“I’ll meet with Vanya about it once I’m done with Viktor.”
He looks up. “What?”
“I said I’d speak to Vanya about it.”
“The east approach?” His brow furrows. “Why would Vanya be involved with that?”
I realize I have no idea what he’s talking about. My head’s too full of how to lay everything out for Grace tomorrow.
“Decker.” Jericho’s watching me carefully. My knee’s going under the table. “When did you last sleep?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re coming apart. I can see it.” He says it low, so his people don’t catch it. “You’ve stood through nights that would fold most men, and you were a wall. Look at your hand.”
I look. It’s opening and closing against my thigh, over and over, and I don’t know how long it’s been at it.
“Whatever this is, get on top of it,” Jericho says. “You’re no good to anyone like this. And I’ve got a bad feeling you’re going to need to have your shit together.”
I walk out in the middle of what he says next. I feel the two techs watch me go, feel the story start writing itself behind me—something’s wrong with the bear—and I can’t make myself care, which is its own warning. I’ve never once left a room like that.
Outside, the sky’s gone gray at the eastern rim.
Not seven. Nowhere near. But I’m standing in the cold with my heart going like I ran here. The animal’s stopped dragging and started shoving, and every argument I own is coming apart in my hands. Waiting is the smart play. Waiting is what I promised. Let her sleep. Come at seven with all of it laid out. Do it right.
I’m already walking.
Because here’s the truth under all of it: I can’t stay away. If all I do is stand outside her door and listen to her breathe, that’ll hold me till morning. I’ve done it before. She never has to know I was there.
The wing is quiet, night lights on, the corridor watch nodding me through the way he stopped questioning days ago. Her door’s the far one. There’s no light coming from beneath it. Good. She’s sleeping. One of us should be.
I pull in a breath and figure out what I need to say.
Sorry. Start with sorry.
Her door gets closer. Something starts to shift beneath my skin. A wrongness that climbs with every step.
Ten feet. Five.
I raise my hand to knock, and stop, and listen for her breathing.
Chapter 39
Grace
I type it plain, because she taught me herself that plain is how business gets done.
You want me. I want my sister out. Tell me how this works.
Then I sit in the dark with the phone face-down on my knee and wait, and the heater ticks, and somewhere out in the night the man I was falling in love with this morning is doing whatever he does with what I said to him.
The reply takes eleven minutes.
The old weigh station on the south road, past the second bridge. Before first light. Come alone. Bring nothing but the phone.
I read it twice. Then I type the only term I have.
Serenity comes off the program. Whole. That’s my price.
