Page 20 of What We Become

The door clicks shut behind him, and the room exhales back into silence.

One hundred and seven. One hundred and eight.

I look at what was done to her. Wrists bandaged where the ties sawed through skin. A split lip I don’t remember from the wall. Bruising along her arms. The chart says cracked rib, and my mind supplies the rest—Micah’s hands on her sternum, the give of bone, the cost of forcing her body to breathe again.

I catalog it automatically. Restraint injuries. Chemical exposure. Blunt-force trauma.

Then I catch myself—working her like a scene—and the space behind my ribs aches, tectonic and wrong.

She is not a scene.

Her things sit in a plastic basin on the side table. The dress, cut away and bagged. One sandal. And the cameo, velvet stiff with chemical residue, the antique face staring at the ceiling like a small, patient witness.

The tracker. My gift. Our leash.

It’s the reason we found that wall. The reason she’s breathing warmed air instead of setting into the structure of that house. Every argument she ever made about surveillance, about autonomy, about being managed—and the leash is what kept her alive.

I don’t feel vindicated. But I have decided that she never leaves our sight without a tracker again. She can hate me for it. She can hate me every day for the next fifty years. That’s the deal. Alive and angry.

My phone buzzes. Milo.

“Jamie’s car’s at the bottom of the bluff,” he says. No greeting. He’s learning. “Coast Guard says no bodies. Current took ’em, supposedly. Torch job on the VIN but I pulled the engine block number. It’s the Civic.” A pause. “He planned the whole ending, Holden. Down to the eulogy.”

“He’s not done,” I say. “As long as he wasn’t watching that house, he’ll think she died in that wall. When he finds out she didn’t, he’ll come finish it. We need to prepare for both outcomes—keep her hidden in case he was watching, and control what he finds out in case he wasn’t. As far as the world knows, that car went into the water with two people in it. Keep it that way. If Stephen watches the news tomorrow, I want him smiling.”

“Already handled,” Milo says. “Odin’s people own the recovery. Coast Guard will log it as vehicle recovered, occupants presumed deceased, bodies unrecovered. Standard bluff accident.” Keys clatter on his end. He’s driving or typing—probably both, and tonight I let it go, because I need him reckless. “Jamie Mercer’s coming apart, by the way. Fenrir’s been digging deeper. Whoever’s sponsoring him knows spycraft. The grad school enrollment is a shell. The house-sitting profile was built eight months ago on a fake identity. Guy’s a ghost with good credit. Whoever taught him has skills I’d admire if I didn’t want to stab them and cut them up into a million fucking pieces.”

“Find the man under the ghost. Real name, money, people. Burn his whole life down to the studs.”

“On it,” he says. Then, quieter, “How is she?”

I look at the mask. Fog. Clear. “Breathing.”

A beat. “Okay,” he says, and the word does more work than it should. “Okay. Eli and I are gonna grab some things from the house and then we’re coming to you. What do you need?”

My chest tightens. “You. Just you.”

Milo goes quiet. I register the slip about a half second after he does and clear my throat.

“I mean, I don’t need anything. Just get here. And be careful. I don’t want you followed.”

“Got it, Detective.”

The line dies. I set the phone facedown beside the cameo.

The door opens without a sound. Knox. Showered, wearing someone else’s clothes—a scrub top straining across his shoulders—foam still ground into the half-moons of his nails. He takes up position on the far side of the bed and looks at her the way he looks at everything: completely.

“Micah’s in the bathroom down the hall,” he says. “On his third shower. Foam’s a bitch to get rid of.”

I nod and look at my own hands, still crusted up my forearms. “Milo called. Said they found the Civic off the bluff. Coast Guard’s logging it—occupants presumed deceased. Might make Stephen think he succeeded. Give us some time to regroup.”

Knox nods. “As long as he wasn’t watching. That chopper wasn’t hiding much.”

“I know.” I press my lips together.

“Others on their way?”

“Yeah. Milo and Eli are stopping at the house first. So, if you want clothes and shit, let them know.”