LOGINBy the time Sage looks up from her laptop the crowd has formed, fifteen or twenty people gathered on the Aldren side of the tape, residents in coats pulled over pyjamas, a man with a phone raised filming, two teenagers standing close together watching the officers move. I use the crowd without thinking about it, stepping into the gap between a woman in a yellow coat and an older man with his arms crossed, moving forward until I'm at the tape with my hands on it, looking through.
The questioning room has a table bolted to the floor and four chairs that aren't, and a mirror on the wall that isn't fooling anyone, and a water cooler in the corner that gurgles every few minutes like it's reminding you it's there. Reyes sits across from me with his notebook open and a pen that he keeps clicking, not from nerves, just habit, click and release, click and release, while he asks me to walk him through the timeline from the beginning.Dante is in the chair to my right and Sage to my left, and Reyes raised an eyebrow when all three of us came in but didn't tell them to leave, just added two more chairs from the stack in the corner and sat down."So the last time you spoke to your brother before tonight," Reyes says."It's been a while but he texted me.""What did the text say.""That he was fine and not to worry." I fold my hands on the table. "Which is what he always says.""And before that? Had you seen him in p
The detective's name is Reyes. He's got a coffee cup in his left hand and a notebook in his right and he looks at me with some kind of suspicion in his eyes, taking in my backpack and my clothes and the fact that I'm kneeling on the road next to a body with my hand on a dead boy's chest."You knew him," he says. Not a question."He's my brother."Reyes writes something. Behind him the officer who tried to pull me back earlier is standing at a distance now, watching, and the forensics man with the case has moved further down the alley and is crouching over something I can't see from here. The camera van at the north end of the block has a light on it now, a white light, and someone is standing in front of it talking."Foster brother," I say, because I don't know why it matters but it does. "We grew up together.""And you were in the area at," he checks something, his watch or his phone, "four fifteen in the morning.""I got a te
By the time Sage looks up from her laptop the crowd has formed, fifteen or twenty people gathered on the Aldren side of the tape, residents in coats pulled over pyjamas, a man with a phone raised filming, two teenagers standing close together watching the officers move. I use the crowd without thinking about it, stepping into the gap between a woman in a yellow coat and an older man with his arms crossed, moving forward until I'm at the tape with my hands on it, looking through.The shape on the ground has a tarp over it now, grey-green, the kind that comes folded in the back of emergency vehicles, and two officers are standing on either side of it talking to each other, not looking at me, not looking at the crowd at all.I duck under the tape.Dante catches me around the waist before I've straightened up on the other side, one arm across my front, pulling me back against him, and I grab his arm with both hands and pull forward and he doesn't let g
We're two blocks into the radius when Sage makes a sound that isn't quite a word, a short sharp intake, and I look back at her without slowing down and she's got her phone tilted up, both thumbs moving across the screen."It's moving," she says."What do you mean it's moving.""The ping. It's not stationary, it's... wait." She stops walking entirely and I double back the three steps between us, looking at her screen over her shoulder. The map shows the radius circle and inside it a small blue dot, and the dot is drifting, slow and irregular, north by northeast along what the map labels as an alley run."That's him," I say. "He's moving... he's okay, he's..""Or someone else has the phone," Dante says, from just behind me.I look at the dot. It moves another half centimeter on the screen, hesitates, moves again."He's moving slowly," Sage says. "Really slowly. Like, walking speed but, inconsistent." She watches the screen
The knock comes in the pattern Sage and I agreed on before the line cut, two short and one long, and I'm at the door before the third knock finishes, pulling it open, and Dante is standing in the alley with his jacket half-unzipped and his hair pushed back like he's been running his hands through it, and Sage is right behind him with her laptop under her arm and her shoes are wet from the puddle at the alley entrance.I don't say anything and neither does he, and then his arms are around me and my face is against his neck and I can feel him breathing, his chest moving against mine, one hand at the back of my head and the other pressed flat between my shoulder blades, and I grip the front of his jacket in both fists and hold on.He pulls back after a moment and takes my face in both hands, tilting it up, and then he's kissing me and I'm kissing him back, my hands moving from his jacket to his collar, and he walks me backward a half step into the storage un
My father is sitting up in the medical unit bed when I arrive, which is the first surprise, and the second is that he's already dressed, shirt buttoned to the collar, four senior enforcers arranged around the room like he called them before he called anyone else. Cassidy is there too, standing near the window with a tablet she's not looking at, watching my father the way you watch something that might fall.He looks at me when I come in and doesn't say anything, just holds eye contact for a second and then turns back to the enforcer nearest him, a man named Garrett who has been with the pack since before I was born, and says, "Effective immediately, Silas Grayce is declared rogue. Kill-on-sight authorization stands until he is confirmed dead or in custody." He pauses, and his voice doesn't waver at all, not once. "Spread it to every unit. I want the perimeter doubled and I want his photograph at every exit."Garrett nods and leaves, and the other three en







