight to Atlas’ office.
The door is open six inches.
I stop in the hallway, just out of Bane’s sight line.
He’s at the large desk, I can see him through the gap in the door.
Phone to his ear. One hand pressed flat to a piece of paper on the desk, fingers spread.
His shoulders are set high and square—the way they go when he is being patient with someone he loves and the patience is costing him.
"—I hear you, brother." Pause. "I know. Listen. I know. But Talbot is moving. He pulled two officers off the Tennessee subsidiary this morning. He's scrubbing. He's been scrubbing since Tuesday and we both knew he would and you are still telling me to wait."
A long pause.
"Yes. Yes. I know Hwang said next week. Hwang isn’t the one watching Talbot bury the paper trail in real time. I am."
Another pause.
"...no. Don't. Don't say it like that. I'm not going early without you. I just—Atlas. Atlas. If he buries Tennessee, the federal piece collapses. Hwang can't subpoena what doesn't exist. Santos can't build a case on what's been shredded. You know this."
A pause.
"...how many days?"
Bane pinches the bridge of his nose.
"...mm. Okay. Five."
He rolls his neck and pulls the phone away from his ear slightly like he’s about to crush the thing in his grip.
"Yes. Yes. Five. I can hold it for five. But that's the limit, brother. After five we move whether you're back or not. Tell Santos. Tell Hwang. I'm not letting Talbot run."
Pause.
"...and the nine?"
His shoulders shift. His hand on the desk flattens.
"Everything’s ready. Reeves has been ready for two weeks. The house in Pennsylvania is staffed. I have transport for all nine and a doctor on retainer. I just need to know when. If you give me five more days, I'll hold. If you give me one, I'll move tomorrow morning. Your call."
A long pause.
"Yeah."
His voice changes.
"He's good, Atlas. He's—yeah. He's been good. He's bringing Wren over. We're doing dinner tonight. He's—he's good, brother. I'm watching him."
My lips pull in a smile when I realize Atlas asked about me. My inside go a little mushy. As if Bane felt it, his eyes snap to the door. He sees me.
He doesn’t flinch.
He doesn't stop the call or lower his voice. He just holds my eyes through the gap in the door and keeps talking, and the bond between us runs clear and steady the whole time—no flinch, no scramble, nothing hidden. He's letting me hear it. He's choosing to.
"He's right here, actually. Hi, Maxie."
I don't move.
Bane listens for a beat, then tips his head at me, relaying. "He says to tell you hi."
I can’t help but smile.
"He says hi. Mm? Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell him." A pause. "Yeah. You too, brother. Five days. Tell Santos. Get back here."
He hangs up and sets the phone down. Looks at his hand on the desk, then looks at me.
"Come in, Maxie."
I push the door open and close it behind me.
He doesn’t get up from behind the desk. The piece of paper under his hand is, I can see now, a list. Names in two columns. One column has nine names. The other column has nine other names. There are red marks next to four of the names in the first column.
"You heard?" He asks.
"...some."
"Most."
My cheeks go red. "...most."
"Sit."
I do.
He looks at me for one long beat. There’s no anger in his face. There’s something else, something a little more complicated–like he’s deciding whether to fill in all the blanks in my head or just pretend I didn’t hear a thing.
"Ask," he says. "Whatever you didn't get from the hallway. I'll fill it in."
It's not what I expected. I expected the wall. I expected it's handled, Maxie, the gentle redirect, the door closed kindly in my face. He's not closing it.
I don't waste the opportunity.
"You told Atlas five days. What happens in five days?"
"Talbot's destroying evidence faster than the federal warrant is coming. Shredding a paper trail at a Kline shell in Tennessee." His jaw works once. "After five days there won't be enough left to subpoena. The case stops being a case."
"And the nine names?" I nod at the paper under his hand. I know what they are. I knew the second I saw the columns. "Those are the ones still inside the…” I swallow the lump in my throat, “The facility?"
"Yes."
"Are they—" I have to stop. Start again. "Is it the same? What's being done to them? Is it the same as—"
"Max."
"I need to know if it's the same."
He's quiet for a beat. When he answers, his voice has gone very careful, like he’s afraid of how I’ll react.
"I think it's worse," he says. "It's been longer for some of them than it was for you. That's all I'll say, because the rest of it is not something I'm going to put behind your eyes tonight."
I don't ask anything else about that.
"Then tell me the plan."
"That, I'm also not telling you." He says it gently, but it's a closed door, and we both hear it close. "Not the locations. Not the dates. Not who's moving them or what roads they're taking. You know why."
I do know why. The more I carry, the more I'm worth to anyone who would open me up to get at it.
"Then tell me one thing." I keep my voice level. "If the warrant doesn't come. If it's day six and you move anyway. What's the part you're most afraid of?”
He doesn't answer right away. His hand stays flat on the page.
"That I get all nine of them out," he says finally, "and it still isn't enough to put Talbot in a cell.
That I save the people and lose the case.
And then we spend the rest of our lives watching Kline do it again to hundreds more, under a new name, in a new state, because we moved a week too early.
" He looks at me. "The only thing in question is whether the law is standing next to me when it happens.
Everything else, I already know how to do. "
My eyes go to my hands in my lap and I try to swallow back the smile growing.
"You didn't have to do that," I say. "You could've heard me in the hallway and shut the door and told me it was handled. That's what Atlas would've done. That's what you would have done six months ago." I look at him. "What changed?"
He's quiet for a moment.
"You did," he says. "You walked into this house flinching at every door that opened.
I watched you teach yourself how to be a person in real time.
And somewhere in there it stopped being protective to keep things from you and started being something closer to an insult.
" His hand finally lifts off the page. "I'm not going to insult you, Maxie. Not anymore."
"...Bane."
He pushes the chair back from the desk. Crooks one finger at me—come here—and there is enough quiet certainty in it that I am up and crossing the room before I've decided to.
He guides me down into his lap. One arm settles low around my back. I fit there. I have learned, this year, that I fit there.
I feel like I fit anywhere the brothers are.
"Listen to me," he says, quiet, his mouth near my temple as I lay onto his chest. "When Atlas gets home, he's going to find out I told you, and he's going to be displeased. Not at you. At me. Let him be. That's mine to carry, not yours."
"Bane—"
"But hear the rest of it." He tips my chin up with two fingers so I have to look at him.
"I don't want a single secret standing between us.
Not one. I have spent my whole life keeping the worst things to myself because there was no one to set them down in front of.
I waited a long time for a person I could hand my whole life to.
" His thumb moves along my jaw. "You're him.
So you don't get the careful version anymore.
You get all of it. Even the parts that frighten you. Especially those."
The bond between us goes so wide and bright I have to breathe through it. Like a massive anchor in my chest dragging me closer and closer to him and God, I can’t get enough of him. "...okay," I manage. "Okay."
Then I think of the time, and the dinner, and the girl down the hall.
"Shit. We should get down there," I say. "If we leave Zero alone with Wren he's going to scare her off with a knife trick or a war story."
Bane huffs a laugh. "He wouldn't."
"He absolutely would. He'd think it was charming." I press my palm flat to his chest. "She likes you, you know. You make her calm. Keep that in mind tonight. She'll do better if you're close."
Something crosses his face—soft, and a little stunned, like he could have never imagined his presence would be good for someone.
He doesn’t know how damn good he’s been for me.
"Then I'll stay close to both of you," he says. "I can take care of two people at one dinner table. I've been wanting the chance."