Page 11 of Rust of Control

He got through it. He always got through it. He gave them the bright thing, the smear of color over the hidden thing, and they screamed for it the way they always did, and not one of them could tell that the man making the sound had left the building.

Afterward, in the dark of the wing, Kit found him. Kit did not say anything for a moment. He just looked at Jude with that soft careful face, the dog-is-sick face, and then he said, quietly, so Rand would not hear, “Hey. You good?”

And Jude, who had a bruise under his sleeve in the exact shape of the truth, who had heard a number through a wall, who had just lost the only room he had ever been safe in, looked at his oldest friend in the band and gave him the only thing he had ever known how to give.

“Yeah,” Jude said, and smiled the bright smile, the one with the most coverage. “Just tired.”

Chapter 6

The call came at one twenty-one.

Nate was in the truck in the gravel lot, reading Ghost's summary a second time. Three girls since Easter. Davya's phone dark at the on-ramp since Tuesday. A name Trip had pulled off a Windsor manifest that didn't match any cargo anybody could find.

He let the phone ring once to check the screen.

Jude didn't call. Jude texted, lowercase and no punctuation, three thoughts crowding into one line the way his mind ran when he was all right. A call meant Jude couldn't type. A call meant something had gone wrong enough to need a voice.

Nate picked up.

"Hey."

Breathing. Too shallow, too high, working to keep itself quiet.

"Hey. Jude."

A sound that wasn't a word. Then, thin and almost gone: "Nate."

"Where are you?"

It came in pieces. A street, a club, the back of it. Nate had the truck running and in gear before Jude finished, because he knew the club. He'd pulled its floor plan fourteen months ago on a job that had nothing to do with tonight.

He drove fast. Both hands on the wheel. He did not let himself hear Jude's breathing again, because it would not get him there faster and it would put a shake in his hands he could not afford.

The case file slid off the seat when he turned onto Gratiot. He left it on the floor.

The alley ran off the back of the club, lit by one amber bulb over the exit door. The Charger sat at the mouth of it. Rand's. Nate parked behind it and did not think about it yet, because Jude was twenty feet up the bricks and Jude came first.

He came around the hood and into the alley.

Jude was on the ground against the left wall, knees up, one arm crossed over his ribs. Sitting up. Nate took that first, because a man sitting up was a man whose spine was working, and crouched.

He put his hand to Jude's jaw and turned it toward the light.

Left orbital, swelling, maybe splitting at the upper lid. He checked it with the back of two fingers. Knuckle, not a heel of a hand. The nose sat straight under his thumb. Both cheekbones whole. He moved to the shoulders, pressed for evenness, felt along the collarbone, and brought his palm to the left side of Jude's ribs where the arm had been guarding.

"Move your hand," Nate said.

Jude moved it.

Two ribs, maybe three. Jude's breath came shallow and held, the breath of a man who had already found out tonight how deep was too deep.

"Okay," Nate said. He checked the right side. Better. Then the wrist, two fingers at the pulse, and counted. Fast but steady. "You hit your head."

Jude's eyes were tracking. "Twice," he said. What was left of his voice.

"On the ground?"

"Wall first. Then the ground."