Chapter 9 Rowan #2
She sets the tray on the metal table, her movements slower tonight and noticeably more careful than before. After a glance toward the door, she looks back at us, her attention lingering on my abdomen before something in her expression tightens.
“You should drink,” she says quietly. The words sound normal enough. But the tension in her voice is impossible to miss.
Lila steps closer to the table while Maria lowers her voice further. “I heard what happened.”
Neither of us responds immediately. Maria studies our faces. “They said Ivan killed Arkady.”
Lila exhales slowly. “Yes.”
Maria looks back at me, her attention lingering on my stomach as her expression grows more serious. “He knew?”
I don’t pretend to misunderstand the question. “Yes, he did.”
Maria’s mouth presses into a thin line. “I never trusted him.”
Lila and I exchange a glance. Maria steps closer and lowers her voice even further. “Do you want to get out of here?”
Up close, the signs of strain are easier to see. There are shadows beneath her eyes that weren’t as noticeable before, and the skin around her mouth has drawn thin with the kind of fear people have when they’ve already crossed a line and know there’s no way back across it.
Lila is the first to speak. “Absolutely,” she says.
The word comes out too fast, edged with desperation, and Maria’s eyes dart toward the door again before returning to us.
“You need to keep your voices down,” she murmurs. “They’re moving people and checking vehicles. Everyone is watching everyone else right now.”
That matches what I’ve been hearing through the walls. The corridor has been full of restless motion ever since Ivan walked out and left us here with the knowledge that Arkady was dead and everything inside this building had started rearranging itself around the hole he left behind.
Maria unscrews one of the bottles and pushes it toward me. “Drink.”
I hesitate, and she notices.
“It’s water,” she says, almost impatiently. “If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t be standing in this room risking my life to do it quietly.”
There’s no softness in the remark, but there doesn’t need to be. Fear has stripped whatever caution she was still holding onto.
I take the bottle. The plastic is cold against my fingers.
The water tastes faintly metallic, probably from old pipes, but it’s still water, and my mouth is dry enough that I drink more quickly than I meant to.
Beside me, Lila unscrews the second bottle and takes a long swallow without taking her eyes off Maria.
“Why now?” I ask.
Maria looks at me longer than she has before, and something in her face changes when her eyes drop again, briefly, toward my stomach.
“Because I heard what happened in the hall,” she replies. “I heard about Arkady, and I heard enough after that to understand he knew.” Her back teeth clench. “He knew you were carrying a baby, and he did this anyway.”
I look down at the bottle in my hand and feel the familiar mix of disbelief and protectiveness move through me all over again.
Even now, even here, the fact of it still comes in strange, uneven waves.
My child. Kiren’s child. A future that should have been private and quiet and ours before it became leverage in someone else’s hands.
Maria releases a deep breath and shakes her head once. “I never trusted Ivan. Men like Arkady, I understand. Men like Ivan smile while they decide whether they need you alive.”
Lila lets out a short breath that might have been a laugh in another room and another life. “That’s accurate.”
Maria doesn’t react to the comment. She’s already looking at the door again, measuring time.
“There’s a service corridor at the end of this hall,” she says, lowering her voice further. “It leads to a loading bay. They’re moving crates and paperwork. The guards are distracted, but they won’t stay that way long.”
“Can you get us there?” I ask.
“I can get you out of this room.” Her eyes meet mine directly. “After that, you move fast and you don’t hesitate.”
Lila’s spine stiffens. “What about outside?”
“There’s a side access door off the loading bay. It opens toward the freight lot behind the warehouse. If you reach the fencing, there’s a service gate the workers use.” Maria swallows. “It should still be unchained.”
Should. Not is.
Lila hears the same thing I do. “Should?”
Maria’s face hardens. “I don’t have better than that.”
Neither do we.
I cap the bottle and set it down on the table. My heart has started beating harder now from the sudden possibility taking form in the room. It feels dangerous to let hope grow too quickly. Hope makes your hands move faster than your judgment. It makes people sloppy.
“We don’t leave her,” I say, glancing toward Lila.
