Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
GRACE
The next twenty-four hours blurred, smeared, and folded in on themselves like pages of a book that had been rained on and left out to dry crooked.
I didn’t remember leaving Sinclair’s basement.
I didn’t remember the drive.
I didn’t remember the transfer through an underground garage, or the elevator, or the coded door that hissed open like something out of a spy movie.
I remembered Goblin’s warm flank pressed against my leg.
I remembered Bones’ hand on the small of my back anytime my steps slowed.
I remembered Legend’s voice—low and steady—telling me we were almost there.
Then we arrived at a safe house. Another one.
This one near the District, tucked between a row of narrow brick townhomes that blended so well I wouldn’t have noticed it if AB hadn’t opened the door with a loud, “Welcome to the nation’s capital, kiddos, please remove your shoes, weapons optional.”
He was trying to make me smile.
It worked. Barely.
The place was…anonymous. Clean lines, bare floors, neutral colors. The kind of temporary shelter where nothing personal was meant to remain. No pictures. No memories. No ghosts.
I dropped onto the couch before any of them could herd me anywhere else. Goblin climbed up beside me, shoved his nose under my arm, and sighed with all the weight of the world.
“Yeah,” I whispered to him. “Me too.”
Across the room, Alphabet had already commandeered the dining table. Three laptops open, phone plugged in, tablet connected, cords like veins spreading out in every direction. The digital heartbeat of the entire mess pulsed beneath his fingers.
He didn’t look up as he spoke. “Sinclair’s five names are garbage in isolation, but when you run them against shipping manifests, port clearances, and the last twelve to eighteen months of diverted cargos? We’ve got movement. Not a full trail. But movement.”
Legend slumped into an armchair opposite me, rope burns still on his hands. “Means we’re not dead in the water.”
Voodoo paced. He’d been pacing since we arrived—tight, contained circles like a lion searching for a threat it could already smell but not yet see. “Movement isn’t enough. We need a direction, and we need to know whether following it keeps Grace in play or puts her in the crosshairs.”
Bones stood behind the couch, both hands resting lightly on the back near my shoulders without actually touching me. His closeness alone was comfort.
I let out a breath that felt like it dragged broken glass out of my chest.
“So what are we doing?” My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “Going back to Montana? Staying here? Hunting for the next lead?”
AB finally tore his eyes from the screens, gaze sweeping the room before landing on me.
“We’re triangulating. Every name, every container ID, every port switch Ignacio babbled, every code Sinclair vomited up—we’re stitching it together.
By tonight, I’ll know which cabal branch is most active and where the shipments converged.
And from that, we can figure out the most likely vector Amorette was funneled into. ”
My stomach hollowed. Hearing her name still felt like stepping off a cliff.
Legend leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Montana gives us home turf. Resources. More privacy. But we lose proximity to the East Coast ports.” He jerked a thumb at AB. “And Mr. Wi-Fi Overdose here gets cranky when the bandwidth sucks.”
Alphabet lifted one finger from the keyboard. “Correction, I get homicidal when the bandwidth sucks.”
Bones ignored both of them. His voice lowered. “Grace.”
Just my name. But full of weight. “We follow your lead. If you need home—real home—we go. If you want us to keep pushing here, we stay.”
Home.
Their place had become home at some point over the past several months. As much as we’d traveled, and all the safe houses, they brought part of that home with them. They were my home.
The word punched something deep in my ribcage. I wanted it. God, I wanted the pine air, the mountains, the quiet. I wanted my bed or theirs. I wanted to sleep without seeing Sinclair’s face or hearing Ignacio sob.
But Amorette wouldn’t be in Montana.
Time kept slipping away.
“I don’t want to run from this,” I said, fingers curling against Goblin’s fur. “I’m tired. I’m…exhausted. But we’re close. Closer than we’ve been since this started. I can feel it.”
Legend nodded slowly, something like pride flickering in his eyes. “Then we stay until Alphabet gets the next solid lead.”
AB lifted a hand. “I can get you that by tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.” He grunted. “Okay, forty-eight hours tops. I want to make sure I drill down far enough that we don’t miss anything.”
Voodoo finally stopped pacing. “Then we prep. Weapons. Extractions. Evac contingencies. Because the second we tug one wrong strand of that cabal web, they’re going to feel it. Might already know Sinclair’s missing.”
A tremor slipped down my spine.
“Does it matter?” I asked.
Bones came around the couch and sank beside me, letting his shoulder brush mine in silent answer.
He was right.
