15. Magnolia #2
The room is packed. The bags are full. There is nothing left to fold or shove or strap down.
Just the two of us. And the silence.
And the blood-stained napkin in my purse that says this ends at ten.
It is nine forty-seven.
The alarm on my phone goes off at six. I don't need it. I haven't slept.
Dash sits on the floor with his back against the wall, the rucksack between his knees, his eyes closed. But he's not sleeping either. His breathing is too controlled. Too even. A man who sleeps in war zones knows how to fake it.
I swing my legs off the bed. The carpet is cold under my bare feet.
"Van leaves in twenty," I say to the ceiling.
"Understood." No hesitation. No groggy fumbling. Just the word, clean and immediate, followed by the creak of leather as he rises.
We move through the room in opposite orbits.
Bathroom. Hallway. Elevator. Lobby. The receptionist smiles her smug little smile as I drop the key card on the marble counter.
I don't give her the satisfaction of a response.
Dash doesn't even look at her. He walks through the lobby like it's a killbox he's already cleared.
Outside, the sky darkens.
The van sits in the VIP lane where he parked it two days ago. No windshield. No passenger door. A long talon scratch across the hood from the griffin. The "Magnolia's" logo on the side, pink cursive with a little rolling pin underneath, is half-obscured by dried mud from the boar hunt.
I unlock the driver's side. Dash tosses his rucksack into the open doorframe where the door used to be and folds himself into the seat. His knees hit the dashboard. His broadsword juts out the missing door at an angle that would decapitate anyone standing on the curb.
I turn the key. The engine coughs. Turns over. Coughs again. Catches.
Rain starts before we hit the highway.
Not a gentle rain. Not a cinematic drizzle that makes everything look soft and romantic.
A full assault. Sheets of cold water slamming horizontal through the missing windshield, drenching the dashboard, soaking my hands on the steering wheel.
Dash reaches behind his seat, pulls out the heavy shield he made me carry that first night, and wedges it at an angle across the windshield frame.
It blocks maybe forty percent of the water.
The rest pours in through the open passenger side and pools on the floorboard around his boots.
We drive.
The wipers are useless. I lean forward, squinting through the space between the shield and the roof, navigating by the blurred red smear of taillights ahead. Rain drums against the shield like fists. The van shudders every time a truck passes, the wind shear rocking us sideways.
Dash's hand shoots out and grabs the dashboard to stabilize himself.
His knuckles are scarred. The knuckles that crushed a brass clothing rack.
The knuckles that pinned a charging boar.
The knuckles that traced my collarbone last night with a touch so light I almost convinced myself I'd imagined it.
Mile markers pass. Green signs dissolve in the rain. The heater wheezes lukewarm air that does nothing against the water sheeting across my lap.
There is nothing to say that the blood-stained napkin hasn't already said.
The city appears through the downpour like a gray ghost. Buildings materialize one at a time.
The old clock tower. The fish market. The crooked alley where the underground monster market hides behind a glamoured brick wall.
Everything looks smaller than it did two days ago.
Duller. Like someone desaturated the world while I was gone.
I know the tavern. I drove past it three times before I finally worked up the nerve to walk inside and hire an Orc to terrify my family.
It sits on the corner of Blackthorn and Ninth, sandwiched between a pawn shop and a shuttered butcher.
The sign hanging over the door reads THE brOKEN ANTLER in letters so faded they're barely legible.
I pull the van to the curb. The tires splash through a river of gutter water.
Dash reaches for his rucksack.
My hands stay on the wheel. Ten and two. White knuckles.
He swings the bag onto his shoulder. Grabs the broadsword. Ducks through the missing door frame and steps out into the rain. Water hits his face and runs in streams down the planes of his cheeks, pooling in the hollow of his throat, darkening his leather armor to black.
He turns back.
For one stupid, reckless second, I think he's going to say it. Whatever the Orcish words were that he whispered against the headboard. Whatever he wouldn't translate.
Instead, he reaches into the rucksack. Pulls out a leather pouch. Heavy. The coins inside shift and clink against each other with a sound I recognize immediately because I spent three months saving every penny of it.
My gold. All of it.
He leans through the open doorframe and places the pouch in my lap. He holds both my hands, pressing them down over the leather. Rain pours off his jaw and lands on my wrists in warm drops.
"Contract failed. Operative compromised his professional neutrality. Honor code violated. Payment cannot be retained."
"Dash."
"The mission parameters were clear." His grip tightens over my fingers. Then releases. "I broke them."
He steps back. Straightens to his full height. Water streams off him. His amber eyes hold mine for three seconds. Four. Five.
He turns.
He walks into The Broken Antler without looking back.
The door swings shut behind him.
I sit in the van with the engine running and the rain pouring through two missing sides of the vehicle and gold in my lap that I don't want. That I never wanted.
The leather is still warm from his hands.