Chapter 20
The gala was obscene.
Not in the obvious way. not violence or exploitation, nothing Seth could point at and say that, that's the thing that's wrong.
The obscenity was subtler. It was the champagne that cost more per glass than Seth had made in a week at the temp agency.
It was the dresses and the jewelry and the laughter, echoing through the Westin's grand ballroom like the sound of people who had never been hungry and couldn't imagine what it felt like.
It was Clayton Mercer, standing at the center of it all, shaking hands and accepting praise for his commitment to fighting the very thing he profited from.
Mercer took the scotch without looking at Seth's face. His fingers brushed Seth's as he accepted the glass, brief, accidental, the casual contact of a man who was accustomed to being served and didn't register the person doing the serving.
Seth registered everything.
The weight of the glass leaving his hand.
The temperature of Mercer's fingers, warm, soft, manicured.
The cologne, sandalwood and something darker, what smelled expensive and wrong.
The way Mercer's eyes stayed on the woman he was talking to, never dropping to the server, never acknowledging the human being standing three feet away with a tray and a hidden device and the muscle memory of four months in a cage that this man had built.
You don't see me, Seth thought. You've never seen me. I was invisible in your warehouse and I'm invisible in your ballroom and that invisibility, the thing you used to erase me, is the thing that's going to destroy you.
Next guest. Poured. Smiled. Invisible.
Seth watched him from across the room and felt something cold settle in his stomach.
Mercer was smaller in person. That was the first surprise.
The photos had made him look imposing, the silver hair, the tailored suit, the smile that owned every room it entered.
In person, he was five-nine, maybe five-ten.
Soft around the middle. The hands that shook donor after donor were manicured and pale, a man who had never done his own dirty work.
Those hands had never touched a chain-link cage.
Had never swung a pipe. Had never dragged a worker back from a collapsed heap and forced them back to the line.
Mercer didn't do those things. Mercer paid people to do those things, and then he came to galas in ballrooms and raised money to pretend they didn't exist.
"You okay?" Zain's voice, low, close. He was beside Seth in a tuxedo that Jack had been entirely right about. Zain wore formal clothing like a soldier wearing civilian dress, correct but uncomfortable, the violence underneath visible to anyone who knew what to look for.
Seth knew what to look for.
"I'm fine," he said. His catering uniform, white shirt, black vest, borrowed from Ghost's contacts, fit well enough. A tray of champagne flutes provided cover and purpose. He was invisible in the way that service workers were always invisible at events like this.
The way he'd been invisible at Mercer's warehouse.
"VIP room is on four," Ghost murmured through the earpiece. "Mercer should head up in about twenty minutes. The device is in your vest pocket. Plant it under the conference table, there's a seam where the legs meet the surface. Magnetic mount. Five seconds."
"Copy," Seth said quietly, refilling a guest's glass with a smile that cost him nothing.
The twenty minutes passed like hours. Seth moved through the ballroom, tray balanced, eyes tracking Mercer's orbit through the crowd.
He watched the man accept a crystal award for Humanitarian of the Year.
Watched him give a speech about the dignity of human life that made Seth's vision go white at the edges.
"…and every dollar raised tonight goes directly to the fight against exploitation in our city. "
Seth's hand tightened on the tray. The glasses trembled.
Zain's hand found the small of his back. Brief. Grounding. Then gone.
"Focus," Zain murmured.
Seth breathed. Refocused.
Mercer finished his speech. Applause. Handshakes. A slow migration toward the elevators.
"He's moving," Ghost said. "Seth, you're up."
Seth set down the tray. Straightened his vest. Walked to the service elevator with the calm, purposeful stride of a man who belonged exactly where he was going.
The VIP room was smaller than he'd expected.
Warm-toned, luxurious; a room where decisions were made over scotch and sealed with handshakes.
Conference table in the center, leather chairs, a bar along one wall.
Two security guards flanked the entrance, private, as Ghost had said.
They glanced at Seth's catering uniform and waved him through.
Invisible.
Seth moved to the bar. Began arranging bottles and glasses with practiced efficiency, a skill he'd picked up years ago, one of the many jobs that had kept him alive before the warehouse. While his hands worked, his eyes scanned the table.
There. The seam where the table's center support met the surface. Perfect.
He dropped a napkin. Bent to pick it up. His hand found the device in his vest pocket, small, magnetic, barely the size of a coin. He pressed it into the seam under the table and felt the magnet catch.
Five seconds. Done.
"Device is live," Ghost whispered. "Signal's strong. Beautiful."
Seth stood. Continued arranging the bar. His heart was hammering but his hands were steady, a trick he'd learned from Zain, or maybe a trick he'd always known and had just needed someone to remind him of.
Mercer entered the room.
And looked directly at Seth.
Time stopped.
Those pale blue eyes moved over Seth's face with the casual assessment of a man who evaluated people the way an investor evaluated assets. There was no recognition, why would there be? Mercer had never visited the warehouse floor. Had never seen the faces of the people who generated his profits.
But Seth had seen his face. On the wall of the temp agency. In the gala photos. In his nightmares, where Mercer's smile was the mask that cruelty wore when it wanted to look civilized.
"Scotch," Mercer said. "Neat."
Seth poured. Handed it over. Their fingers didn't touch.
"Thank you," Mercer said, already turning away to greet his real guests. Dismissed. Invisible.
Seth stood behind the bar and poured drinks for the men who funded human trafficking and smiled when they said thank you and felt the cold thing in his stomach crystallize into something sharp and patient and absolutely certain.
He was going to help bring this man down.
Whatever it cost.