It didn’t matter.
We weren’t stopping.
Not until we found Amorette.
Bones raised his arm.
It was such a small gesture—barely more than a quiet invitation—but my body moved before my mind caught up. I leaned into him, curling into the curve of his chest as though that was the place I’d been meant to fit all along.
He didn’t say anything at first. Just held me, his warmth sinking into my skin, into me, into the hollowed-out spaces where adrenaline had finally burned itself out.
We’d all showered and changed back at Sinclair’s house before we left it behind—somewhere in the fog, I remembered that.
The soap, the steam, the scrape of a towel across my skin.
Washing off the sweat and fear and the stink of the basement.
But none of it touched the tiredness.
“Do you want to rest?” Bones asked quietly, his breath stirring the top of my hair.
“I don’t…” My fingers curled in Goblin’s fur again. “I don’t know what I want.”
That earned me the full attention of the room.
Legend’s head lifted immediately, all that mischief he wore like armor snapping off his face as if someone had flipped a switch. Voodoo paused mid-swipe over whatever tactical list he was building on his phone. Even AB’s typing cut off mid-click, his hands suspended over his keys.
For a heartbeat, nobody breathed.
Then Legend said, abruptly and with the weight of absolute certainty, “Food.”
All of us looked at him.
He lifted his chin. “No joke. That’s what we need. She needs to eat. We all do. And we need a beat. Just us. Nothing heavy. Clear the mental palate before we start wrestling with the next monster.”
Voodoo’s thumb tapped once against his thigh. “Agreed. Low blood sugar and high stress is a shit combination.”
AB rolled his chair back from the table. “I can pause. Algorithms won’t implode if I take thirty minutes. I have plenty of searches that can run while we break.” He pointed to the screen without looking at it. “I already know where to pick the threads up.”
Legend rubbed a hand over his jaw. “So. Options. We can cook here. Or we can pick up from that little place three blocks over—the one with the day-old pastries and the weirdly excellent sandwiches.”
Voodoo snorted. “The café with the chairs that collapse when you breathe too hard.”
“They fixed the chairs,” Legend shot back. “Their grilled cheese is god-tier, don’t even lie.”
Bones glanced down at me. “Dollface? Any preferences?”
I didn’t. But the normalcy of them debating sandwiches and collapsing chairs and delivery apps felt like a rope thrown to a drowning swimmer. Something to hold onto.
“I…maybe something simple?” My throat felt tight. “Warm.”
“Soup,” Voodoo said.
“Grilled cheese,” Legend insisted.
“Both,” AB decided. “I’ll place the order. You—” he pointed at Legend, “—go pick it up. You look like you need to move before you start climbing the walls.”
Legend blinked, then flashed a crooked grin. “True enough. I’ll be back in fifteen.”
“Take Goblin with you. He’s been a trooper, but he could use a good walk too.”
Bones pressed a kiss into my hair—soft, grounding. “We’ll keep it light. Just food. No questions, no planning until you say otherwise.”
For the first time in hours—maybe days—I felt something like steady ground forming under my feet again.
Not peace. Not safety. But something close to breathing.
Because even as the world kept spinning and the horror kept unfolding… I wasn’t alone in it.
Not for one breath. Not for one step.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Food sounds good.”
Legend was already grabbing his keys. “Come on, buddy. Field trip.”
Goblin perked up from where he’d curled up against me. Legend grinned and crouched. With a soft huff, Goblin nudged my hand as if asking if I minded and I stroked him between his ears.
“Go on, a walk sounds good.” That earned me a wet kiss to my cheek before he hopped down and trotted over to Legend. Once he had the leash snapped on, they were out the door. The house exhaled into a quieter silence.
Voodoo slid his phone into his pocket and tilted his head at me. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
I blinked at him. “A… movie?”
His brows lifted, amused. “Yes, Grace. Moving pictures. Story. Usually accompanied by popcorn.”
“That sounds—” I tried to find the right word. “—wildly normal.”
Bones huffed a low laugh beside me, rubbing slow, warm circles on my arm. Voodoo shrugged lightly, leaning a hip against the table.
“Well,” he said, “we could play cards instead. Something simple. Poker?”
Poker.
Poker after everything I’d just seen.
Poker instead of screaming, or panicking, or burying myself under the weight of it all.
The absurdity tugged the corner of my mouth upward. Barely—but it was there.
“Poker, huh?” I asked. “Are we playing for stakes?”
