Page 34 of Crow’s Shadow

I get the chain in both fists. “Hold still.”

“It’s bolted down, you can’t just—”

I set my heel and yank. The bolt tears out of the slab in a spray of concrete and rust.

“Okay.” She breathes it. “Okay. Twenty years, and you never once told me you could do this.”

“I couldn’t. Until you.”

She comes into me all at once. No distance left in her anywhere.

“You came for me first,” she says into the leather of my cut.

“Always. First. Every time. First. There was never a version where I didn’t.”

“Say it again.”

“First.”

Headlights flare at the far end of the building. An engine turns over. Shadow goes rigid against me.

“Renner. It’s him. He’s running.”

We hit the open floor. A black car is already moving toward the loading door, two gunmen covering it.

I bring my piece up.

“Don’t.” Grim’s hand comes down flat on the barrel. “Too far. Too many guns on him. You fire, you eat a round, and she watches you drop after four days of holding on for you.”

“He’s getting away, Grim.”

“He’s getting away with his life. We’re getting away with hers. You want to trade?”

I do not want to let him go. I hate how right Grim is.

“Let him run,” Grim says. “We’ll build his box another night.”

The car speeds through the loading door and disappears into the dark.

“Crow.” Shadow’s voice goes flat. “He didn’t come here for me tonight. He was already packed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He was leaving. First light, they said. He had what he wanted.”

“He didn’t get your power. You’re standing here.”

“Not my power.” She turns and looks at me. “The book.”

“The book’s in the floor at the club. He never touched it.”

“He didn’t need to touch it. Lash fed Renner what he could get his hands on for months. Old records. Cipher pages. Anything Loki left open long enough for him to photograph.”

“Pages of what?”

“Photographs. Page after page of the Ledger. Renner’s had a man down that hall the whole time I’ve been here, copying them into a book of his own. I heard the pen at night. I thought I was losing my mind.”

“You’re sure.”