Maria follows my gaze. Her attention turns to Lila for a moment, studying the tight set of her shoulders and the restless energy she’s trying to contain.
Lila’s mouth tightens, but she nods.
Maria moves toward the door and listens first, her head tilted, one hand braced against the metal.
I watch the line of her shoulders as she waits.
It occurs to me suddenly that I know almost nothing about her beyond her name and the fact that she has chosen this moment, this risk, and us.
That feels like a dangerous kind of intimacy.
People step into your life for five minutes and can still leave scars that stay forever.
She turns back toward us. “Now.”
The key is already in her pocket. Her hands shake once as she draws it out and slides it into the lock. The click is loud, echoing in the small room. Then the door opens.
The corridor beyond is narrow and washed in cold industrial light, making everything look slightly colorless.
Concrete floor. Cinderblock walls. A steel utility cart parked crookedly near the far corner.
For a heartbeat, none of us moves. Then Maria steps out first, and Lila and I follow close behind her.
The air outside the room smells different.
Grease, dust, faint chemical cleaner, and underneath all of it the metallic tang of old blood that no one ever fully scrubs out of places like this.
Somewhere deeper in the building, a forklift beeps in reverse.
Voices rise briefly, then disappear again behind a door that slams hard enough to shudder the frame beside us.
Maria lifts one hand, signaling us to stay close.
We move quickly down the corridor. My boots make almost no sound against the floor, but I hear everything else with punishing clarity.
The pull of my own breathing. Lila’s breath beside me, slightly uneven.
The rustle of Maria’s jacket. The far-off grind of a train outside the building. Every sound feels too loud and exposed.
At the end of the corridor, Maria turns us left through a narrow service passage where pipes run along the ceiling, and the light dims to a yellowed half-glow. The floor here is rougher, stained darker in places, and cold air leaks through somewhere ahead.
“That’s the bay,” Maria whispers.
We keep moving.
A man’s voice rises somewhere behind us, too far away to make out the words, but close enough that all three of us stiffen at once. Maria doesn’t turn around. She picks up her pace and reaches the end of the passage a second later.
The loading bay opens in front of us. The space is larger than I expected, with a high ceiling crossed by metal beams and industrial lights hanging in rows overhead.
One loading door is halfway open, letting in a slice of night so black it looks solid.
Crates are stacked along one wall. A pallet jack sits abandoned beside a line of shrink-wrapped boxes.
Beyond the open door, I can see the outline of fencing and the suggestion of train cars farther back in the dark.
For one impossible second, I think this might actually work.
Maria points toward the side exit. “There.”
The door is set into the far wall beside a rack of safety vests and dented hard hats. Lila starts toward it first. Then a voice cuts through the bay.
“Hey.”
Everything stops.
A guard steps out from behind one of the stacked pallets, his expression moving from confusion to recognition so quickly it barely feels like a transition. His hand goes to the gun at his side.
Maria moves before I do.
She shoves me hard enough that I stagger sideways, my shoulder striking the edge of a crate, and the first shot cracks through the bay an instant later. The sound is enormous in the enclosed space. My ears ring and Lila screams.
Maria jerks.
She stays upright briefly, her body reacting before her mind can catch up. Then the key slips from her hand, clattering against the concrete as her knees give out and she drops hard to the floor. Blood blooms across the front of her shirt.
“No!” The word tears out of me before I can stop it.
The guard raises the gun again. Lila runs toward me instead of the door. That mistake costs us.
The second shot hits her high in the side, just below the ribs. She folds with a sharp, shocked cry, one hand flying to the wound as she crumples against the floor.
Everything after that fractures into motion. I drop beside Lila, grabbing her under the arms and trying to pull her toward the stacked crates while more shouting erupts from somewhere beyond the loading bay. Boots pound against the floor. A door slams open. Men are running now, closing in fast.
“Get up,” I beg, but her face has gone white with pain, and her fingers are already slick with blood.
Maria is still alive. I know it because I hear the wet, shallow drag of her breathing. She turns her head toward me with obvious effort, her face drained of color, and for one terrible second, our eyes meet across the floor.
“Run,” she breathes.