Bones’ fingers stilled, then resumed their gentle motion. Voodoo’s lips twisted into something that lived between a smirk and genuine warmth.
He pushed off the table with easy precision. “That depends,” he said. “How badly are you planning to beat us?”
And for the first time today—I felt the slope of a smile tugging at me. Not full. Not bright. But real.
“You don’t even know if I’m that good at it.”
AB snorted from the counter. “Please. You have the best poker face I’ve ever seen. You make statues look expressive.”
Bones rumbled a low agreement. “I’ve seen you deal with arms dealers and bakers with the same collected calm. You rescued me at the museum without a twitch. That’s championship-level control right there.”
Voodoo folded his arms, smirking. “Yeah, Grace. If that wasn’t a poker face, nothing is.”
Heat flickered in my chest—small, startled, but warm.
I tried for modesty, but the corners of my mouth betrayed me, lifting despite the weight of everything pressing against my ribs.
“Honestly,” I said, shrugging lightly, “I’m not bad at it.”
“Not bad?” Bones echoed, nudging my knee with his own. “You’re terrifying at it.”
I huffed out something close to a laugh. “Fine. But I’m better when we’re actually playing for stakes.”
Voodoo raised a brow. “Oh? Planning on taking all our money?”
“Money’s boring,” I shot back. “Besides… you guys need a break too.”
AB snapped his laptop shut. “Hear that? The lady wants stakes and a break. Someone get the cards.”
And for the first time in hours, between trauma and fear and grief and the razor-edged hunger for answers, I felt myself exhale something that wasn’t pain.
A smile. Real. Small. But mine.
“Cards are easy,” Voodoo said. “We always keep some at various stops.” He disappeared down the hall and when he came back, he had three decks with him. “Stakes… may prove a little challenging?”
“Do we need physical stakes?” AB mused aloud moving over to join us on the sofa. When he sat next to me, he stretched his legs out and there was a kind of slow sigh that escaped him. We were all aching in different ways. “Or just the idea of them?”
By the time Legend returned—with Goblin trotting proudly at his heels and bags of food swinging from both hands—we’d turned the dining area into something that almost resembled normal life.
Almost.
The circular table was pulled into the center of the room. Five mismatched chairs around it. Bones had cleared enough space that the whole setup looked intentional instead of desperate.
Legend stopped in the doorway, blinked once, then grinned. “Well, damn. I leave for twenty minutes and you degenerates turn this place into a Vegas side room.”
Bones lifted the deck, letting the cards slap together in a clean, deadly shuffle. “Sit down, Lunchbox. You’re in for the next hand.”
“Sweet,” he said, dropping the bags on the counter. Goblin trotted over to me, nudging my knee until I scratched behind his ears. “What are we playing for? Money? Bragging rights? Organs?”
“Clothes,” AB said cheerfully, digging through the food. “And promises.”
Legend went still. Then slowly, very slowly, his grin widened. “Clothes and promises. Okay. This I like.”
I held up a hand before anyone got too excited. “One promise per day. Max.”
Four pairs of male eyes cut toward me. Bones raised a brow. Voodoo paused mid–drink prep. AB froze with a spoon halfway to his mouth. Legend looked personally offended.
“One per day?” Legend echoed. “Gracie, sweetheart, we’re gonna win you by the hour.”
“You think so?” I countered, arching a brow.
Bones let out a low whistle. “She’s confident.”
“Confident?” AB snorted. “She’s plotting our destruction.”
I shrugged, the tiniest tug of amusement pulling at my lips. “I’m just saying… the odds might not be in your favor.”
Legend set out the food—sandwiches, fries, soup, and something spicy AB immediately claimed—and dropped into the chair beside me. “You’re talking big for someone who hasn’t played us yet.”
“Oh, I’ve played you,” I said lightly. “You just didn’t notice.”
Voodoo returned with drinks—beer for the guys, sparkling wine for me, because he noticed things—and set them down. The fact Voodoo had taken the time to step out and grab drinks was sweet. “Alright. House rules, lose a hand, lose a layer.”
AB raised his bottle. “Win a hand, earn a promise.”
Legend bumped his shoulder against mine. “You ready for this, Gracie?”
I looked around at them—these men who had torn men down for me today and they’d do it again tomorrow and the day after that if I needed it—and felt something warm settle under my ribs.
They needed this.
God, so did I.
I nodded, settling into my chair. “Deal the cards, boys.”
Just like that, for the first time since Bones had been taken, the air around us eased—not because the danger was gone, but because, for this moment, we let ourselves breathe.