Trained. Or practiced enough that it amounts to the same thing.
My jaw tightens.
I text Trenton one character: E. One contact on my side.
His reply comes back in under five seconds: 2 back. I have them.
I pocket the phone.
The figure rounds the corner of the house and I'm already moving, my forearm driving up hard under his chin before he can register the shape of me in the dark. His head snaps back against the siding with a sound like a bat connecting with a fence post. It clatters to the gravel. I glance down without releasing the pressure.
Tac flashlight. Not a gun.
I pin his wrist against the wall and get a proper look at his face. Young. Early twenties, maybe. Whatever cool he came in with is completely gone. His eyes are white around the edges, breath coming in short, shallow pulls. His whole body has gone rigid against the siding, the way bodies go when the brain finally catches up to how badly things have gone wrong.
Not Harris.
"Who sent you." Flat. Not a question.
He makes a sound that isn't words.
I apply pressure to the wrist. The angle is specific—I know exactly how much force it takes before the joint starts to fail, and I stay just below that threshold. The tendons flex against my thumb. He feels it. I feel him feel it.
"Try again."
"Harris." It comes out in a rush, like he's been holding his breath and just ran out. "Harris paid us. Said we were supposed to scare them. Get the kid out."
Get the kid out.
Fury shakes me to my core.
Charlie asleep in that room. Charlie with her unicorn and her night-light and her stuffed animals lined up like a tiny army. Charlie who asked me to check on her before bed because she might get scared.
I keep my face neutral.
"How many?"
"Three. Me, Denny, and one more at the front. That's all, I swear to God, man, that's all he told us to do."
Trenton materializes out of the dark behind him. No sound. No warning. Just suddenly there, his hand dropping onto the kid's shoulder with a grip that makes him flinch hard enough to cut himself off mid-sentence.
"We know about the front," Trenton says.
That voice. Completely level. No heat in it at all. People who don't know Trenton think the loud version is the one to be afraid of. They're wrong. The loud version means he's still deciding. This version means he already knows what he is going to do and he's just working through the steps.
He meets my eyes over the kid's head.
We don't need to say it.
Harris isn't here. He sent three guys, found them somewhere, paid cash, and told them enough to be useful and not enough to matter. Which means right now, while we're out here dealing with the distraction he built for us, he's somewhere else. Watching. Waiting. Seeing if the noise pulls us far enough out of position to?—
"Morgan." The word comes out of me before I've finished the thought.
Trenton's already moving.
I haul the kid off the wall by his collar, spin him, and drive him forward. He stumbles but I keep him upright, one hand fisted in the back of his jacket. He smells like cigarettes and nervous sweat. I don't look at his face again.
Trenton has the second one from the backyard, this one bigger, older, with a cut above the lip that's already swelling from wherever Trenton introduced himself, moving him toward the back door with the same mechanical efficiency he applies to everything when he's in this headspace.
