7. Chapter 7 #2
“I think they had everyone in mind,” I say. My palms are searing, but my blisters don’t close like his do. A hand closes over mine. I forget what I was pulling on.
“Leave it to me. You’re hurting yourself.”
I can’t respond because my mouth is dry and I’m fighting my dragon’s urge to rub up against him.
Not the time!
A thump against the side of the truck ends the argument. He’s on his feet and through the door. There’s a shout, a crack, a gurgling sound. And then he’s back. I don’t ask him what just happened out there.
His face has changed.
“What’s happening out there?”
“Headlights,” he says. “They’re closer than we thought.”
“You need to go,” I hear myself saying. “Now. Before they get here.”
“I’m not done.”
“You will be if you stick around. These guys are professionals.”
“So am I.”
“But there’s only one of you—”
“Three.”
“Three of you. And dozens of them.” I put my hand on his arm. The muscles tighten beneath my fingertips. “And you’re running out of time.”
He doesn’t move.
“If they put me down out there,” he says, working it out, “nobody else knows where you are.”
“Exactly.” I sound calmer than I feel. I’m sending away my only chance of getting out of here. An engine rumbles in the distance. “Go,” I tell him.
He’s already moving out through the door and down onto the road. I can’t see any of it. I hear something hit the side of the transport hard enough to shake it. Somebody tries to shout but doesn’t finish. Boots skid on gravel and a shot rings out but goes wide.
Then he’s back in the doorway with one hand on the frame.
“Crowe,” he says.
I look up at him.
“Crowe?”
“That’s my name.” His eyes are locked on mine. “Gideon Crowe.”
“Gideon Crowe,” I repeat.
“I’m coming back for you.”
He doesn’t say it like a promise. He says it the way you’d state a fact to somebody who’s about to argue. Then he’s gone, and the doorway’s empty, and the noise moves away down the road.
For about a minute, I just sit there, staring at the door.
Go. Go with him. Now!
The voice in my head belongs to the creature I’ve been fighting to hold back through all of it. Scales shimmer down my arms. The runes flare in response. My skin sizzles. My dragon doesn’t care.
Him! Go with him!
“I can’t!” I say out loud, because her voice is so strident it feels like I need to answer it.
The chaos outside grows louder. Orders being shouted. Sounds of confusion. He isn’t out there anymore. I can tell.
A man climbs in. He gets one boot over the sill, and I’m on him.
“Hey!” he yells as he goes down.
Bet you didn’t expect that, fucker!
I take a fistful of his vest and haul him the rest of the way in with me, because I want him closer.
Close enough that my dragon can come to the fore.
I get my teeth into the side of his hand when he brings it up.
He screams. I take his ear off with my other hand, and he screams again and swings. I dive past it and go for his throat.
The chain stops me a foot short of the door.
Three more come in behind him.
They get my right arm. Then my hair. I get an elbow at somebody’s nose and hear the crunch of it.
Somebody gets an arm across my chest, and I turn my head and bite down on it through the sleeve until he lets go.
They get my left arm. They get my legs. One of them drops his whole weight onto my back, and I come up off the floor anyway, and it takes two more of them to put me back down.
It takes all four. It takes a while.
Nobody hits me. Not once.
When it stops, I’m face-down on the floor with my cheek against the metal and a knee between my shoulders. One of them is standing over me, holding his hand against his chest, blood dripping onto my back.
They bring in a second chain and run it through both cuffs and shorten everything until my hands sit under my chin.
“She’s here,” one of them shouts. “Go, go, go!”
The doors slam. The lock throws. The engine comes up through the floor and the whole convoy grinds through the rest of the turn and away, picking up speed.
Nobody comes back in with me.
Not the older one, not the younger one. I listen for both of them the whole first mile, and I don’t hear either voice again.
Outside, up front, men are calling names to each other and getting answers back.
Then the voices come from the front.
“How many down?”
“Seven.”
“Theirs or ours?”
“Two from our team. Five from the backup team.”
“That’s it? None of theirs?”
“No.”
“You sure? I put a bullet in one. I know I did.”
“No bodies aside from ours.”
“Jesus.” There’s a huff. “What the fuck were we up against?”
“Fuck knows. The money isn’t good enough for the shit we’ve seen on this gig.”
“What do we tell the client?”
“We tell him the delivery’s intact. His team can put a report together.”
They stop talking, and after that there’s only road noise.
I lie where they left me until my hands stop shaking, and then I get myself up into a sitting position. Both wrists are burning where the cuffs bite.
Same chains. Same floor. Same box, moving faster than it was.
Gideon Crowe.
I say it in my head twice, and then a third time, because it feels like something good.
My dragon has gone quiet. She isn’t beaten. She’s leaning backward, down the road behind us, toward the fight we drove away from. Steady. Patient. Like she knew he was coming.
How could she have known that?
A man with no heartbeat opened that door and used my name as if he knew me.
And my dragon recognized him.