Page 273 of What We Burn

Micah buries his face in the pillow and laughs, and it’s so bright and beautiful that I can’t help but lean in to kiss him again.

“Whoa! Okay.” Milo untangles himself and slides off the bed, and I’m quick to drag Micah closer.

“Looks like, uh . . . I’ll just go back downstairs—maybe change this shirt first because I think I got someone’s jizz on me.” Milo heads for the door. “Have fun, lovebirds, and don’t forget to hydrate.”

SIXTY-NINE

MILO

“Everything live is gone,” Holden says.

The grocery bags are sweating on the kitchen island, but nobody is unpacking them. Sage and Holden came through the door ten minutes ago, called everyone downstairs and dropped the kind of news that makes milk and frozen waffles feel offensively normal.

Eli and Micah stand shoulder to shoulder across from me. Knox is attending via video from the auto shop. Sage stays close enough that her hip presses against mine.

“Fenrir tripped a failsafe when he started pulling data from the recovered devices,” Holden continues. “They bricked themselves. Encryption keys wiped. Local profiles deleted. Every live route into the Kennel disappeared.”

“The static mirrors we got?” I ask.

“Still intact. But they can’t give us what the live access could.”

I grip the edge of the island. “The identities.”

“Not all fifteen.”

“And SMAN69?”

Holden’s jaw tightens. “We can’t confirm whether Stephen was one of the men at the warehouse.”

Fourteen men. I killed fourteen men. We burned the place to the ground and handed Fenrir every device we recovered. Stephen could be ash in Dean’s cremator. He could be watching us through a window right now. We have no way to know which.

“Jesus Christ,” Eli mutters.

“It gets worse,” Holden says. “There’s an active arson and missing-person investigation. The bulletin came out while we were loading Sage’s things into the truck. Multiple agencies. Multiple teams. And I can’t bury it without pointing straight at myself. I’ll monitor it, though. Knox is already handling the tread impression.”

“Should be done soon,” Knox says from Holden’s cell. “Guy I know will make sure the old set’s gone and nothing points to us.”

“Should we warn Amy?” Sage asks. “Are they going to question her about Tyler?”

“Most likely,” Holden says. “They’ll question anyone connected to him.”

Eli pulls out his phone. “Amy doesn’t have access to the encrypted channel. I’ll message Dean so he can let her know.”

“Okay. What do we do next?” Sage asks.

“Nothing,” Holden says. “Odin’s order stands. We’re benched. No targets. No Kennel. No freelancing. We have to sit tight and give his team time to clean this up.”

My nails press into my palms, biting into my skin. I fucking hate being benched. Hate not being inside the op and knowing what’s coming—like being stuck on the loading screen of my own life while everybody else gets to keep playing.

“There are still twenty-four local accounts out there,” I say. “That’s Fenrir’s pre-wipe count of the locals, minus the ones we put in the retort. Twenty-four guys who logged into a rape auction like it was fantasy football, and our grand strategy is to sit here doing cross-stitch until Odin wraps up his business trip?”

“Milo—” Holden starts.

“I could build a listening post. Fully passive. No logins, no touching the Kennel, no tripping another Kennel failsafe. Just scrapers on public stuff—missing persons feeds, arrest records, the damp little corners of the internet where guys like that can’t help bragging. If SMAN69 so much as hiccups online, we’d know before he finishes the hiccup.”

“No.”

“You didn’t even let me get to the good part. I could use a whiteboard. You know I love diagrams.”