32. Miles
Thirty-Two
Miles
Pain explodes through my chest before I move an inch, it’s deep, and radiating from the wound below my collarbone like fire under my skin. My vision whites out at the edges. My elbow hits the floorboards again before I’ve gained any height.
I scream out in pain again, I remember being shot twice, but the one by the collarbone is a pain I’ve never felt.
I lie still and breathe through my nose, out through the mouth. The way Cain taught me years ago. Pain is information, and information can be managed. I tell myself that even as every breath feels like it’s tearing something open inside me.
Breathe. Fucking breathe Miles.
I try again, slower this time. Rolling onto my side first, the pain spikes white-hot when the wound takes any pressure, but I breathe through it until the worst of it settles, I get my elbow under me.
“Don’t.” Mason’s next to me, his hands firm on my shoulders, helping me to sit up a little better, but my body is screaming at me to stay the fuck still.
“Help me up.”
“Miles…”
“Mason.” My voice comes out rough, quieter than I want, because I don’t have the energy to talk, never mind fully stand. “Help me up.”
He stares at me for a second, but he already knows I’m getting up whether he helps or not. He slides his arm under mine.
Standing takes everything I have left. The room tilts hard and Mason's grip is the only reason I don't go down. By the time I’m upright, black spots are crowding the edges of my vision.
How much blood did I lose? And why hasn’t Doc fixed me?
I look around and turn to Mason. "Sadie?"
He looks over at Cain, then back to me. "They took her."
Three words. I hear them, but they just sit there in the room like something someone else said about someone else.
“Desk,” I manage.
“You need…”
“Desk, Mason.”
He gets me there. I drop into the chair and plant both hands flat on the surface, breathing hard, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Mason stays right beside me, his hand softly on my shoulder, almost as if he’s waiting for me to fall and is ready to catch me.
The room swings hard. I hear a sound come out of me that I don't recognize, it’s low and wrong.
I turn to my other side and look up at Cain.
“Nice to see you awake.” He smiles.
“Th…thanks,” I choke out.
The room finally steadies, and when I open the laptop, my hands are shaking. In however long I’ve been doing this, I know the work demands my absolute control, my hands have never betrayed me like this. I stare at the tremor for a second.
“It will pass; Doc will give you something.” I hear Cain, but I still can’t take my eyes off my hands.
I nod, then lock it down and start typing. I’m working slower, but I’ll still be faster than anyone else, if I have to explain everything to them. I stop typing for a moment and take a deep breath in.
“Mason, did…did you…get the…”
“In the basement. I had some fun, but he’s not saying a word yet.” I nod at his words and continue to type. The feed comes up.
It’s an empty room. It has cinderblock walls and a single bare bulb. The metal ring on the wall has rope hanging slack through it. There’s no one there. Something in my chest twists hard. The timestamp is live; it’s in real time.
I got into the system, they knew I would and that's why they attacked me, that’s why they took her, warning me to stop, but it only makes me want to bring them down more.
I pull up the entire building camera network.
Every angle. Every feed. It takes four minutes.
Four minutes of the doctor saying things I don’t hear and Mason talking somewhere behind me while the only thing that exists for me is the screen.
This is my world. In here I can block everything out around me when I’m in this world.
It’s when I get to the fourth camera, on the upper level using the wide angle, I see her.
There she is. She’s standing, her hands are bound behind her back. Her chin is lifted up. She has that same quiet refusal to break that I’ve watched on the beam, in the library, and in every hard moment she’s ever faced. She’s in a larger room now, and she’s looking at someone else.
Another girl sits against the far wall, her knees are pulled to her chest. She looks like she’s been held for a long time.
I zoom in. I know that face.
Renee Park.
She’s alive. The breath leaves me in a rough exhale.
“Is that her?” Mason asks, I nod. “Is that Sadie?”
“Yes.”
“Can you find the location?” Cain asks, and I notice Lincoln is here too.
I’m already working on it. The camera system is old, commercial, and tied to a building management network that still carries its original installation records. Which I think is a little sloppy for this group because everything else has been top security. So why is this so easy?
***
The doctor has been working on me while I work. He’s asking questions, and Mason responds to some of them, the others are met with silence. At one point something shifts deep in the wound.
A sudden, brutal flare of pain rips through my chest, it’s white-hot, absolute, and worse than the original shot. It tears an involuntary sound out of me, which is a half shout, half broken scream, and loud enough that Mason flinches. The room vanishes, everything goes white, then black.
When the world comes back, my forehead is pressed against the desk, my breath coming in shallow, ragged pulls. Mason’s hand is locked around the back of my neck, grounding me, his voice low and urgent.
“Miles. Miles, stay with me. Look at me.”
I force my eyes open. The edges of the room are still swimming and the pain has settled into a deep, pulsing agony that makes every heartbeat feel like another bullet.
"I'm fine," I say to the desk surface. I’m not fine, but I need to find her.
"You passed out."
"I didn't pass out."
"Miles." Mason’s voice is trembling. "You passed out."
Five minutes. I lost fucking five minutes.
"How far?" Mason asks. He's looking at the address on the screen.
"Twenty minutes. Maybe less."
"You’re staying here! You’re not going!” Mason snaps at me.
"I'm not." The admission that my body has made a unilateral decision about what is and isn't possible tonight, that standing up, getting into a car, and going to a warehouse is not a thing something this version of me can execute.
This sits in my chest with a weight that has nothing to do with the bullet. "You and Declan go."
"Without you."
"Hayden," I say. "Take Hayden too, I'll send you the feed," I say. "On your phone. Both cameras. If anything changes in that building, you'll see it in real time but have earpieces in so I can talk to you or Cain. I’ll watch and tell you if anything is coming up.” I hate that I’m too weak to go, but if I do, I’ll be dead before I see her.
"Okay."
“Lincoln is going too,” Cain tells them.
"Declan drives." I hold his gaze. "And Mason…"
"I know," he says.
"Come back with her."
He looks at me for a moment, then he nods once. He goes and I turn back to the screen. Sadie is still standing and she’s still upright.
The doctor says something behind me.
"I heard you," I say, it’s a lie I didn’t hear him.
"Mr. Crawford, the blood loss alone…"
"I heard you." I don't look away from the screen. "Stay in the room, if I go down again, I'll need you here."
He looks at Cain, then sits down next to me, and I look up at Cain. “If I go down, you’re on the computer…”
“I don’t know the…”
“I’m not losing her. So, listen to everything I’m about to say.” I don’t normally talk to Cain like this but I’m in fucking pain, I can’t get my girl, and I have a feeling I’m losing too much blood to be able to stay awake.
He nods and I explain everything, and he nods letting me know he hears me.
I watch Sadie. She turns her head toward something I can't see from this angle, Renee, probably.
Whatever happens, I promise I will find you.
I found her. Now I have to get her back.
The thought hits at the same time as another vicious wave of pain.
It starts deep in the wound and explodes outward, stealing the air from my lungs.
My vision tunnels hard. The edges of the room go dark first, then the center.
I try to stay upright, try to keep my eyes on the address, but the black rushes in too fast.
I hear Doc shout my name as the chair tips.
Then there’s nothing.