Varina looks away from me again, and this time something in me gives up on the part of her I kept trying to reach.
Canon stands and checks the screen. “Almost time.”
On the feed, one Rogue lifts a hand and crouches lower behind the van. The road remains empty for several seconds, then headlights appear at the far edge of the image.
My heart stops because I know the shape of the vehicle even through grainy footage. One of the escort trucks. Maybe not the primary product vehicle, maybe a decoy, maybe a support pass that has already been adjusted because Moth and Saint knew enough to move the heart of the route. I try to tell myself that but the screen shows Rogues waiting with guns, and the fragments in their hands came from my mouth.
Canon smiles. “Watch closely.”
I strain against the straps so hard the leather cuts deeper into my wrists. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Of course I do.”
“Canon, please.”
“You should have thought of that before you chose them,” he says.
The escort truck rolls closer on the feed, and my breathing turns ragged enough to make every inhale a fresh punishment. The Rogues on the screen shift, one man moving too early, another signaling him down. I lean forward as much as the straps allow, trying to see beyond the frame, trying to find thetrap Saint must have built, the sign that he knew, the proof that what they pulled from me was not enough.
The first shot on the feed is silent. The laptop speakers lag half a second before the sound comes through, nothing like real gunfire and somehow worse because it makes the violence feel far away from my ability to affect it. Muzzle flashes bloom along the fence. The escort truck swerves. Men move in the grainy dark. Someone in the room behind me laughs, and that sound breaks something open in my chest.
The feed shifts violently as whoever holds the camera moves. The image catches a second vehicle cutting in from the side, headlights off until the last second. Obsidian, maybe. I can’t tell. The screen blurs, clears, then fills with movement I can’t parse. Someone fires from behind the van. The escort truck’s side door opens, and a figure leans out with a weapon.
Canon’s smile fades by a fraction.
“What?” Rook asks.
The feed jolts again. A Rogue near the fence goes down. Another turns too late. The camera swings toward the road, catching a flash of black vehicles where there shouldn’t be any. Obsidian had moved.
Saint knew, or he guessed, or he trusted enough of what I gave him before I was taken to build around what they might pull from me after.
Canon’s face goes hard. “Turn it off.”
Rook grabs the laptop, but for one beautiful second before he shuts it, I see the shape of the trap closing. Rogues scramble where they expected Obsidian to bleed. Vehicles cut in from the wrong angle, each of the fragments they beat out of me pointing them to their death rather than their victory.
Canon turns on me slowly, whatever satisfaction he carried into the room stripped down to something meaner. “What did you tell them?”
I almost laugh. It hurts too much, so I smile instead. Blood pulls at the split in my lip. “Enough.”
Rook hits me for that too, and the world fractures around the impact. This time, I don’t come back quickly. I drift somewhere just beneath the room, hearing voices through water, feeling pain as light rather than shape.
Canon’s voice comes close again, breaking through the haze. “If he comes for you, I’ll make him watch what you became.”
I force my swollen eye open as much as it will go and breathe through the hurt. “He already knows,” I whisper.
Canon leans closer. “Knows what?”
My voice barely reaches him, but it reaches. “What I am.”
Bricks
FifteenMinutesBefore
The road’s too quiet. That’s the thing about ambushes most idiots don’t understand. They think the problem is noise, movement, some obvious sign in the brush or a vehicle sitting where it shouldn’t be. Sometimes, sure. Men get sloppy. Engines cough. Cigarettes glow. A bad shooter shifts his weight at the wrong second and turns himself into a target before anybody fires.
Good ambushes don’t feel like that. Good ambushes have silence in them, the kind that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up before my brain finds the reason.
This road has that.