They were in the car, a borrowed sedan, nothing conspicuous, when Levi stepped into the headlights.
It happened fast. One moment the street was empty, rain-slicked and quiet. The next, a figure in an army surplus jacket was standing in the middle of the road, hands out, that manic grin on his face.
"Shit," Zain said, and hit the brakes.
Seth was out of the car before it fully stopped. Rage and adrenaline and the vestiges of the gala's controlled fury all converging into what burned.
"Levi. What the hell are you doing?"
"Time's up, brother." Levi's hands were shaking. His eyes were wrong, too wide, too bright. He was high. "Forty-eight hours. I said forty-eight hours."
"It's been thirty-six."
"Close enough." The gun appeared from behind his back. Small. Chrome. Shaking in his grip.
Zain was out of the car now. Moving slow, hands visible, every inch of him radiating the controlled lethality that Seth had learned to recognize.
"Put it down," Zain said.
"This ain't about you, man. This is between me and Seth."
"Everything about Seth is about me."
The words landed in the rain-wet dark. Levi blinked. Looked between them.
"Oh." A sick, knowing smile. "Oh, I see. That's sweet. That's real sweet."
"Levi." Seth's voice was steady. "You don't want to do this."
"I need the money, Seth. I need it. You don't understand. "
"I understand better than anyone."
"Then help me! Just give me something, anything, I'll disappear. "
"You'll come back. You always come back. Every time you need a fix, every time you're desperate, you'll remember where I am and you'll come back and one day you'll bring someone worse."
"I won't. "
"You sold me, Levi." Seth's voice cracked. Just once. "You sold me to the people who put me in a cage. For drug money. And now you're standing here with a gun asking me to trust you."
Levi's face crumpled. For a moment, just a moment, the boy Seth had known surfaced. Fifteen, scared, sleeping in doorways. The boy who'd shared his last cigarette and his last lie and believed they'd both get out.
Then the gun came up.
Zain moved.
The disarm was brutal and clean, one hand on the wrist, one strike to the throat, the gun clattering to wet asphalt. Levi crumpled, gagging, and Zain hit him again. Once. Twice. Methodical.
Then he stepped back.
The gun lay on the ground. Levi groaned in the rain. Zain looked at Seth.
"Your call," he said.
Not what do you want to do. Not I'll handle it. Your call. A gift of agency from a man who understood that powerlessness was the wound and choice was the only medicine.
Seth picked up the gun.
It was lighter than he expected. Warm from Levi's hand. The rain ran over the chrome and made it gleam.
Levi looked up at him. Blood on his teeth. Fear in his eyes, real fear, for the first time.
"Seth. Come on, man. We're friends."
"We were never friends. We were two people drowning in the same water."
"Please. "
"You'll come back."
"I won't, I swear. "
"You will. Because you can't help it. Because the drugs won't let you. And next time, you'll bring Mercer's people, and they'll kill everyone in that safehouse." Seth's hand was shaking. His voice was not. "I'm not going to let that happen."
"Seth. "
He pulled the trigger.
The sound was enormous. Louder than he'd expected, louder than the movies, a crack that split the wet air and echoed off the buildings. Levi's body jerked. Went still.
Blood pooled in the rain.
Seth stood over the body of the first person he'd ever killed and waited for the horror. The guilt. The crushing weight of what he'd done.
What came instead was silence. A vast, numb nothing, like a door closing inside him. The gun hung heavy in his hand. The rain fell on his face. Somewhere a car alarm went off, triggered by the shot, and was silenced.
"Seth."
Zain was in front of him. Hands on his shoulders. Blood on his own knuckles from the fight.
"Seth. Look at me."
He looked.
"Give me the gun."
He gave him the gun.
Zain set it aside. Cupped Seth's face in his hands, warm, steady, the only solid thing in a world that had gone liquid and strange.
"You did what you had to do," Zain said.
"I know."
"It's going to hit you later."
"I know that too."
"And when it does, I'll be here."
Seth nodded. He couldn't feel his hands. Couldn't feel much of anything.
Then Zain pulled him in, and Seth's face was against his chest, and the warmth of another body was the only thing anchoring him to the earth. He didn't cry. Didn't shake. Just stood in the rain and breathed and let Zain hold the weight of him.
"We need to move," Zain said quietly. "Jack's incoming for cleanup."
"Okay."
"Are you okay?"
"No." Seth pulled back. Looked up at him. Rain on his face, or something else. "But I will be."
They went back to the safehouse. Jack handled the body. Ghost scrubbed the nearby cameras. Nate was waiting with medical supplies he didn't need and hot coffee he did.
Seth sat on Zain's bed, not his own room, not tonight, and stared at his hands while Zain locked the door.
"I killed someone," Seth said.
"Yes."
"I thought I'd feel more."
"You will. It comes in waves."
"How do you know?"
Zain sat beside him. Close enough to touch. Not touching yet.
"Because I remember my first," he said quietly. "In Fallujah. I was twenty-two. He was running at our position with something in his hand, turned out to be a phone, not a detonator. I didn't know that until after."
Seth looked at him.
"I threw up. Then I didn't feel anything for three days. Then it hit me all at once, in the mess hall, of all places. Someone dropped a tray and I was on the floor."
"What happened then?"
"A sergeant pulled me up. Said something I didn't understand at the time. He said, 'The first one changes you. The ones after that just confirm the change.'"
"Is that true?"
"Parts of it." Zain's hand found Seth's knee. "The part he left out is that you get to choose what the change looks like."
Seth covered Zain's hand with his own.
"I don't want to be alone tonight," Seth said.
"You're not."
"I mean…"
"I know what you mean."
Zain kissed him.