59. Knox
FIFTY-NINE
KNOX
“Don’t even try to stop me, Knox.”
I catch up to Milo halfway across the parking lot. He’s got Tyler’s phone in hand as the screen lights up with notification after notification.
“I’m not,” I say.
Another chime.
“Four,” he says.
“What did you send?”
He turns the phone toward me. On it, the Kennel app is open. From Tyler’s profile he’s posted a “dog whistle.”
Got two new pets for the local yard to play with.
A location pin follows—the warehouse on Pike St. The same one he and Micah took Tyler to when they were working him over for information.
“How many does it reach?” I ask.
Milo’s thumbs are already moving again. “Everyone who’s ever checked in at a local yard.
Could be a handful of guys. Could be all thirty-seven.
” The screen keeps lighting up in his hand, buzz after buzz, and each one feeds something in his face.
“They’re biting, Knox. Look at this. Look at—’fresh or trained?
’ ‘age?’ ‘pics?’” He laughs, and it’s not a good sound.
“Twenty seconds. Twenty fucking seconds and they’re negotiating. ”
I read the messages scrolling past. My hands stay loose at my sides. That takes work.
“You said two pets.”
“Two pets.” He starts walking again, faster, toward his truck.
“Amy and Sage. That’s what they’ll think.
That’s what the yard’s for, right? They’ll come running, because that’s what these guys do.
That’s what Tyler would’ve wanted—” He stops.
Corrects himself. “That’s what Tyler did.
He put them up for sale. I’m just finishing the listing. ”
I step in front of him. He tries to walk around me. I move with him.
“I said don’t—”
“I heard you.” I keep my voice level, quiet. “I’m not stopping you.”
He stares at me. The manic energy doesn’t leave his eyes, but it organizes a little.
“Then what are you doing?”
“Making sure you walk out of that warehouse.”
“You think I need backup?”
“I think you’re not thinking.” I tap the side of his head, two fingers, gentle. “You’re feeling. That’s not how we work.”
His jaw works. For a second I think he’s going to argue. Then all that noise pulls tight around a single point.
“They hurt her,” he says. “Both of them. Sage got choked. Amy’s got blood on her hands she’s never going to wash off. And everyone who shows up tonight is a guy who read that post and asked for pictures.” He holds up the phone. “Knox. They’re sending deposits.”
I look at the screen. Someone’s sent a photo of cash fanned on a table.
“How long?” I ask.
“First response said fifteen minutes.”
“Then we have twelve. We’ll take my truck. I’m driving.”
Milo doesn’t fight me for the wheel. That’s the first bad sign.
He climbs in hunched over the phone like it’s a lit fuse. I pull out of the lot and the screen lights his face from below. Every chime moves his mouth.
“Seatbelt.”
No answer. I reach across at the stop sign and drag it over him myself. Click. He lets me. Second bad sign.
“‘No limits,’” he reads. “‘Willing to pay extra for rough.’ Extra. For rough. Like it’s a pizza topping, Knox, like—” He laughs.
Hollow. It breaks in the middle and doesn’t come back together.
“I’m screenshotting everything. Names, handles, payment apps.
After tonight I’m gonna work through whoever’s left, one by one.
I don’t care how long it takes, I don’t care if I’m eighty—”
“Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
He is. But it’s shallow. Frantic. Knee bouncing.
“Stephen is dead,” he says.
I keep my eyes on the road. There is no point in talking now. He can’t hear me.
“He’s dead. Tyler’s dead. Stephen’s dead. Same fucking person. I told them. I told Holden. I told Eli. I told everyone, and they kept looking at me like I was seeing monsters in the wallpaper. I wasn’t. I knew. I’m the only one who knew.”
I drive. Pike Street is eleven minutes out. I’ll do it in nine. But the whole way, the phone doesn’t stop. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Each one feeds the twitching and the muttering, the occasional burst of manic laughter.
I think about Fury’s throat. Tyler’s marks blooming purple over the scar she already carries. I think about Amy on the floor, staring at her own hands like they belonged to a stranger.
My hands stay on the wheel. My rage is not loud. It never has been. It sits in my chest like a stone in a well. It’ll still be there when I need it.
“Kitten will be safe. We do this. Kitten can sleep.”
Pike Street is dark except for the single light over the warehouse lot. I kill the headlights half a block out and coast into the shadow of the building across the road.
We’re early.
Milo doesn’t notice. He keeps reading the replies, knee bouncing hard enough to shake the cab. Each new message jerks another hollow laugh out of him.
Vehicles arrive over the next eight minutes. I recognize some of them—Tyler’s buddies, the ones who gave us the app when Milo cloned their phones. Good. They need to go.
