Chapter 2 - Delilah
The man pointing at us has a face I see every time I close my eyes.
Thin lips always pressed into a cruel line. Scar cutting through his left eyebrow. Tattoo of a snake crawling up the right side of his neck, the head disappearing behind his ear. Dark eyes that don't blink often enough, like he's always watching, always calculating.
The exact same face he wore when he pressed the gun to David’s temple in the office supply closet while I watched through the gap in the door, too terrified to breathe, too frozen to run.
He killed David for skimming money. Shot him execution-style while two other men held him down. I heard David begging. Heard the gunshot. Heard the sound of his body hitting the floor.
Then I heard them talking about how to dispose of it, where to dump the body, whether anyone would notice he was gone.
I would. David had a daughter. Seven years old.
Brought her to the office sometimes when his ex-wife couldn't pick her up from school.
She'd sit at his desk drawing elaborate princesses while he finished paperwork, and he'd always have gummy bears in his drawer for her, the good kind, the expensive organic ones because Emma had food allergies.
I reported it because Emma deserved to know what happened to her father.
Now the man who killed him is here, staring up at me with recognition dawning across his face, and I can see the snake tattoo flexing as he tilts his head.
"Inside," Graham says again, his voice harder now. Not asking. Commanding.
This time my body obeys before my brain catches up. I stumble toward room 23, my duffel bag banging against my hip, my hands shaking so badly I can barely grip the strap.
We reach the door, still open from when we left thirty seconds ago, and Graham pushes me inside ahead of him. I stumble across the threshold and turn just in time to see him sweep the walkway with his eyes one last time before following me in and slamming the door shut.
Three locks engage in rapid succession. Deadbolt. Chain. The push-button lock on the handle that wouldn't stop a determined child but might buy us seconds.
Every second counts when men with guns are coming.
"Bathroom," Graham says. "Get in the bathroom and stay low."
"What are you—"
"Bathroom. Now."
He's already moving, pulling a gun from somewhere under his jacket, checking something on it. The weapon looks huge in his hands but somehow also natural, like it belongs there.
I should move. I should follow his instructions. I should do literally anything except stand here staring.
But my legs won't cooperate.
Graham glances at me, and something changes in his expression. Less commanding. More concerned. "Delilah. I need you to trust me. Get in the bathroom. Lock the door. Get in the tub and stay down until I tell you it's safe."
"There are four of them," I hear myself say. My voice sounds distant, disconnected from my body. "Four men on motorcycles. You're alone. The math doesn't—"
"The math is I'm trained for this and you're not," he interrupts. "So, get in the bathroom before they get up here and the math becomes irrelevant."
He's right. I know he's right. The logical part of my brain, the accountant part that lives for numbers, probabilities and risk assessment, is screaming that he's absolutely right.
But the other part of me, the part that's been alone in this terrible room for days waiting to die, can't handle the idea of hiding in a bathroom while someone else fights the men who want to kill me.
Can't handle the idea of him getting hurt because I witnessed something I shouldn't have.
"I can help," I say, and even as the words leave my mouth I know how ridiculous they sound.
Graham's expression doesn't change. "Can you shoot?"
"No."
"Fight?"
"Not really."
"Tactical training of any kind?"
"I... took a self-defense class once. Four years ago."
"Then you help by staying alive and out of the way." His tone isn't cruel, just factual. The way you'd explain to a child why they can't help perform surgery. "Bathroom. Now. Please."
The please does it.
I grab my duffel bag. It’s stupid, pointless, but it's the only thing I own anymore, and bolt for the bathroom. It's tiny, barely big enough for the toilet and shower stall, but it has a door that locks and a tub I can crouch in.
Good enough.
I slam the door and twist the pathetic push-button lock. Throw my bag in the tub and climb in after it, curling into the smallest shape I can manage. The porcelain is cold against my knees. The shower curtain, stained and smelling faintly of mildew, brushes my shoulder.
I'm shaking so hard my teeth chatter.
From the main room, I hear Graham moving. Something heavy being dragged: the dresser, maybe, pushed against the door? Footsteps crossing to the window. The metallic click of his gun again.
