Page 34 of Charging Dodge

The compound outside goes quiet in pieces—first the south, then the roof, then a few stray shots from the east that trail off into nothing. One voice calls out somewhere near the barracks, and then there's nothing left but wind and the low hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. Gallows hears it too. Something shifts behind his eyes, but he doesn't let it reach his face.

“Those children's parents made a choice,” he states.

“Don't,” I say, my tone carrying a warning.

“It's a simple truth. They knew what that ledger meant and they chose exposure over a very reasonable offer⁠—”

“They chose not to let you buy your way out of what you did,” I cut him off. “And you had them killed for it.”

“I had a problem managed,” Gallows counters.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “And now I'm managing mine.”

His hand moves toward the table. Not toward the papers this time—toward the edge where the laptop was sitting before I knocked it across the room, where a pistol sits flat against the table surface, half covered by a manila folder. Slow. Deliberate. Like he still thinks the conversation is running long enough to cover it. I fire once. The round catches him between the eyes and his head snaps back against the corkboard wall, pinning him there for one suspended second before he slides down and lands at the base of the maps. The charcoal suit doesn't wrinkle on the way down. His hand is still four inches from the pistol. He sits against the wall of his own war room in a pristine charcoal suit, looking almost peaceful in the way that dead men sometimes do. I stand in the ringing silence for a moment. There's nothing mystical about it. There's just smoke, busted laptops, scattered paperwork with his crimes typed out in columns, and a man who thought he was untouchable because nobody had ever been willing to pay the price of touching him.

I walk back out into the yard. “Done,” I tell Glacier.

He reads my face and nods. That's all that needs to pass between us. We move fast after that. Cobra and Rebel drag everything burnable—furniture, curtains, and the papers right off Gallows's own desk into the main building while Speed helps Creeper into position and Pyre wraps his arm tight against his body. I find the generator, crack the fuel line, and let it pool across the concrete floor of the main building. I strike the match myself. The place goes up hard and fast, orange light climbing the walls and rolling black smoke into the sky, and we don't wait around to watch it finish.

The warehouse burns behind us. None of us look back.

The ride back is long. Open road, empty sky going gray-pink at the edges, just engine noise and the wind and the low hum of exhaustion settling into my bones. I push my bike faster than I need to. I'm not running from anything anymore—I just need to get there. I need to get back to that porch light. It's still on when we roll up the gravel drive. I cut my engine before the bike's fully stopped, and the front door opens before my boots hit the ground. Adalynn's standing in the doorway in one of my old shirts, hair loose, eyes red and raw from a night of not sleeping. Carter's right behind her, arms crossed tight, jaw set in that way he has when he's been holding himself together for hours and doesn't know how to stop. Behind Carter, Noah and Amelia are pressed into the doorframe in their pajamas, squinting against the early light. Hulk fills the hallway like a wall that never moved.

“Dodge.” Adalynn's voice breaks on my name.

I close the distance in three steps and she meets me halfway, grabbing the front of my cut with both hands like she needs the grip to stay upright. I pull her in and wrap both arms around her, and she shakes—full-body shaking, the kind that's been held back all night waiting for somewhere to go. “It's done,” I inform her, mouth against her hair. “It's over. He's gone, Adalynn. All of them.”

She doesn't say anything to that. She just holds on tighter.

Over her head, I find Carter. He's looking at me the way a fourteen-year-old looks at something he desperately needs to be true before he lets himself believe it. I give him one slow nod. Something in his shoulders drops about two inches, and for just a second, he looks exactly his age. Noah pushes past him without a word and wraps both arms around my leg, face buried against my side. Amelia follows, pressing in from the other side, and I put one hand down on her head and hold them both there. Mom appears in the kitchen doorway with a coffee pot already in her hand, eyes bright and steady the way they always are—the way they've always been, every time I came home from something I wasn't sure I'd walk back from.

“Come inside,” she says quietly. “All of you. Come inside.”

I stand there in that gravel drive with Adalynn against my chest, both kids pressed to my sides, Mom behind us, and the sky going pink over the open fields. Hulk's leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed, watching the road out of habit, doing the job he was left to do right up until there's no job left to do. The quiet in my head right now isn't the kind I have to fight. It isn't empty or loud or full of things I've been trying to drink away. It's just quiet, the real kind, and I let it sit there and stay.

I came back. That's enough. That's everything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Adalynn

Miranda gets the kids settled with food and warmth and the kind of quiet authority that doesn't ask for anything back. She doesn't make a production out of it—just steers Noah toward the kitchen table with a bowl of oatmeal, tucks Amelia into the corner of the couch with a blanket, and says something low to Carter that makes him nod and sit down instead of hovering in the doorway with his arms crossed, trying to look older than he is. Dodge stands beside me in the hall. He smells like smoke and cold air and something underneath both of those things that's just him—that particular combination I couldn't have described before and now can't stop noticing. I turn toward him. There are cuts on his knuckles. A darkening bruise along his jaw I hadn't clocked from the driveway. The split in his lip is small but fresh. I reach up and touch the edge of his jaw without really deciding to, just two fingers, light. He goes still.

“How bad?” I ask.

“Not bad.” His voice is rough, worn down at the edges. “Shoulder'll be ugly tomorrow. Nothing that needs a hospital.” I nod. I don't move my hand. He covers it with his. His palm is warm, which surprises me after everything—like he's been cold for hours and is only now remembering that he doesn't have to be. “Come to my room with me,” he says. It isn't a question, exactly, and it isn't pressure either. It's just an open door, and I walk through it.

His bedroom is the same as I remember. Heavy curtains, worn quilt, the way the room swallows sound the moment the door closes. He shuts it behind us and doesn't reach for the light. I don't ask him to. The gray morning pressing through the curtain gap is enough. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls off his cut, lays it across the chair in the corner. His shirt comes off next, careful around his left shoulder. The bruise has spread overnight, purple and deep, bleeding under his collarbone. I cross to him without thinking about it and put my hands on his shoulders, light around the damaged side, just holding him for a second. He exhales. Long and slow, like he's been waiting to do it since he rode out. “You're back,” I whisper.

“Told you I would be.”

“I know.” I press my forehead to the back of his neck and breathe him in, sweat and smoke and something underneath that's just him. “I know you did.”

He turns then, and I sit back, and he looks at me the way he does sometimes, like he's making sure I'm still real. Like the coming back mattered as much as the leaving. “You waited,” he says.

“Wasn't going to do anything else.”

He reaches up and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, and his hand stays there, palm curved against my jaw. I lean into it without deciding to. My body makes the decision before my brain catches up. “Hey,” he says quietly. “Stop holding your breath.” I let it go and breathe normally. His thumb moves slowly along my jaw, back and forth, and the last wall I've been holding up since he walked out that door comes down quietly, without a sound.