017— THE FILE.

Niko pulled up outside my building and cut the engine.

He looked at the facade for a moment. The narrow entrance. The peeling paint around the door frame that I'd been meaning to report since month one and never did.

"It's fine," I said before he could.

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"You were doing a face."

"I genuinely wasn't—"

"Niko."

He looked at the building again. Then at me. "It has character," he said finally. "Really significant character."

"Get out of the car," I said.

                    …

The apartment was exactly as I'd left it.

Twelve steps across. Mattress on the floor. The chair with the shortened leg sitting at its permanent lean. I stood in the middle of it and breathed.

Three months. Gaya Morrison lived here for three months and it already felt like someone else's life.

I didn't know if that was good or bad.

"Cozy," Niko said from the doorway.

"Don't."

"I meant it."

"You did another face."

"I don't do faces," he said, coming in and sitting on my mattress with the ease of someone incapable of being uncomfortable anywhere. 

"How long were you here?"

"Three months."

"Alone the whole time?"

"Obviously."

He nodded and just st sat there while I found my bag from the top of the wardrobe and started moving through the apartment.

Documents first. The real ones in the inner zip, fake ones separate. The photograph from the bedside drawer that I didn't look at when I picked it up. Just moved it. 

Looking at it required more than I had today.

"You travel light," Niko said.

"When you move fast you learn to."

"Is that something you've had to do a lot?"

"Recently," I said. "Yes."

He picked up my copy of The Count of Monte Cristo from the floor and turned it over. "Good book."

"You've read it?"

"Once," he said, putting it back down. "A long time ago."

I waited to see if he'd say anything else. He didn't. Just smiled at nothing in particular and looked around the apartment with those easy eyes.

"So," he said, "Do you actually hate him or is it more complicated than that?"

I stopped folding. "I hate him."

"Mm."

"I do."

"I believe you."

"You don't sound like you believe me."

"I absolutely believe you hate him," he said, very sincerely. "I'm just also noticing that you noticed his dark circles this morning before you looked away."

"I notice everything."

"Sure," he said.

"I notice when Anton uses less butter. I notice when the east gate takes longer to open. I notice dark circles. It means nothing."

"Completely nothing," he agreed. His lips curled into a something mischievous. A smirk.

"Stop smiling like that."

"I'm not smiling."

"Niko."

"I'm just sitting here," he said innocently. "Not smiling. Not thinking about anything. Completely neutral."

I threw a rolled up pair of socks at him. He caught them without looking.

"Does he know you notice things?" he said.

"Why would I tell him anything?"

"Fair," he said. "He notices things too though. For what it's worth." He stood up, stretching. "Not that that means anything either."

"It means nothing," I said.

"Nothing," he confirmed cheerfully. "You ready?"

"Almost."

My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.

Anya probably. She'd texted twice yesterday and I'd left her completely on read like a terrible person. I grabbed the phone without looking at the screen and unlocked it with my thumb.

Unknown number.

A video file. No message. 

“Spam,” I thought, pressing play. “Wrong number.”

The image was dark at first.

A concrete room with bare walls. A chair in the center under a single hanging light.

Then the camera steadied and I saw her.

The wooden bird slipped from my hand and hit the floor and I didn't hear it.

Elena.

She was in the chair. Wrists behind her back, mouth gagged, her hair loose and matted around her face. 

She was wearing what used to be a white shirt, but now it had dark stains on it. 

She was trying to say something through the gag, her eyes moving fast like she was looking for something or someone who wasn't there.

She'd lost weight.

Significant weight.

She looked like someone who had been afraid for a very long time.

“She was supposed to be in Edinburgh,”some part of my brain said distantly. She sent a postcard. There was a drawing of the castle.

The camera moved.

Crew walked into the frame.

My heart dropped.

He looked exactly the same. That was the thing I kept returning to even as everything else in my body was doing something catastrophic. He looked completely, perfectly the same. Golden hair. Easy smile. The face that half of Silvercrest Pack had looked at and seen leadership and the future of their pack.

He looked at the camera like he was looking directly at me.

"Hello, Sloane," he said warmly. "You look well. I'm glad Briar Falls agreed with you." He tilted his head. "Though I hear you've upgraded recently. Very impressive gates."

He knew about the mansion.

"I won't waste your time," he said. "You know why I'm sending this."

He moved toward Elena.

She heard him coming and her whole body reacted — pulling against the restraints, making a sound through the gag that was muffled and desperate and…

He crouched in front of her.

Took her face in his hand and tilted it up toward the light like he was examining something.

"She's been very patient," he said, conversationally, still looking at Elena. "Haven't you?" He released her face and stood up. "But patience has a limit."

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out.

I heard the sound before I processed what it was. A short sharp sound, and Elena's muffled scream tearing through the gag and her whole body jerking forward…

He held up his hand toward the camera.

In it, between two fingers, was Elena's fingernail.

"We've already started the clock," he said pleasantly. "I thought you should know."

Elena was shaking in the chair. Shaking hard. Tears streaming down her face, and I could see her trying to control it, trying to hold herself together, and she couldn't, she couldn't hold herself together…

"Seventy-two hours," Crew said. "Come home. Alone. Or we continue." He smiled. "You know how to reach me."

The video ended.

The apartment went silent.

I was still holding the phone.

My hand was shaking so badly the screen kept blurring. 

The rejection mark on my shoulder blade had ignited, radiating outward through my whole back like it was responding to something. My chest was doing something wrong. Like something was sitting on it.

Elena's scream. Even muffled. Even through a phone screen.

She was supposed to be in Edinburgh.

She sent a postcard.

There was a drawing.

"Sloane?"

Niko's voice. Somewhere nearby. The apartment was too small suddenly, the twelve steps from one end to the other not enough space to contain what was happening in my chest right now—

"Sloane. Hey."

I was breathing but it wasn't working. 

In for four. I tried. But the four wouldn't come, the counting wasn't landing anywhere, and there was a ringing in my ears that had started quietly and was getting louder and Elena's face was everywhere, Elena who used to send voice notes at two in the morning—

"Sloane. Look at me."

Niko's hands on my shoulders. His face in front of mine. Saying something I could see but not fully hear through the ringing.

The floor was closer than it should have been.

I grabbed his arm.

“Hold on,” I told myself. “You don't get to fall apart here. Not here. Not yet.”

The ringing got louder.

“Not yet,” I told myself.

The apartment tilted.