Page 5 of Sting of Sin

He went still. Real still.

"What."

"In there. While you were on the phone." I dragged a hand down my face. "She grabbed my sleeve and she said get me out. Said it clear. Three words."

For a second he didn't do anything. Just stood there with his helmet hanging off his fist and his jaw working like he was chewing glass. Then he turned and put both hands on the seat of his bike and leaned into it, head down, breathing hard through his nose, and I let him. Wasn't a thing I could say that'd help.

When he straightened up his eyes were red. He wiped them with the back of his hand and didn't pretend he hadn't.

"To you," he said. "She talked to you. Four years, and the first thing out of her—" His jaw clamped. For one second it was all over his face, raw as an open wound, and then I watched him shove it down, the way he shoves everything down, because there was no room for it. He slammed his helmet down. "Doesn't matter. Don't matter who she said it to." He swung a leg over the bike. "She wants out, she gets out. We go back in there right now, today, I carry her out myself, and let them try and stop—"

"Throttle." I put a hand flat on his chest. "Stop."

"Get your hand off me, Maul."

"She told me 'cause you were down the hall on the phone with Julia. That's the who of it, brother. That's all it is. You stepped out, I was the one still in the chair." I kept the hand where it was, and I leaned on it. "And maybe she told me and not you 'cause some part of that girl knew exactly what you'd do with it. Knew you'd walk up to that front desk and try to carry her out the door in front of every nurse on shift, and they'd have security on you in ninety seconds and you face-down on that pretty clean asphalt, and she'd be in a van to Flagstaff by sundown with your name in a file and a lock on every door between you and her." I let it sit. "She didn't pick me over you. She picked the one of us who'd stop and think before he got her moved faster."

He stared at me, chest going hard under my hand, and I watched it land, watched the sense of it burn through the heat and leave just the tired and the scared underneath.

"Why now?" he asked. Quiet now.

"She broke four years of a quiet for a reason. It has to be about moving her."

He looked off across the lot, at that pale ugly building sitting there in the sun like it had every right to. When he spoke again the heat was gone, and something colder and steadier had moved in where it'd been.

"I never planned on letting them move her." He pulled the helmet strap tight.

"We have to be smart about this," I said.

"Then we do it your way," he said. "Smart. But we do it. I'm not leaving her in there."

"We're not leaving her in there," I said. "We're gonna take her out so clean they don't even know to chase us."

***

WANTING A THING and doing it right are two different beasts, though, and a thing this size you don't do without the table. We rode the ninety minutes back without a word between us and I put it in front of Warden with the door shut.

He heard us out, hands folded, not a word the whole time, the transfer, three hours out, four days; the evaluation, some specialist named Sutter whose name was on the order smooth as oil; Bee grabbing my sleeve; get me out. When we were done he sat quiet a long beat, turning it over the way he turns everything over, looking at it from the angles the rest of us couldn't see.

"She say why?" he asked.

"She said three words," I said. "That's what she had."

"But you took it as the move." Warden's eyes came up to mine. "Not something else."

"What the hell else would it be." Throttle's voice was tight. "You know what those places do to people. They got her so doped she stares at a wall. Now some specialist nobody's ever laid eyes on signs a piece of paper and they're shipping her three hours off to somewhere worse.”

Warden nodded slow. Didn't argue. But he didn't quite agree either, and I clocked it, and I let it go, 'cause I didn't have a better read than Throttle's and neither did anybody.

"Here's where we are," Warden said. "She's committed. Court signs off on it every so often, and they sign off 'cause the doctors tell 'em to. You're her brother, Throttle, but you’re not the one who decides. That clipboard prick is, near enough."

"When it all happened, I only wanted what was best for her… she was so broken," Throttle said. "So, we get a lawyer and move the guardianship to me. Get her discharged."

"We will," Warden said. "And it'll take months. They'll drag it. That's what they do." He leaned back. "And you got four days before they put her in a van and drive her someplace you can't drop in on whenever you feel like it."

Nobody said anything for a second.

I'd been quiet most of it, elbows on my knees in the chair by the wall, letting them work it. But I could feel the thing coming, the only thing it was ever gonna be, and I was already on the far side of it before either of them got there.