12. The Wall #2
I remembered to breathe out. I'd been holding it since the door's seam went bright.
My hands were steady. My knee was steady.
I'd been standing in the open with the door swinging and I'd gotten out of the light before the light found me, and I let myself have one second of that.
One. It felt like the first clean thing I'd done near this building.
"Ghost?" Blade, in my ear. "You stopped talking and I heard crunching. Report."
My hand went to the earpiece. "Had to improvise a hiding spot." Half a whisper. "The door opened. Men came out of it, three at least. I can hear them from here, Blade. I'm going to get closer and listen."
"The job was eyes, hermano. Not ears." Blade's words came out fast and clipped at the end.
"I'm inside the building across from them. Dead building. They won't see me."
"Ghost—"
"I need to focus now." I pressed the earpiece until the click told me I'd gone one-way, and the last of whatever he said cut off in the middle of a word that was probably co?o!
The camera went into the chest pocket of my jacket. I stayed down. One knee on the floor, glass through the denim, right boot flat, and I put my gloved fingertips on the floor and started to move.
The lamp outside threw enough light through the window frames that the glass on the floor shone, every piece a little star on the boards, and I had to get across the room without putting my weight on a single one. I went slow, folded over my own hands, my eyes on the floor a foot ahead.
I reached with a boot for a bare patch. Brought the weight over.
Stopped and listened. Reached again with the other foot.
Twice I had to turn my whole body to find a clean spot, and once I had to put my foot down a long way out and trust my hips to follow it, the stretch pulling all the way up the back of my leg.
Somewhere in my head a movie played, some thief going over lasers in a museum, and I'd have laughed if I'd had the breath to spare.
The far wall had windows all along it, the frames empty.
Kids with nothing to do in a district with nothing left to break but glass, and right then I could have hugged every one of them.
I came up under the window that faced the pit's wall, my back to the plaster, and the door the men had come out of sat a little to my left across the alley, and I could hear every word.
"—not what I asked." The hoarse one. "I asked if he's ready."
"He's ready." The loud one. "Says he's ready. Everybody says they're ready."
"Thursday's the big one." The hoarse one again, calm, like it was a schedule. "Initiation." A beat, like he was letting the word sit. "Everybody who showed something these last months gets one more look… The ones who win go up and collect."
"Same as we did." A third voice, easy about it, a man describing a road he'd already driven. "Up the stairs, into the box, and he makes you the offer."
"And the ones he keeps stand next to him."
My scalp went tight.
Thursday. Caleb's Thursday. The night an enforcer had set for him in a parking structure, two weeks on a clock, and now it had a title. Initiation.
"So who goes through?" The loud one. "Out of the ones he's been watching."
"I heard the boss's money's on the kid with the kicks." The third man, quieter now. "The one who put two of ours on the floor backstage."
"Monk." The loud one, the name coming out of him like it tasted bad.
The name went through me. Hearing it in that mouth, across an alley, put something hot in my throat that had no business being there on a job.
"Yeah. Him." The third man. "Impressive. I'll give him that. But I don't trust a guy like that. Man says no to the boss's face and the boss wants him more? Somebody's going to end up sorry, and I'd bet it's not the boss."
I sat under that window with my fists closed on my knees and let him not trust Caleb. Let him. He'd find out Thursday exactly what that was worth.
"That's above you." The hoarse one's words came flat and final.
"I'm just saying…" Sulky. A man used to being talked over.
"Say it in the car."
Their boots stepped on concrete, moving away. Down the alley toward the wide streets, the ones with room to park a car, the ones I'd stayed out of on purpose.
I heard a car door close. Then two more. An engine turned over, headlights swinging across the empty window frames above my head and gone, and then the sound of it shrinking toward the main roads.
I stayed under the window and let my heart do what it wanted for a while. My hands had started shaking, and I let them do that too. Nobody was there to see it.
Then I clicked back to two-way. "Coming out."
The earpiece stayed silent.
