The pier goes very quiet. Not because the carnival has stopped, it hasn’t, the music is still running, the crowd is still a din, the sirens are still closing. Quiet in the space between the five of us as we realize shit just got real.
“Framed for what?” Ryan asks calmly.
“Bank robbery.” She says it plainly, no softening the blow. “My best friend set me up. She walked me through the job like I was helping her with a task, and I didn’t know what we were really doing until it was too late. My face is on the cameras. My prints are—” She stops. Breathes. “My prints are on equipment I handled because I thought we were doing something else. She built the evidence before I had any idea there was evidence to build.”
Silence.
A different kind of silence than the first one. The kind that comes after something enormous and requires a moment to settle in.
Archer’s hand is on her arm and I watch it tighten, fractional, the Archer version of every instinct he has arriving at once and being held in that grip. Tristan makes a sound that means grief on her behalf. Ryan says nothing. I say nothing.
The sirens are close. The blue-red light is at the bridge. We don’t have much time.
“Okay,” Ryan replies.
Two weeks of watching him and I still find theokayremarkable. Not dismissal. The opposite of dismissal. Receiving something enormous and absorbing it cleanly.Okaymeaning: I have this, we have this, the size of it doesn’t change what we do next.
“Okay,” he says again. “Jack.”
I’m already moving.
Here is what I know how to do, from three years on the circuit and before that and all the time since: I know how to move through a crowd without being noticed. I know how to get from one position to another without the journey being visible. I know which routes in Sweetwater Valley go where and which ones don’t show up in the standard approach roads a law enforcement convoy would use.
I also know the carnival. Inside and out, every year for seven years. Every staff position, every blind spot, every sightline. Ryan doesn’t have to tell me what hewants. The pack bond delivers it faster than language.
Get to the ground. Spread. Know where they’re coming in and from where. Be in position before they are.
I go.
But first…
First I cross the gap to Lola.
She’s watching me come with the expression she gets when she’s bracing for something, and I do what I’ve been wanting to do for days, which is put my hands on her face. Both of them. Her jaw in my palms. She’s warm and I can feel her pulse under her jaw. Her eyes are very dark and she is absolutely furious with herself for being afraid.
“Hey,” I say.
“Jack—”
“You’re not alone with this anymore. That’s what I need you to know before I go. Notwe’ll handle it,not strategy. Just… you’re not alone with it. You haven’t been alone with it for two weeks and you’re definitely not alone with it now.”
She looks at me.
“Okay?” I ask.
Something in her expression shifts. “Okay,” she replies.
I let go.
I go.
The carnival ground late on a closing weekend night is busy but not peak. The main rush has passed, the crowd is the comfortable evening version, families still out butthinning toward the exits, the core carnival devotees at the game alley and the food row and the stage where the band is doing a late set.
I move through it fast.
Not running. Running is noticed. I move with the purpose of a man on staff with somewhere to be. Nothing more.
The first vehicle is at the main entrance. I clock it from the food row. A patrol car, one officer at the entrance arch, talking to the carnival gate volunteer. Not aggressive. Information-gathering posture. They’re looking, not yet searching.
