Page 23 of Flames and Blood

The van stops for fuel after dark. I can smell diesel through the mesh. Two men are talking at the front of the van, quietly, but I can hear them anyway.

“—found the guard on the floor of the east door. Out cold, not marked up. Whoever did it didn’t want a fight.”

“Anything missing?”

“Seems like they were after the medical bay. Drugs, from the looks of it.” A pause, longer than the last one. “My gut says otherwise.”

“Client know?”

“Client will know in ten minutes. Recheck the schedule.”

I don’t move. If I move, they’ll know I heard something worth moving for.

Neither of the men across from me moves either. No look between them, no hand going anywhere near a weapon. The older one takes the radio off his shoulder, says a route number and a time into it, and clips it back. Then he checks his watch against the clock up front.

“Somebody went into the building we left,” I say.

Nothing.

“What happened?”

Nothing.

“You’ve answered me all day.” I keep my voice easy. “What’s different about this one?”

He looks out of his window and says nothing. All day he’s given me something, even if it was only no. This is the first thing he won’t talk about at all.

Nobody’s coming for me. I settled that a year ago, and nothing has changed my mind about it since.

Hope takes too much out of you when it’s wrong.

My dragon doesn’t agree.

She doesn’t use words. She pushes, steady, behind my ribs, and she’s pushing toward the back of the van. Back down the road we’ve already driven.

You’re wrong, I tell her.

She keeps pushing. She won’t argue with me, and she won’t stop pushing. I can’t win against that.

The van pulls out of the lot, and the road starts climbing. The temperature drops.

“How much further?” I ask.

“Few hours.”

“Then what?”

“Then there’s a line,” he says. “My job ends at it. Somebody else’s starts.”

“A line on a map?”

“A ward line.”

I sit up a little. “How big?”

“It goes all the way round the territory we’re driving into,” he says. “You’ll feel it before we get there. Things like you generally do.”

Things like me?