Blade was standing beside the bikes when I came back around the corner, arms folded, and he watched me come out of the dark the way he'd watched me cross a hundred training floors, reading my feet before my face.
Up close, the worry was on him. Blade didn't wear it the way other people did. It was in the stillness, the way his arms had locked across his chest, the muscle standing out along his jaw, and the way his eyes went over me once, fast, head to boots, checking me for blood before they came back up.
"Algún día me vas a matar del susto, chico."
"One day you're going to scare me to death, kid."
"They didn't see me."
"They could've seen you, hermano." His voice came out louder. "You went quiet with a thud and glass crunching in my ear."
"I landed on it. I didn't break it." I held the camera up between us. "Door confirmed. Three of his inner circle. No faces. But the night, Blade… I've got the night."
He took the camera. Turned it over without looking at the screen, looking at me instead, and I watched two things fight it out in his face. Half of him wanted to take a strip off me. The other half had just watched his best work come home clean, and the muscle in his jaw let go by a fraction.
"Report." The camera went into his jacket.
"Thursday. Initiation night. His whole crew shows up, and every fighter he's had his eye on gets one more look in front of him. The ones who win get called up to the box." I made myself slow down. "And his money's on Caleb…"
Something under my jacket started to crawl.
Because I could see it, the way my head saw everything, ahead of time and in color.
Caleb in that ring with the building dressed for a party.
Caleb winning, because Caleb always won.
Gravedigger leaning down to make his offer, and I knew exactly what word was going to come out of Caleb's mouth into that hanging mic, in that room, to that face.
My skin went cold in a way the desert had nothing to do with.
Then the other thought landed, worse for coming second. One more look. That was no fight night. That was a test, the last one, in front of the man himself, and whatever Gravedigger put across from Caleb on Thursday wasn't going to be a drunk off a barstool. It was going to be the best thing he had.
"Ghost." Blade's hand was on my shoulder. I hadn't seen it land. "You stopped."
"He has to prove himself one more time." It came out slower than anything I'd said all night. "In front of him. With the best they've got."
Blade didn't tell me it would be fine. He never had. He held my eyes a second longer, and then he gave me the only thing that had ever helped.
"Then we build him for it."
My phone went off against my leg.
Two in the morning, and the screen said Vega. The name alone put weight on me before I'd answered, because there was one reason a man posted on a hospital called at that hour, and it wasn't to say goodnight. Everything in me went quiet and ready. I had it to my ear before the second buzz.
"Vega. What's wrong?"
"Ghost." Wind on his end, his breath quick. "Two men in private-ambulance uniforms came in the front five minutes ago! Van's in the structure, second level. I followed them in. They put paperwork on the desk.
"It was a transfer order. Liam Rossi, tonight, to a specialist facility, and the woman at the desk didn't like it, I could see her not liking it from across the lobby, but she read it and she said the numbers check."
The numbers check. Caleb's old phone, open on a bench in that building. Tyler had said it in the kitchen with Caleb's phone in his hand. They can see everything the account sees. Of course the numbers checked. They were the real numbers.
"Where are they now?" My words came out rushed.
"She's stalling. Calling upstairs. The floor's saying nobody moves an ICU patient at two in the morning without the attending, and the attending's in at seven.
But they're not leaving. Santos and Valkyrie have eyes on the van up on two, and Ghost, that van's big.
Cargo. Windows blacked. Two are inside the hospital, but if these are the pit guys, the ones he's been building?—"
"Then they're trained, and there's more of them." I was already on the bike. "Twenty minutes. Help the receptionist stall them if you must."
"Twenty—"
"Fifteen." I hung up on whatever came next.
The whole night went flat and small in my hands. A door in a wall was a thing for Thursday. This was now, and it was Liam, and Gravedigger was reaching for him while Caleb slept. Insurance, so Caleb would do as he was told.
Blade's engine caught before mine did. He knew.
"Liam." I gave it to him anyway, through the helmet.
"Ride." His visor came down on the word.