Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Nova
Four days into the compound restriction, I've stopped flinching when Boulder hands me my helmet.
It's Wednesday morning.
Pharmacology II at nine-thirty, clinical rotation skipped this week per Amara's compromise, classroom only until the situation gets handled.
Boulder's bike is already running in the courtyard.
Compass is at the gate with a clipboard and a Glock at his hip, doing the security check on the families coming through to the back lot.
The compound feels different this week.
Tighter. Quieter in the way that means more is happening underneath the surface than I can see from the kitchen.
Mei is already gone. Her class is at eight, and Razor took her in.
She and Razor have an awkward thing going where he doesn't know what to do with a girl who flinches at sudden noises and she doesn't know what to do with a man who grunts instead of greets.
They're figuring it out.
Doom is waiting for me at the gate when I come out.
He's in his cut. Bandana tied.
His hands are in his pockets, and his shoulders are down in the way they only are around me.
He doesn't say be careful. He's not a be careful type of man.
"Come back," he says.
"I will."
He kisses me once. Brief. A tether, not a goodbye.
I get on the back of Boulder's bike.
Brick takes the lead. Compass closes the gate behind us.
The ride to campus is twenty-two minutes if traffic on the bypass cooperates.
Boulder doesn't talk on his bike.
Brick rides like a man who's calculated every escape route between the compound and the school, because he probably has.
We come in past the south parking structure where the bikes don't get a second look anymore.
Most of the nursing program knows me now, or they know enough about me to know not to ask questions.
Boulder walks me through the main lobby of the Salud building and up to the second floor.
He stops at the door of Dr. Maldonado's lecture hall.
He has the schedule. He has the protocol if I text him the safety word.
"Anything weird," he says, "you walk out of the room and you call me."
"I know."
"I'm in the lobby."
"I know, Boulder."
He almost smiles.
Boulder doesn't quite smile at people, but he comes close with me sometimes.
I think because I remind him of Kelsey, or because he's trying.
Either way, I'll take it.
I walk into class.
The lecture hall fills up around me.
I take my usual seat in the back row, three from the door, the way Boulder told me to sit when we worked out the new routine.
Dr. Maldonado walks in two minutes later, drops her bag on the lectern, and starts the slide deck immediately.
Tricyclic antidepressants.
I write down what she says and try to forget there are two armed men in the lobby downstairs waiting for me to finish.
Pharmacology II has gone on for forty minutes when the knock comes.
I'm in the back row taking notes when someone raps gently on the door.
Through the small window I see a man in a tailored gray suit holding a manila folder. A lanyard around his neck with the university's logo on it.
Dr. Maldonado looks at the door, then at the man through the window, and waves him in.
He steps in just enough to be inside the room.
In fluent, polite Spanish, he asks the professor if he can borrow me for a moment.
There's an issue with my clinical placement paperwork that needs my signature before noon.
I feel the wrongness before I can name it.
I look at his lanyard.
The badge is the right kind. The colors and the font are right.
Dr. Maldonado looks at me. "Nova? You want to handle that and come back?"
I want to say no. I want to text Boulder right now.
But every alarm in my head is screaming and I don't have a reason yet, just a feeling, and standing up and refusing this man in front of forty other students isn't a thing I can do without an explanation.
I close my notebook and tuck my phone into the back pocket of my jeans where I can reach it.
I stand up and follow him into the hallway.
The door clicks shut behind us.
The hallway is empty.
He turns to me, and his face doesn't change exactly. His mouth does. The polite smile is gone.
His hand is at my sternum before I understand he's moved.
He walks me backward three steps, fast and controlled, between two cabinets where the camera angle is broken.
My back hits the wall.
He doesn't press. He just holds me there with his palm flat against the center of my chest, his face close enough that I can smell his aftershave and the bitter coffee on his breath.
His breathing is even. His eyes are tracking the hallway over my shoulder, not even fully on me.
He waits a moment. He wants me to feel the difference between what's happening and what could happen.
Then he speaks in low Spanish, just for me.
"Dile a tu noviecito que acepte la oferta de su padre. Si no, no será la última vez que te visite. Y la próxima vez voy a tomarme más tiempo contigo."
Tell your little boyfriend to take his father's offer. If not, this won't be the last time I visit you. Next time, I'll take more time with you.
