Page 143 of No Good Fight

I look at him.

The expression on Logan’s face is almost empty, but there is enough underneath it that I remember what I know about him and Poppy, about the kind of fear a man carries after watching the woman he loves almost die.

That does nothing to make me feel better.

It does make me listen for another ten seconds.

Logan taps the north side of the building. “If Preston wants you there, he plans for you. Maybe he wants you to be angry. Maybe he wants you to be visible when he hurts her. Or he’s planning on hurting you to make her obey. Either way, walking through the entrance he expects is exactly what he’s counting on.”

“He wants me to find them.”

“Eventually,” Remy says. “He wants Alex first.”

Josh pushes away from the table and starts pacing, but Casey catches the back of his sweatshirt when he passes.

“Stop wearing a trench in Ryder’s floor and look at this.”

Josh swats his hand away, but he comes back.

Casey points at the old utility corridor. “If this is still accessible, fire crews used it for maintenance inspections because the main equipment room was always packed with shit. Exterior door here. No windows on that wall.”

“What condition is it in?” Carter asks.

“Could be fine. Could be rotten through. Could be chained shut.”

“Helpful.”

“You want guarantees, pick another building. This is what I’ve got.”

Carter’s mouth moves slightly, but he keeps studying the plan.

They work like that for the next several minutes, lines of dialogue broken apart by maps turning, phone calls, screenshots, and searches. Nobody gives me a speech about staying calm. Nobody tells me Alex is going to be fine because none of them knows that. They give me distances, access points, vehicle positions, the estimated drive from my house to Mason Ridge, and every possible place Preston could see us coming.

It works better than comfort ever could and it feeds the darkness in my soul demanding that I do something.

Carter gets confirmation that no marked cruiser is within sight of the property. Remy speaks to dispatch and arranges EMS staging several roads away without using Alex’s name over open radio, and asking for radio silence for the response.

Logan gets a newer satellite image of the maintenance building and notices an access lane disappearing into the trees behind it. Casey calls someone at the station, asks three questions about utility shutoffs, and ends the conversation before whoever is on the other end can start asking why.

Josh finds the redevelopment inspection report Alex had mentioned weeks ago.

He turns the laptop toward us. “South utility door was cited for a broken panic bar. Never documented as repaired.”

Casey nods. “That could help us or screw us.”

“It’s a door.”

“It’s a door attached to a building with shit wiring and a man who likes to use fire as punishment.”

The room goes silent for half a second, not because Casey said anything dramatic, but because every one of us remembers pulling Alex out of Mason Street.

I can still feel her weight in my arms.

I can still hear Casey ordering me to move because I had stopped being a firefighter the second I saw her on the floor.

He catches my eye now and doesn’t say a word about it.

He doesn’t need to.