10. Knox
TEN
KNOX
She doesn’t wait before she’s rocketing down the street, canvas bag over her shoulder, head held high.
I’m beside her in a few strides. She’s so fucking small that I swallow up the distance in two steps.
She glances up at me. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Knox.”
I don’t offer anything more. She doesn’t need my life story, doesn’t need to know anything beyond what serves her right now. Names are just sounds we answer to. Mine’s four letters that don’t mean shit.
“Knox,” she repeats, testing it out. “That your real name?”
I shrug. Doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t.
We walk in silence for half a block. She vibrates beside me, a live wire trying to stay grounded. Her hands keep fidgeting with the strap of her bag, and every few steps she glances up at me, then away, like she’s making sure I’m still there.
I’m used to being the biggest man in most rooms, but beside her I feel like some oversized beast trying not to cast too much shadow. She’s small, yes, but there’s nothing meek about the way she moves. Nothing delicate in the set of her jaw or the steel in her spine.
I keep my stride measured, deliberately shortening my steps so she doesn’t have to jog. I’m used to folding myself down—hands visible, shoulders lowered, voice kept quiet. You learn to do that when you’re built like a warning sign.
With her, the contrast is worse. She’s small enough that I could break her without thinking. It makes me want to cross the street and watch over her from a distance, to protect her from my size as much as from the street.
The memory of her viciously stabbing Brock flashes.
Well, maybe not so fragile.
“Are all five of you going to take turns babysitting me?” she asks suddenly, breaking the silence.
I don’t answer right away. Truth is, we haven’t figured this part out yet. The schedule isn’t set, but we’re all on the same page—eyes on her until we know she’s stable.
“Yes.” No point in lying.
She makes a noise—something between a laugh and a scoff. “Great. Just what every girl dreams of. Five strange men following her around. You have all the evidence. I’m fucked if I talk. You don’t need to worry. I’ve got enough self-preservation in me to keep my mouth shut.”
I don’t take the bait. Just keep walking, one foot in front of the other, scanning the street ahead out of both necessity and habit.
“You know this is insane, right?” she continues when I don’t respond. “This whole thing. The masks. The—what do you even call it? Vigilante justice? The stalking? It’s completely insane.”
I shrug. “Insane is relative.”
Something about her spikes my temperature, and I don’t like it. Her scent—vanilla and coffee grounds—drifts up every time she moves, and I have to force myself not to breathe it in too deeply.
I watch a couple walking toward us, the way the guy’s arm wraps possessively around the woman’s waist. They’re laughing, heads tilted together, oblivious to everything but each other.
I shift, positioning myself between them and Sage as we pass.
It’s a reflex, my body making decisions before my brain can intervene.
“Are you always this talkative?” she asks, a bite of sarcasm in her voice.
I glance down at her. Those gray eyes flash up at me, challenging. Fearless.
I’ve seen a lot of survivors in my time.
Broken people, shattered beyond repair. Sage isn’t like them.
She should be curled in a corner somewhere, rocking back and forth.
Instead, she’s walking beside me, back straight, challenging a man more than twice her size even though she watched me pull the rope that hanged someone less than twenty-four hours ago.
But then again, she’s that same woman who took the knife from my boot and turned the same man into something that would give a coroner nightmares.
I watched her scream while she did it, transfixed.
Watched the blood spray across her face and arms and chest, watched her keep going long after he stopped moving, watched the animal inside her claw its way to the surface and take over.
Fucking glorious.
I respect her. I don’t say it, but I think it. I’ve thought a lot about her since that jetty. There’s a pull, low in my gut, that started the second I saw her on her knees and hasn’t let up since.
She rolls her eyes. “I’m going to take that as a no.”
I glance at her. Just a glance—I can’t afford much more than that, can’t afford to look at her too long or I’ll start noticing things I shouldn’t.
Like the curve of her neck, the way her hair catches the light, the shadow of exhaustion under her eyes that makes me want to put her somewhere soft and dark and let her sleep for a week.
“I talk when I have something worth saying.”
She snorts. I almost want to smile. There’s a rhythm developing between us, combative but good.
“That’s probably a good thing. Most people talk too much, but they never really say anything. You know?”
I nod.
She looks up at me, adjusts the bag on her shoulder.
“I guess you just strike me as way too quiet. You seem like the kind of guy who could kill someone with your bare hands and not break a sweat. Just a silent—” She raises her hands, flicking them in an imitation of a snap, making a sound that I guess is supposed to be a neck breaking.
I smirk. “Maybe. But it’s easier when people assume it’s a suicide.”
She goes quiet. For three steps, four. Her lips twitch, like she’s chewing on whether to keep pushing. “Why let me do it? I mean—under the jetty. I grabbed your knife, right? You could have stopped me. But you didn’t. Why?”
