Page 12 of Iron and Ivory

Diesel looks at me all serious. "I think it's six pm the next day."

"How is that possible." It's not even a question the way I say it. It's just words fallin' out of my mouth while my brain's still catchin' up.

I walk over to the window and yank on the blinds. They clatter. Let in a blade of grey-gold light that cuts across the floor like a judgment, and I squint through the gap at the world outside.

There's nothin' out there.

Well—not nothin'. There's Crow, leanin' against the gate post with his rifle hugged to his chest, head tipped forward, asleep on his feet like a goddamn horse. The whole compound behind him is still. Dust hangin' in the air the way it does when nothin's moved it for hours.

I stare at that stillness for a long second. Let it register.

"How could it be quiet for two fuckin' days." I let the blind go. It rattles back. "The FBI has to know their people are dead. And if they don't know they're dead, they at least know they're missin'. That's the same thing in a fed's mind—missin' and dead, that's the same goddamn drawer."

I turn back around and look at all of 'em. All these faces. Brothers, yeah, but right now they're just a room full of men who don't have answers, and I'm lookin' at each one of 'em the way you look at a hand of cards you already know is bad.

I land on Diesel because he's the only one in this room whose brain I trust to be runnin' on something besides fumes and wishful thinkin'.

He's got nothin'. I can see it before he even opens his mouth—that flat, honest blankness that on Diesel means he genuinely doesn't know and isn't gonna pretend otherwise. That's the thing about him. He won't dress a nothin' up.

"Maybe…" He shifts his weight, crosses his arms. "Maybe they aren't comin'."

I let that sit for a second. Just let it hang there in the ghost of cigarette smoke and dust-mote air. Because it doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit into any shape I know how to hold.

"How could they not be comin'?" My voice comes out low and flat, which means I'm more unsettled than I'm lettin' on. "I mean—we fuckin' killed thirty-five people. Thirty-five. That's not a missing persons report, that's a goddamn body count."

Someone yawns behind me, big and unhurried.

"They're comin' today then." I say it like it's already done. "Today. Tonight. Both. Don't matter which."

I look around the room and I make sure to look slow, because slow means deliberate, and deliberate means I'm not panicked, and the second these men smell panic on their Pres is the second this whole thing starts to rot from the inside out.

"Everyone up. Ya'll have five minutes. Shower, eat, whatever you gotta do to get your head straight—then back on watch." I pause long enough to let that land. "Every single one of you."

I hold the stare on each face. Not movin' through 'em fast—I go one at a time, and I linger, and I let the silence do the work.

I land on Diesel last. Even him. Especially him, 'cause if I skip him they'll notice and if they notice they'll wonder, and I can't afford wonder right now, I can't afford a single crack in the wall of certain I'm holdin' up with both hands.

"And no one falls asleep this time."

Then I leave and take the stairs two at a time because that's what you do when you give an order—you walk the fuck out, and you don't look back, and you don't hesitate, because hesitation is a question and I don't have time for questions right now. Not when I've got a timetable, and a body count, and five minutes to get my head right before this whole compound buckles under the weight of what's comin'.

I kick the door open. I kick it closed behind me. Same boot, same motion, no pause in between—just the two sounds of a man who don't have time to use his hands for doors when his hands are already untuckin' his shirt and tearing it over his head before he's even crossed the room.

I'm still caked in blood-red dirt and it's dried hard in the creases of my forearms, packed under my nails, settled into the lines of the fucked-up brand over my heart like it belongs there, like the earth is just claimin' what the fire already marked.

I start the water. I make it burn, and I step in, and I stand there, and I let it work.

The water goes red. Then rust. Then clear.

But the demons inked into my skin—the ones divin' off my shoulder blades, the ones wreakin' hell down my arms, the ones screamin' up through the smoke on my ribs—they don't wash off.

They never do.

They just get clean and keep laughin', same as always, same as they been doin' since the day they got there.

Which is maybe the most honest thing about me.

That the darkest parts just get brighter when I scrub 'em.