“That’s the air freshener,” she deadpans. “Someone probably died in here.”
Emerson snorts behind us. Rowan mutters something about tetanus—again. I’m grinning like a tool because this stupid, rusty van is ours now. Safe. Untraceable. Ugly enough to vanish in plain sight. Perfect for the kind of work we do.
And perfect because Berk chose it.
We load in, taking our usual positions. Rowan drives the first leg. Emerson scouts through windows that are half foggedfrom whatever nightmare chemicals soaked into the interior. I settle in the back with Berk, both of us surrounded by gear bags filled with weapons, cables, spare plates, burner phones, and her knives that gleam even in the dim cabin light.
She looks at home here. Like she was born for war in crappy vans.
“It’s a miracle you have contacts who can keep finding these,” I say as I buckle in.
She lifts a brow without looking at me. “I have many miracles.”
“You gonna introduce us to those miracles?”
Her gaze flicks to mine, amused and sharp. “Like I said, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
I chuckle, but she doesn’t. Not fully. Her eyes flash with genuine protection, not for us—for whoever her contacts are. Whoever hid and helped her. Kept her alive when we weren’t there, when she thought we didn’t want her.
They protected her when we failed.
Yeah, they’re already my people, even if I never meet them.
We drive like fugitives who know how the system hunts. Four splits. Two lane changes without signaling. An alley cut-through. We pull off into an underground garage to switch plates again and sit for twelve minutes in the dark in case anyone is tailing from too far back to see.
Paranoia isn’t paranoia when the monsters chasing you are real.
“Clear,” Rowan finally murmurs.
We pull back onto the road, the city lights crawling across the windshield like neon scars. I glance at Berk. She’s on her burner, thumbs moving fast, her face tight with concentration. Now and then her knee bounces, the same twitch she gets right before she throws a knife.
“What’s the update?” I ask.
Her fingers pause over the phone. She looks at me in a way that makes my chest ache, then gently nudges my thigh with hers. A silent acknowledgment and thank you. “Nothing yet. He hasn’t touched his phone. Once we’re back at the house, I’ll work backward through his activity.”
We roll on. The van hums like it’s fighting for air, the cabin answering with the soft clink of weapons every time we hit a bump. It should unsettle me—this whole situation—but instead it steadies me.
This is who we are.
This is how we move.
We survive, even in garbage vans and borrowed shadows.
We make it back to the house after taking so many detours, it feels like we’ve driven the whole damn city twice. When we finally step inside, the lights are low, the air thick with leftover exhaustion and focus, and Berk is already down the hall and hunched over her laptop like she never stopped.
Her screen washes her face in cold blue light, her expression cut from focus and something darker. The tension pulled tight along her spine tells me everything—I know exactly what she’s about to do.
She’s going to break herself apart again.
She has Jory’s entire digital footprint gutted open—his apps, contacts, browser trails, messages, deleted shit he probably hoped would stay buried. It’s all there. Organized. Detailed. Labeled. Waiting. She’s already ten steps ahead of us, running on adrenaline, obsession, and fueled by guilt so deep she’ll never admit it out loud.
I move toward her. She doesn’t look up. Doesn’t register the sound of the door shutting behind me.
She’s shutting us out. Losing herself again.
Not happening.
I rest a hand on her shoulder. She stiffens, weighing whether to shake me off—that reflex she has when she’s drifting too far into a headspace she thinks none of us notice. I tighten my grip just enough to make her pause, to bring her back.