Doors slam. Shadows cross the lot and disappear into the warehouse. Some people carry things in. Others go in alone. Milo counts them under his breath, loses his place, then starts again.
By the time a Corolla rolls in last, the lot is full.
I count slow. Four pickups. Three sedans. Two SUVs. A hatchback. A motorcycle. A work van with a ladder rack.
Twelve vehicles.
Milo lifts his head from the phone for the first time since the apartment.
“Twelve.” He says it like a prayer. “Some of them ride together, Knox. Could be fifteen guys in there. Could be twenty.” He should sound scared. He sounds like Christmas morning.
“There are thirteen.”
A man crosses the lot from the Corolla. Quick steps, shoulders hunched, eager. He doesn’t check the shadows. Men like this never check the shadows. They think the dark belongs to them.
He pulls the side door and disappears inside.
“Make that fourteen.”
“They’re all dying tonight,” Milo whispers gleefully.
He’s out of the truck before I kill the engine, taking the kit bag with him.
“Fucking shitshow,” I mutter.
I leave the mask in the truck. Nobody here is walking away.
I get out and follow.
The warehouse has four exits. Roll-up door in front, the side door Corolla man used, a fire exit on the east wall, a loading dock out back.
We circle wide, off the gravel. Milo moves ahead of me, quiet for once, phone dark in his hand.
Fire exit first. I jam a wedge from the kit under the door and kick it flush. Loading dock next—chain through the handles, padlock from Milo’s bag. The roll-up door is chained from the inside. Fine. They locked themselves in for us.
Milo stops at the side door and types one last message.
“‘Two minutes out,’” he narrates as he types. “‘Pets are fresh and skittish. Have everyone ready. Things get messy with new stock.’” A giggle crawls out of him. “Messy. I wrote messy. Oh—Knox—’already undressed, lol.’ L-O-L. He’s laughing. He’s actually in there naked and laughing about it.”
I take the phone and drop it in my pocket. “Ready?”
He pulls two blades from his kit and smiles when the light catches them. “I was born ready for this exact moment.”
The bay is one big open space under a string of work lights. Folding chairs. A cooler of beer. A bare mattress on the concrete, stained old and new. And men. Naked men, standing around hard, laughing, passing a bottle, waiting for women to be delivered to them like takeout.
I count again. Fourteen. Some still shucking their clothes. Music plays off someone’s phone. The smell hits—sweat, beer, desire.
One of them turns. Jake Petersen. “Who the hell are you?”
Milo steps past me into the light. “Jesus Christ. I’m all for men loving men and filthy group sex, but this might be a bit much even for me.”
A couple of them laugh, uncertain. The smart ones are already looking at me. At my size. At the door behind us.
The laughter dies in pieces. A guy near the mattress—massive gut, gray chest hair, wedding ring still on—frowns. “Where are the girls?”
“The pets?” Milo’s voice goes bright and terrible. “Why, you’re looking at them. Knox and I came here to play, boys. But careful. I bite.” On the last word, he clicks his teeth together.
The men shift, looking confused.
“What?” one of them asks. “What do you—”
Milo holds his hands out to the side, brandishing a knife in each. “I think it’s time to turn this sausage fest into mincemeat.”
I kick the door closed behind me, and the room comes apart.
I’ve seen Milo fight. I’ve never seen this. He’s a hummingbird made of edges—throat, inner thigh, under the arm, gone. The first three are down before the screaming even starts, arterial spray arcing across the work lights. The screaming starts and doesn’t stop.
A big one rushes me. I take his wrist, turn it, put my elbow in his throat, and shove him back into the fray. Milo jumps on his back like a feral squirrel, knife arcing up, then swooping down to slice open the man’s throat. Blood sprays and Milo flings the dying man aside, moving onto the next.
I stay by the door.
They come at me in waves—naked, slick with other men’s blood, eyes white all the way around.
The next is fast. Baseball build, still half-hard, screaming.
He throws a punch. I catch his fist, break his arm at the elbow, and throw him back.
He lands at Milo’s feet. Milo doesn’t even look down.
He just opens the man’s throat on the backswing, like swatting a fly, and keeps dancing.
That’s what it is. Dancing.
Someone’s phone is still playing music—something bright, all synth and a woman’s voice promising a good time—and Milo moves through the room in time with it.
He carves a line across one man’s belly, spins out of a grab, comes up under another’s chin.
The lights catch every spray of red. The warehouse throws every shriek back at us.
It should be ugly. It’s beautiful. A blood-soaked ballet scored by some guy’s gang-rape playlist.
The next guy runs at me with a folding chair. I take it from him and hit him with it. Once. He stops being my problem and becomes Milo’s.