Semua Bab I Will Find You: Bab 1 - Bab 10

HollandThe first thing I registered was pressure behind my eyes, the kind that makes everything feel woolly and distant, like someone’s clouded your world with a thumb. I forced my lids open and found I wasn’t at the rental desk like I had just been moments before. The chaise beneath me was black leather, cool and strangely unfamiliar, and an end table sat within easy reach, a glass of water sweating beads onto the lacquer. The room smelled like cedar and old paper—expensive, deliberate.A voice answered the small confusion in my chest before I could ask a single question. “The water is for you. How are you feeling?”It was husky, even softer than the rumor of Remy’s voice from the lobby. The sound bunched my nerves like a fist. Panic flared quick and hot, a heat behind the sternum: where the hell was I?I pushed myself up slowly, hands bracing on the chaise. The office spread before me in shades of dark wood and soft light. Books lined a shelf, neat as a captain’s log. A heavy desk

HollandThe next morning, reality tried to reassert itself. It did it in petty, ordinary ways: the coffee machine refusing to cooperate until I smacked it, my favorite slacks wrinkling in the dryer because I’d forgotten them, a chipped nail catching on my blouse. Somehow the stupid comforts of annoyance steadied me more than sleep had.I told myself I’d keep my head down. I’d treat this like a job, which it was. I’d do my work and not think about upstairs. Not think about his hand on my arm. Not think about how ridiculous it had felt to want to stand there in his office with my mouth open and my heart acting like a traitor.The rental counter welcomed me with the usual morning chaos: two voicemails that were mostly breathing and muffled curses, a vendor invoice with numbers that didn’t make sense, a customer insisting the truck he returned last night had been full of gas (it hadn’t), and a man in a ball cap who kept calling me “sweetheart” like he thought it might earn him a discount.

ToddWe drifted into small things then—the kind of shop-lobby knowledge that saves hours over a month. I showed her how to read the grease-pencil marks on windshields to tell where a truck was in the queue, which foreman to call for refrigeration units, the quickest way to get an answer from Accounts when customers fought about deposits. She told me which vendors called too early and which ones lied about it. I listened more than I spoke. It’s a Gamma’s first discipline: know the landscape, then move through it so lightly that the ground doesn’t remember your weight.A few times, a word tried to slip—Luna. Pack. Even just we. I swallowed each before it reached air. She wasn’t a secret to be kept from, but a boundary to be honored. There’s a difference. We’ve broken humans by failing to recognize it.“Do you like it?” I asked at one lull, nodding toward her screen. “The rental work?”Her answer surprised me by being immediate. “I like being good at things,” she said. “And I’m good at t

HollandThe morning tried to be ordinary. It wore the same light as yesterday—thin sun smeared over the lot, breaths of cold rolling in with every swing of the shop door. I unlocked the counter, turned on the lobby lamps, and told myself to keep my head down and my hands busy. Contracts, keys, clean surfaces. Order.I could still feel the echoes of last night—dream or not-dream or something that sat right between. My salt lamp had glowed this morning like it always did. The deadbolt had laughed at me with how perfect it still was. The pistol in the drawer had been exactly where it should be. The only evidence of anything at all were four small ovals on my arm, finger-bruises that would fade in a few days. Evidence, or imagination that left marks.I wiped the counter until it didn’t need wiping. The ficus looked like it wanted to talk to a therapist. I told it to get in line.A bell chimed as the side door from the shop swung in. A parts runner waved and dropped an envelope on the coun

RemyHolland’s palms were flat on the counter, the skin along her jaw tight with the kind of fear that doesn’t have room for sound. I followed her gaze through the glass.Under the sodium lamp at the far edge of the lot, a man stood too still for the cold. Hood up. Hands in pockets. Light hit him wrong, hollowing the face and leaving the eyes in shadow. I didn’t need more than the tilt of his head to know.Robbie.I had looked into her past, even if she didn't leave the clues behind, my connections spread far and wide.Pierce rose in me like a storm front. Ours. Move.“Stay behind me,” I said—quiet, the way you talk to a spooked horse, never forgetting that terror is strength without a handle. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t reach for the door yet. I let the moment scale to its true size in my body: not panic, not rage—clarity.I flicked my eyes to the shop door. “Todd,” I called, not loud, and he was already there, boots eating the distance. He took one look at Holland’s face and didn’t