His other hand moves.
The back of his knuckles trails from the side of my jaw, down the line of my throat, across my collarbone.
He hooks one finger under the neckline of my shirt and slides it down, slowly, until the back of his hand is curved against the inside swell of my breast.
He doesn't grab or pinch.
He just holds the contact there long enough for me to feel exactly what this is.
Long enough for me to imagine what more time means.
"Eres muy bonita," he says, conversational. "Espero que seas razonable."
He slides his hand back out. He pats my collarbone twice, lightly, the way you pat a dog you don't want to spook.
He steps back and straightens his tie. Then he walks down the hallway and out the doors at the far end without looking back.
I stand against the wall.
For a few minutes I can't move.
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against the cabinets beside me until they stop. Eventually, they do.
I pull my phone out of my back pocket and open the text thread with Boulder.
I send the word we agreed on:
Yellow.
Caution, not red.
Red would have Boulder through the door in fifteen seconds, weapons out.
Yellow means something happened, I'm safe right now, come up the back stairwell and meet me.
He texts back within a few seconds:
On my way.
I think about walking out of the building, getting on the back of his bike, and going home.
I don't.
I take three breaths and straighten the neckline of my shirt where the man pulled it down.
I check my reflection in the mirror on the cabinet.
My hair and my face are fine. No one will know.
I open the door of the lecture hall.
Dr. Maldonado is mid-sentence about half-life calculations when I slip back into my seat.
She gives me a glance, the kind that asks if everything is okay.
I nod and pretend to find my place in my notes.
I don’t take notes for the rest of the class.
I keep my hands flat on the desk so they don't tremble.
I think about Doom at the gate this morning, the way his shoulders dropped when I told him I'd come back.
I think about a man's hand inside my shirt and how he timed exactly how long to leave it there.
I don’t let myself think about what Doom will do when I tell him.
I’m steady, but I’m not okay.
I sit through the rest of class.
Boulder doesn't ask questions on the way home.
He gets the report from one of Alejandro's contacts before I'm even on the back of his bike.
The campus security feed has been pulled.
There's a face and a name.
Alejandro's people will have the file at the clubhouse by the time we get there.
Boulder texts ahead.
The gate is open before we come around the corner of the perimeter wall.
Doom’s in the courtyard.
He's not wearing his cut. He's in a black t-shirt, the chain at his neck. His hands are at his sides like he's been holding still since the moment Boulder's text came through.
He locks on me before I'm off the bike.
I climb off and head right to him.
He doesn't move. "Are you hurt?"
"Not physically."
He doesn't reach for me or touch me. He's giving me the choice, and I can see what it's costing him.
"Tell me what he did."
I tell him.
I keep my voice even because if I don't, I won't be able to say it at all.
I tell him everything.
The suit and the badge, the Spanish, the hallway between the cabinets, the hand on my sternum and how it moved, what the man said about next time. The pat on my collarbone like I was a dog.
Doom is very still while I talk.
When I finish, he closes his eyes for one full second.
When he opens them, the man I know is gone.
He doesn't say anything to me.
He puts his hand at the small of my back, light, careful, asking, and walks me into the clubhouse and through the kitchen and into the main room where Boulder and Brick are already on their phones, where Compass is at the doorway and Razor is at the table with a laptop open.
Doom doesn't yell.
He doesn't have to.
"They put hands on her."
Five words. The room goes quiet.
"On my woman. In a hallway. Against a wall. With his hand inside her shirt."
Brick lowers his phone slowly. Razor closes the laptop.
"We don't wait. We don't sit on this and write a fucking strategy. We move on Hatchet tonight. I want a location and a ride. I want it inside the hour."
His voice is unrecognizable.
I have never heard this voice come out of him.
Boulder hasn't either. I can see it in his face.
He's seen Doom on the Diego rescue and on the worst day of the Vegas situation. He has never seen him like this.
The room is about to move.
It doesn't.
Amara is in the doorway behind us.
I didn't hear her come in. None of us did.
She's in jeans and her cut, her braid over her shoulder, her hands loose at her sides.
She crosses the room.
She stops a foot away from Doom and looks up at him, because he's a head taller than her. Her voice is quiet and absolute. "Stand down, prospect."
The room stops breathing.
Doom's jaw works. "Prez—"