It's past one in the afternoon. We've been calling all morning.
Max.Voicemail. Again.Voicemail. Atlas texts. No answer. I text. Nothing. Zero texts once—I don't ask what it says—and gets nothing back. Margot. Straight to voicemail every time. Her phone is off or she's sending us there on purpose. Atlas tries Wren. Nothing.
The bond pulls southeast. Steady.Hurting. Alive.That's all it gives us.
Atlas stopped calling an hour ago. He put both hands over his face, held them there, and then walked into his office and shut the door. He's been on the phone since—not about Max. Business calls. I can hear his voice through the door. Steady. Professional. Like nothing's wrong. That's how I knoweverythingis.
Zero hasn't moved. I've brought him coffee twice. Both mugs cold. His letter is smoothed flat on the nightstand—hepressed the wrinkles out with his hand at some point, careful, like the paper was something that could bruise.
"Eat something," I said the last time I went up.
He didn't answer.
"Zero."
"I can feel him." Quiet. Not looking at me. "I can feel him and he's scared, Bane. He's scared and someone is making him feel small and I am sitting in this fucking room—"
"I know."
"—doing nothing—"
"I know."
He picked up the cold coffee. Drank it in one swallow. Set it down. That was the most I was going to get.
I sit in the library. The couch where he sat in my lap and picked at my shirt button and kneaded the back of my neck while I talked about Hawkins and trucks and Pittsburgh. The couch where I saidI love youon an exhale and he ran.
The letter is in my back pocket. I take it out. Read it again.
I should have stayed. I should have said it back.
I fold it. Put it back.
Read it again twenty minutes later.
I love you, Bane. I love you the way you love—steady, certain, without asking for anything back.
Again.
You told me once that you're not going anywhere. That you've got me. That's the order.
Here's mine: I've got you too.
I file it next to the cell. Next to the beach house. Next to every night he's come looking for me in this room. He put it on paper because his mouth wouldn't make the shape of it.
Writers do the hardest things with a pen.
Atlas finds me past two. Stands in the doorway the way Max stands in the doorway—the same lean, the same one-shoulder rest against the frame.
"Anything?" I ask.
"Nothing. But my contact at the Seventh just called."
I sit up.
"Something's happening at the facility. Federal vehicles mobilizing. State police coordinating with a judge in the Eastern District. They're moving on a warrant."
"A warrant for what?"
