Same blood. Same price.
If it’s true, then I finally know why Serenity was taken and what they’ve been doing to her all this time. Her blood is being sold. She is running out. And Vanya’s investigation, Viktor’s quiet planning, all their patience, has been running against a clock nobody told me about.
Decker knew. He must have. He knew from when he first went to Viktor. I'd felt it in him, and told myself it was nothing. And all this time, while he’s been holding me, and touching me, andfuckingme, my sister has been bleeding out.
Why didn’t he tell me?
I spent days in that cave. Days in this building. Sitting across the table from people, thinking I was helping by telling them about someone on a phone. Letting myself get giddy over a man. A man who never once let me know that we never had the time.
Serenity’s been slowly dying.
I rub my face and realize that my cheeks are wet. When I pull in a breath, there’s a sob in it, and tears are dripping off my chin.
The room has gone dark around the phone screen without my noticing. Down the corridor, Marek shifts his weight, the same small sound as every night, in the building where I finally started feeling I could trust again.
I look at the messages until the screen dims, and the question comes up in me slow and cold.
Why didn’t he tell me?
Chapter 37
Grace
I don’t remember deciding to move. I’m just up, jacket on, the burner zipped into the inside pocket with my hand around it through the fabric, and I’m opening my door into the corridor.
Marek straightens off the wall. It’s late, and my face must be doing something, because his hand drops away from his radio.
“I need Decker,” I say. “Now.”
He looks at me for a second. Whatever he sees, he doesn’t argue with it. “I’ll walk you.”
The yard is cold, and the gravel is loud under my boots, and I don’t feel any of it. I rehearsed nothing on the way over. There’s nothing to rehearse. I have two facts sitting hard in my chest, and the only thing left to learn is whether he’ll lie to me on top of everything else.
Marek knocks once and steps back to the corner of the building, out of earshot, which is the smartest thing he could do right now.
Decker opens the door. He’s dressed, boots on…he wasn’t sleeping either. He takes one look at my face and his whole body changes, comes up ready, eyes already going past me for the threat.
“What happened?”
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“Serenity.” My voice comes out level, which surprises me. “They’re not keeping her. They’re bleeding her. Selling her blood off a drop at a time until there’s none left. Is that true?”
And there it is.
He doesn’t ask what I’m talking about. He doesn’t say “who told you that?” Doesn’t frown, doesn’t do any of the things an innocent man does when a mad question comes at him out of the dark. His face goes carefully blank, and his eyes flick once toward the yard behind me, and I watch him understand that something has gotten past every wall he built.
He looks caught. That’s the answer before the answer.
“Come inside,” he says.
“Answer me.”
“Grace. Inside. Not out here.”
I step in because Marek doesn’t need to hear this, not because Decker said to. He shuts the door. The room is the same room. The bed is the same bed I slept in last night with his heartbeat under my ear.