Then nothing.
Just my breathing. My heartbeat. The distant roar of motorcycle engines still on.
I press my hands over my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing and count.
It's what I've been doing for days when the panic gets too big: counting, calculating, finding patterns in numbers because numbers make sense when nothing else does.
One. Two. Three. Four men on motorcycles.
Five. Six. Seven days I've been hiding here.
Eight. Nine. Ten seconds since I heard anything from Graham.
Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen—
A crash from the main room makes me jump so hard I bang my elbow against the tub. Loud voices. Male voices. Angry.
"—saw them come up here—"
"—check every room—"
"—alive, Demon wants her alive—"
My blood turns to ice at that last part.
Demon. The Vipers' president. He wants me alive. The thought is somehow worse than wanting me dead. More crashes. Doors being kicked in. Room 21. Room 22. Getting closer. I can track their progress by sound, each impact making me flinch harder than the last.
Then I hear Graham's voice, calm and steady: "You're in the wrong room."
A beat of silence.
Then laughter. Mean laughter. The kind that says they know exactly which room they want.
"Wrong room?" one of them says, a voice like gravel, rough from too many cigarettes. "That's funny. Because I'm pretty sure we saw you and a woman heading upstairs about ninety seconds ago."
"She left. Fire escape."
"There's no fire escape on this floor."
"Then I guess she jumped."
More laughter. But it's forced now. Uncertain. They don't know if he's lying or not, and it's bothering them.
Good. Let them be bothered. Let them hesitate.
"Step aside," a different voice says. Colder. Higher-pitched than the gravel voice. The kind of voice that's used to being obeyed. I recognize it, the man with the snake tattoo. The one who killed David. "We're coming in either way."
"No," Graham says.
The next sound is impact. Someone hitting something hard. A grunt of pain that might be Graham or might be one of them. Scuffling. The heavy thud of bodies colliding.
Fighting.
I curl tighter in the tub, my hands still pressed over my mouth, tears streaming down my face that I didn't realize had started. This is my fault. All of it. If I hadn't witnessed the murder, if I hadn't reported it, if I'd just minded my own business like everyone told me to…
The bathroom door rattles.
Someone's trying the handle.
I stop breathing entirely.
"Locked," a voice says from just outside, the gravel voice, too close. Right on the other side of this flimsy door with its joke of a lock.
"Break it down," the snake-tattoo man commands.
No. No no no no—
The first kick hits the door so hard the entire frame shakes. The second loosens the lock. The third—
Gunshot.
The sound is deafening, impossibly loud in the enclosed space of this terrible motel room. I scream before I can stop myself, the sound muffled by my hands but still audible.
Definitely audible.
"She's in there!" someone shouts.
More gunshots. Three. Four. I've lost count. Something heavy hits the floor outside the bathroom. The crashes and thuds blend into chaos that my brain can't parse, can't organize into anything that makes sense.
I'm going to die in a bathtub in a cheap motel bathroom. The thought is so absurd I almost laugh. Almost. If I start laughing I won't stop, and if I don't stop I'll completely lose it, and I can't afford to lose it right now.
Count. Just count.
One. Two. Three gunshots.
Four. Five. Six seconds of silence.
Seven. Eight. Nine—
"Delilah." Graham's voice. Rough. Breathing hard. "You can come out now."
I don't move.
"Delilah," he says again, gentler this time. "It's over. You're safe. Open the door."
"How do I know it's really you?" My voice comes out small and shaky. Pathetic.
A pause. Then: "You asked me why I came alone. I said because one person is harder to track than two. You said you'd been packed for two days. Then you said there was nothing you wanted to remember about this place."
It's him. Has to be him. Nobody else could know that conversation. I uncurl slowly, my joints protesting from being compressed into such a small space. Climb out of the tub on legs that feel like they might give out any second. Unlock the bathroom door with hands that won't stop shaking.
The door swings open.
The first thing I see is Graham standing in the middle of the room, gun still in his hand, pointed at the floor. His jacket is torn. There's blood on his knuckles. I can't tell if it's his or someone else's. His breathing is elevated but under control.
