“Your brother and the brunette are above. If you want them to stay alive, you’ll watch your tongue.” He smiles at my newfound silence, the expression wicked. Why did he seem so likable yesterday when I first met him?
“Nick and his codes,” Gage muses. “The funny thing is he thinks they’ll save him, but whether it was the first, third, or thirtieth option your team decided on, it would still have been one of his hideouts: the restaurant, the bookshop, his sister’s, that new post he’s working to set up above the Wheelhouse.” He taps his smoke against the rim of a near-empty glass between his feet. Ash swirls into the liquid. “But thanks to your brother spouting off about getting back to the bookshop, I don’t even have to visit Nick’s places one at a time. That twitchy moron won’t suspect anything until it’s too late, leaving the perfect window for me to visit the shop when I get home and finish the job. You will be back in Order hands, the man they know as Badger will be dead, and I’ll retire a rich man of twenty-two.”
“Why?” It’s the only thing I can manage to get out. “You’re from AmWest. Why would you help the Order?”
Gage stands, hunched slightly on account of the low ceiling. “I’m not helping anyone but myself. Nick ran me out of business and then had the nerve to act like he was doing me a favor by taking me on his crew. Bossing me around. Paying me next to nothing. Acting like I was too stupid to handle anything important. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he realizes I worked against him. His last thought before I squeeze the trigger will be that I pulled this off right from under his pointed, greasy nose.”
I see everything in that moment: Gage talking about clientele falling to the Order, because he is the leak. Badger being so skittish and on edge. How he stepped out immediately after we arrived so that he could visit one of his crew. Armed. Ready to stop the leak. It was uneventful. Probably could have skipped the whole thing. Badger went after the wrong guy.
“He knew something was up,” I spit out. “Badger knew someone on his team was defecting.”
“Ah, but look who’s on a boat about to hand a fugitive to the Order, and look who’s still back in Pine Ridge with a slightly smaller crew.”
The boat’s motor slows before Gage visits me again. He secures a blindfold over my eyes and hauls me above deck.
We are shoved and shuffled to the edge of the boat. I assume we, but it’s possible Emma and Blaine aren’t heading where I am. Or that they’re already dead. I strain to hear anything of use, but only Gage’s voice is audible over the wind. Mist from the Gulf blows onto my front, icy pricks against my nose and neck.
“I’ll report back when Badger’s taken care of. If the others are with him, do you want them alive?’
An answer I can’t make out.
“No, that’s fine. I have no problem wiping the place clean. Happy to be of service.”
Something mumbled.
“Tonight,” Gage says sternly. “I’ll do it as soon as I’m back. And then I get the rest of the pay? Good, good.”
I’m shoved over the edge of our boat and hauled onto another. My shin bangs something. Hard. I keep waiting for the blast of a firearm, but it never comes. That would be too easy. They didn’t go through all this trouble just to kill me.
Gage’s boat roars to life, then fades out across the Gulf.
In the darkness beneath my blindfold, I picture Charlie complaining about eggs, and Aiden chasing Rusty, and Clipper’s blushing face at the mention of Riley. Sammy cracks a joke about my tardiness, saying Blaine and I can find our way through a forest but manage to get lost among marked streets. Bree is unamused. She turns to Badger, scowling, and says something is wrong. Adam agrees.
They sweep the town and find the dropped crate of water. At Mercy’s, they learn Blaine and I never arrived. When they get back to the bookshop they put an armed watch at the door and start weighing their options, discussing what might have happened, devising a plan.
These are the things I tell myself to dull the twisting sensation in my stomach, to ignore the bile scratching at my throat.
Their executioner is coming, but they’ll be prepared. They have to be. I repeat it, over and over, not sure if I’m lying to myself.
We’re moving again. I crouch on the deck to shield my face from the frigid air. Nearby, someone laughs, shrill and in tune with the clawing wind.
Far too soon the engine slows, then dies out completely. I’m lugged to my feet, off the boat, toward whatever—and whoever—is waiting.
NINE
I CAN’T SEE A THING, but the rhythmic lull of the water and the soft thump of our boat against an unseen structure tells me we are in some kind of port. The strain of pulleys and the clank of cargo suggests a large one. Surrounded, somehow, given the echo. By mountains? Rock? Someone shoves me between the shoulder blades, forcing me forward. The ground beneath my feet is sturdy. Not dirt or mud like the streets of Bone Harbor or Pine Ridge, but man-made. Even and level. Slick with a sheen from the ocean.
“No, that one’s going to Lode,” I hear someone shout. “To Lode, you idiot! Dock 3B.”
“What about the Haven shipment?”
“It went out yesterday, with the other cargo for Taem and Radix.”
Radix. Another domed city? I tuck the name away and breathe deep. It smells different here than the other gulfside ports I’ve been in. There’s the normal salty air and the lingering stench of diesel engines, but there’s also something cool and sharp about the place. I’m tugged along by an escort I can’t see, and I start to feel like we’re walking into the belly of a cave. A cave with damp, bloody walls, if the metallic tinge to the air tells me anything.