The door to Holden’s room was closed. I could hear voices inside—muffled, indistinct, but definitely more than one person.
I knocked softly. “Holden? It’s Bea.”
Silence. Then shuffling sounds, a low murmur, and the door cracked open to reveal Handful’s face. His usual grin was nowhere in sight.
“Thank fuck.” He stepped aside to let me in, keeping his voice low. “He won’t talk, won’t get out of his wet clothes. Won’t let us near the bottle. Just sitting there. Maybe you can—”
I put a hand on his arm. “Give us some time.”
Handful nodded and slipped out, closing the door behind him.
Holden was sitting on the edge of his bed, a bottle of whiskey clutched in one hand. His clothes were wet from the rain, stained with dirt and something darker. His eyes were fixed on the wall across from him, seeing nothing.
Or maybe seeing everything, over and over again.
“Holden.” I crossed the room slowly. “I’m here.”
No response. He lifted the bottle and took a long pull, his throat working as he swallowed.
I lowered myself onto the bed beside him, close enough to touch but not touching. Not yet. “Indira called me. Dutch told me what happened just now.”
“Then you know.” His voice was raw, scraped bare. “You know I killed him.”
“A bullet killed him. Unless you fired the gun, it wasn’t you.”
“I might as well have pulled the trigger myself.” He finally looked at me, and what I saw in his eyes made my breath catch. Not just grief. Not just guilt. Something deeper, darker—like the part of him that planned and calculated and kept everyone safe had just shut down. “My route. My plan. I didn’t see them, Bea. I didn’t see the shooters until it was too late.”
“You couldn’t have known—”
“It’s myjobto know.” The words exploded out of him, rage and anguish tangled together. “That’s what I do. That’s who I am. I see problems before they exist. I plan for every scenario. And when it mattered—when a kid’s life was on the line—I failed.”
I reached for the bottle, gently. He let me take it, his grip going slack as if the fight had suddenly drained out of him.
“Tell me what happened.”
He talked for a long time. I didn’t interrupt.
“He asked me if he proved himself.” Holden’s voice cracked on the words. “With his last breath, he asked if he was a full brother now. I told him yes, and then he died, Bea. He died in my arms with a smile on his face because I told him what he wanted to hear.”
“You told him the truth.”
“The truth is that I got him killed.” He turned to face me fully, and the tears finally came—silent, devastating tracks down his blood-spattered face. “The truth is that he’d be alive right now if he’d never met me. If I’d never recruited him. If I’d said no when he asked to come on this run.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to cite statistics about survivor’s guilt, to use my training to help him see that this wasn’t his fault. But right now, he didn’t need a therapist. He needed the woman who loved him to sit with him in his pain.
So that’s what I did.
I pulled him into my arms and held him while he broke. His whole body shook with sobs. “I’ve got you,” I murmured against his hair. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
We sat like that for a long time. The light in the window changed. Hours, maybe. Brothers came and went outside the door—I could hear their footsteps, their murmured conversations—but no one knocked.
Eventually, Holden’s sobs quieted. His breathing slowed. The tension in his muscles began to ease, replaced by the heavy weight of exhaustion.
I pulled back enough to look at him. The wet fabric was still plastered to his skin, the stains dark and dried at the edges where the rain had done what it could and no more.
“You need to get out of these clothes,” I said.
He looked down at himself like he’d forgotten. Maybe he had. “Yeah.”