I look straight ahead. The moon’s rising, a bright, bleeding gold through the salt-streaked windshields along the avenue. “He was yours to finish.”
She jerks as if I flicked a match at her. Her throat works, a hard swallow, and I catch it—the flash before she locks it down. “You have a really weird sense of morality.”
I don’t bother denying it. I just reach out and take her bag without asking. She makes a grab for it, shooting me a death-stare, but I’ve already shifted it to my non-dominant side and kept walking.
“Seriously?” She catches up to me. “You’re stealing my bag now, too?”
“No point in straining your shoulder.”
She glares at me. “You’d better give it back this time. You and your squad already took enough of my things.”
If only I’d taken some underwear as well. Could have jerked off on the fabric instead of into my goddamned palm.
“I will.”
We turn onto her street and I can see her building up ahead—paint peeling, windows dark.
“Who’s next on shift?” she asks. “And how often do you guys rotate? Holden was this morning. And I saw the guy with the jacket—the one who cleaned me up—he was watching during the lunch rush at the diner. And now I have you. When do the other two show up?”
I consider the question, weighing how much to tell her. She deserves honesty—she’s earned it, the hard way—but there are things I can’t say. Things that aren’t mine to share.
“Micah and Milo are busy.” I don’t know this for sure. But my guess is that they’re freezing their asses off in a meat locker while Milo deals with Brock’s body in his own psychopathic way. I almost scoff at the idea. Weekend at fucking Bernie’s.
“Micah and Milo? Wait. Hold up. I need to get this straight.” She lifts a hand, ticking us off on her fingertips. “We’ve got Knox, Holden, Milo, and Micah. Which one is the guy in the jacket?”
“That’s Eli.”
She sighs. “Okay, and Micah and Milo are . . .?”
“Micah was the guy holding you, Milo’s the one who looks like a feral raccoon high on caffeine.”
“He was the one going on about the note?”
“That’s him.”
She snorts. “Got it. So where are they now? Like, do you have jobs? Or is there a lot of money in being a murder puppy?”
I ignore the jab. “We all have jobs. This is more of a hobby. A very satisfying one.”
She chews on her bottom lip as she thinks, and fuck if I don’t want to take my thumb and free it, press against it, just to see if the pink would bloom brighter, just to see if she’d bite me for even trying.
I shove my hands into my pockets to keep them to myself.
“Tomorrow, you’ll meet Eli properly.”
“Autumn eyes,” she mutters to herself, nodding. We walk a few steps before I catch her watching me.
I wonder what she sees—monster or guardian or just another fucked-up man in a long line of them.
She stops in front of her building and jams out her hand for the bag. I don’t make her ask twice. She hugs it close, shoulders taut, spine rigid.
“Should I expect more unannounced break-ins?” she asks.
I shake my head, arms crossed in front of my chest.
“Do I have to worry about you guys showing up when I’m in the shower? Or, like, standing in my room at night while I sleep? Cause that’s creepy as fuck and you guys have already been in my apartment twice by my count.”
The idea of watching her sleep sparks something sick inside me—it’s both a joke and a trap, cause god knows I’d love to be a shadow on her wall.
“We’ll only enter if there’s a reason.”
It takes her a moment, but she nods, tiny, like she accepts that answer but doesn’t like it. She backs up three more steps, keys ready in her fist, then turns and bounds up the stairs, two at a time. The key slides in, and a beat later the door slams behind her.
I wait. Forty-five seconds. Long enough for her to travel the small lobby, climb the internal stairs and open her apartment. It’s because I’m worried for her, and because some quieter, uglier part of me likes knowing exactly where she is.
I find a spot across the street in the shadow of a dumpster that smells like salt and rotting fish. I lean against the brick wall and watch her building until the light comes on in her window.
I stay there for a long time. Long enough for the light to turn off, for the building to go dark. I stay until there’s nothing left to watch but shadows and the distant churn of the sea.
Then I pull out my phone and text Eli.
Me:
She’s home safe.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
Eli:
Thanks. She give you any trouble?
My fingers hover over the keyboard.
Me:
Nothing I can’t handle.
I put the phone away and press my skull against the brick.
Nothing I can’t handle? Bullshit.
Sage has a mouth on her, and more steel than sense. She makes me want to do terrible, patient things. She’s supposed to be a job, but it seems my body didn’t get that memo.
She’s dangerous.
I’m about to leave when I see her curtains twitch, and her face appear in the window. For a beat, I think she’s looking at me, then the curtains close once more.
Fuck.
I settle back against the wall, crossing my arms as a breeze touches my hair.
Someone needs to keep watch. Might as well be me.