Chapter 16 #3
"When I was alone in there," I say. Small.
Not to Wren, exactly. To the windshield.
To the light. To whoever is listening. "In the facility.
Before Bane came—it was only a day and a half but it felt like weeks.
And the whole time the only thing that kept me—" I stop.
My throat has closed. I breathe through it.
"The only thing that kept me here and sane was talking to you.
Through the wall. Hearing your voice. Knowing someone else was in it with me. "
Wren doesn't look at me. Her jaw is tight. Her hands are tight on the wheel.
"So I'm asking you to be in it with me again. Not because I can't walk through those doors alone. I can. But I don't want to."
She signals left. Takes the turn. The Seventh Precinct is six blocks away.
"Max." Her voice is rough. "You absolute idiot. When have I ever not been in it with you?"
I almost laugh. It comes out wet. I press my hand to my mouth and taste blood from my lip and I am in a car with the only person in the world who has been where I've been, who has seen what I've seen. Maybe we should have done this months ago, but we’re here now.
"Thank you," I say.
"I told you not to thank me."
"I'm thanking you anyway."
"Stubborn ass,” she says, smacking my shoulder.
"Learned it from you."
She almost smiles. Almost. The corner of her mouth lifts and then she pulls it back because Wren doesn't give smiles away easily and she's saving this one for later.
Four blocks. Three.
The precinct comes into view. Low, rectangular, ugly. Fluorescent light spilling through the glass doors. A flag out front that hasn't been replaced in too long, the colors faded to pastels.
Wren pulls into the lot. Parks. Kills the engine.
We sit. Both of us looking at the building through the windshield.
"I'm going in with you," she says. Not a question. "And I'm not sitting in the waiting room."
I look at her.
"You're not the only one who was in that building, Max. You're not the only name they can put on a report." Her jaw is set. Her hands are still in her lap but they're not shaking anymore. "Two witnesses. Two victims. Two statements. That's harder to bury than one."
"Wren—"
"Don't. Don't do the thing where you try to protect me from the thing I'm volunteering for.
I've had enough of that from Reeves." She turns to face me.
"You said you didn't want to walk through those doors alone.
Fine. But I'm not walking through them as your moral support.
I'm walking through them as a victim. My name. My statement. Next to yours."
My throat closes. I nod. She nods back.
"Ready?" she asks.
I look at the building. The fluorescent light. The faded flag.
I think about Zero in the driveway, barefoot, bleeding, the letter in my handwriting crushed in his fist. About Bane's voice through the office wall—twelve weeks—steady even when the number was a death sentence. About Atlas in a hotel room treating me like a prince while he was carrying the burden of cleaning up the mess I’d caused all by himself.
They gave up everything to keep me safe. Their business. Their money. Their leverage against a man who could destroy them. They did it without asking, without hesitating, without ever once making me feel like the cost was mine to carry.
This is how I give it back.
Not the money. Not the business. Not the thing Talbot took. But the fight—the one they've been losing quietly, in offices and courtrooms and boardrooms, for months. The one that needs something no lawyer or federal prosecutor or private investigator can provide.
A person willing to stand up and say this happened to me.
When I walk through those doors, there is no version of my life that goes back to what it was.
My designation becomes public record. My name becomes evidence.
Every secret I've kept since I was eleven years old stops being mine.
The brothers, the bonds, the facility, the cells—all of it, laid out under fluorescent lights for strangers to document and lawyers to dissect and reporters to find.
I will never be just Max again.
But the three men in that house will have their lives back. And nine people in a concrete building sixty miles from here will have a chance.
That's the math. That's the only math that matters.
"Yeah," I say. "I'm ready."
We get out. The morning air is cool. The sun is cresting the treeline, throwing long gold light across the parking lot. Wren comes around the car and falls into step beside me. Shoulder to shoulder. Boots on pavement. Chin up.
The glass doors are right in front of us. She pushes one open. I push the other.
The fluorescent light hits us both. Bright. Harsh. The kind of light that doesn't allow shadows.
The woman at the front desk looks up.
"Can I help you?" she asks.
I step forward. My hands are at my sides. My cheek and lip throbs. The bonds in my chest are pulling northeast—three threads, three brothers, three men who love me enough to try to keep me from this and who I love enough to do it anyway.
My voice is steady.
"My name is Max Carter. I'm here to report a crime."