"And me?" Seth asked.
"You help Ghost with identification. Photos, names, anything you remember about the people inside."
"I can do more than look at pictures."
"I know you can. But right now, your memory is the most valuable weapon in this room. Use it."
Seth wanted to argue. Wanted to push, the way he always pushed, harder, faster, more, until something gave way or he broke against it.
But Marcus was right. And Seth was learning, slowly, painfully, that not every battle needed to be fought at full volume.
"Okay," he said.
Marcus nodded. Meeting over.
People moved. Jack disappeared to gear up. Nate pulled out his phone. Ghost retreated behind his screen like a hermit crab returning to its shell.
Seth stayed at the table, staring at Mercer's gala photo.
A hand appeared in his peripheral vision. Zain's hand, pushing a mug of coffee toward him. Black. Too strong. Just the way Seth had started expecting it.
"You did good," Zain said quietly.
"I told a room full of strangers that I'm a recovering addict who got kidnapped because of a drug debt. That's not 'good.' That's just honest."
"Around here, they're the same thing."
Seth wrapped his hands around the mug. The warmth seeped into his fingers, his palms, his wrists.
"Tomorrow morning," he said. "Six AM. You promised you'd train me and I feel ready."
"I don't break promises."
"Everyone breaks promises."
"Then I'll be the exception."
Seth looked up at him. Zain's face was close, closer than it needed to be, leaning against the table, his dark eyes steady and warm in a way that his voice almost never was. He smelled like coffee and gun oil and something else, something spicier. Cinnamon, maybe. Or cloves. The kind of smell that lived in skin and cloth and came from a kitchen Seth had never seen.
His grandmother's kitchen, maybe. The mother who hung laundry in petroleum air.
Seth didn't know these things about Zain. But he wanted to. And that wanting, that pull toward knowing another person, toward being known, felt more dangerous than anything Mercer had ever done to him.
"Six AM," Seth said.
Zain nodded. Pushed off the table. Left.
Seth sat alone with his coffee and the gala photo and the ghost of cinnamon in the air, and he thought:I am in so much trouble.
Outside, the December wind picked up. A train whistle sounded, long and mournful, moving through the city like a prayer no one had asked for.
Seth drank his coffee and let the warmth settle into him and did not think about Zain's hands.
Much.
CHAPTER 7
Teaching Seth to fight was a mistake.
