Page 35 of Flames and Blood

Nobody comes back in with me.

Not the older one, not the younger one. I listen for both of them the whole first mile, and I don’t hear either voice again.

Outside, up front, men are calling names to each other and getting answers back.

Then the voices come from the front.

“How many down?”

“Seven.”

“Theirs or ours?”

“Two from our team. Five from the backup team.”

“That’s it? None of theirs?”

“No.”

“You sure? I put a bullet in one. I know I did.”

“No bodies aside from ours.”

“Jesus.” There’s a huff. “What the fuck were we up against?”

“Fuck knows. The money isn’t good enough for the shit we’ve seen on this gig.”

“What do we tell the client?”

“We tell him the delivery’s intact. His team can put a report together.”

They stop talking, and after that there’s only road noise.

I lie where they left me until my hands stop shaking, and then I get myself up into a sitting position. Both wrists are burning where the cuffs bite.

Same chains. Same floor. Same box, moving faster than it was.

Gideon Crowe.

I say it in my head twice, and then a third time, because it feels like something good.

My dragon has gone quiet. She isn’t beaten. She’s leaning backward, down the road behind us, toward the fight we drove away from. Steady. Patient. Like she knew he was coming.

How could she have known that?

A man with no heartbeat opened that door and used my name as if he knew me.

And my dragon recognized him.

Chapter 8

Crowe

We go down that mountain faster than we came up it. Nobody fires at our backs. The moment that convoy started rolling, every gun on the road turned around and went with it. They’re paid to deliver her, not to chase three men into the dark.

The sky over the ridge behind us is already going from black to something else. Kent jogs down the slope with his arm held against his chest and doesn’t say one word about it, which is how I know it’s bad. Meyer takes the shorter line through the rocks. We drop the last stretch to the tree line without stopping.

The truck’s where we left it, facing downhill, key in it. I take the fire road with the lights off. The mine entrance is half a mile past the fork, gray timber, dry, dark past the first bend.