The second thing I see is the bodies.
Three men on the floor. Two by the door: one is not moving, one is groaning and clutching his leg where blood is seeping through his jeans. One near the window, definitely not moving, blood pooling under his head where it struck the corner of the nightstand.
The third thing I see is the fourth man.
The man from the office. David's killer. The snake tattoo is still there, still crawling up his neck. The scar through his eyebrow is split further now, bleeding from where Graham must have hit him. Those dark eyes that don't blink enough are glaring at Graham with pure hatred.
He's on his knees with his hands zip-tied behind his back, blood running from his nose.
"You got lucky," the man spits, and his voice, that cold, high-pitched voice, makes my skin crawl the same way it did when I heard him order David's body dumped in the river.
"No," Graham says calmly. "I got trained."
He looks at me then, his hazel eyes doing a quick assessment. Checking for injuries, for shock, for anything that needs immediate attention.
"You hurt?" he asks.
I shake my head. Can't speak. My throat has closed around words that won't come.
"Good. We need to leave. Now. Before whoever they called for backup arrives." He nudges the zip-tied man with his boot. "He's coming with us."
"What?" I finally manage. "Why?"
"Because he's leverage. And because Phoenix is going to want to have a conversation with someone who knows where Demon is hiding."
Graham moves to the man by the door who's still groaning, zip-ties his hands despite the leg wound, then does the same to the unconscious man by the window. The one who isn't moving at all, the one whose head hit the nightstand, he checks for a pulse, finds none, and leaves alone.
Dead. That man is dead.
Graham killed him.
The thought should horrify me. Should make me afraid of Graham instead of the men who came to kidnap me. But all I can think is that the dead man was going to break down the bathroom door. Was going to drag me out of that tub. Was going to take me to Demon.
And Graham stopped him.
"Can you walk?" Graham asks me.
I nod. Test my legs. They hold.
"Stay close. Don't look at anything you don't have to. Just focus on my back and keep moving."
He grabs the zip-tied snake-tattoo man by the arm and hauls him to his feet. The man stumbles, catches himself, and glares.
Graham ignores him completely.
We step over the body by the door. I try to follow Graham's advice: don't look, just keep moving, but my eyes betray me. I catch a glimpse of the man's face, frozen in permanent surprise, and my stomach lurches.
"Eyes on me," Graham says without turning around. "Nothing else matters right now except getting to the car."
I focus on the back of his jacket. The leather. The patches I can't read from this angle. The way his shoulders move as he drags the prisoner forward.
We make it to the walkway. Down the stairs. Across the parking lot, where four motorcycles sit abandoned, their engines still ticking as they cool.
Nobody stops us.
Nobody sees us.
We reach a sedan parked three buildings down. It’s plain, unremarkable, the kind of car you'd forget immediately after seeing it. Graham opens the back door and shoves the prisoner inside, then slams the door and locks it.
Then he turns to me.
"Front seat," he says. "Buckle up. This is going to be a fast drive."
I climb in. Buckle up with shaking hands. Watch as Graham slides into the driver's seat, starts the engine, and pulls onto the road without a single wasted movement.
We're half a mile from the motel before I realize I'm crying.
"You did good," Graham says, his eyes on the road. "Followed instructions and stayed calm. That's what kept you alive."
"I didn't feel calm," I whisper.
"Nobody does. But you did it anyway. That's what matters."
He reaches over and squeezes my hand once, then puts both hands back on the wheel.
Behind us, in the back seat, the man with the snake tattoo who killed David and tried to kidnap me for Demon sits in furious silence.
The scar through his eyebrow has stopped bleeding but left a dark streak down his face.
I can see him in the rearview mirror, those eyes that don't blink enough watching me.
I look away.
Ahead of us, somewhere in Millhaven, is a clubhouse full of bikers who are going to have a lot of questions.
And beside me, driving with the same steady competence he's shown since the moment I opened my motel room door, is a man I met twenty minutes ago who just killed someone to keep me safe.
I should be terrified.
Instead, I feel safer than I have in weeks.
The math doesn't make sense.
But for once, I don't care.