Page 24

“What girl?” the second voice asks.

“Jogger. Running along the river, right past the building. Dark hair, tight little body. Leggings and one of those sports bras, you know, with the zipper.” A laugh, low and wet. “I slowed down to get a better look. She had this ass that I swear to God, I wanted to pull over and—”

I don't hear him finish the sentence. I am no longer standing by the fence. I am no longer listening. I am no longer a man who delegates and strategizes and directs from a distance.

I cross the parking lot. I break the front door off its hinges. The knob doesn’t turn this time because I don’t try the knob. I hit the door with my shoulder at a speed that turns reinforced steel into shrapnel, and the door flies inward and hits the cinder block wall behind it.

Four men. Three at a folding table playing cards, one on a couch against the far wall with a laptop. The one on the couch is the one who was talking. I know this the way I know my own name, because the wolf has been listening to every voice through the wall and has matched the one that described Sophia’s body to the heartbeat on the far left. The slow and heavy one, the one attached to a man in a gray hoodie with a thick neck and small eyes who is now staring at the broken door with his mouth open.

The card players react first. The tallest one, neck tattoo, reaches behind his back for something tucked in his waistband. I’m on him before his hand gets there.

I catch his wrist before he clears the weapon. Twist. Bone gives with a snap.

Then my right fist comes forward.

Old steel meets his ribs.

The impact sounds nothing like a normal punch. Metal, bone, breath—one ugly compressed crack. He leaves his feet and hits the card table hard enough to fold it beneath him, cards and beer bottles and an ashtray scattering across the concrete.

The second man swings a bottle at my head. I let it connect. Glass explodes against my temple. He has half a second to stare at the cut already closing before I hit him with the knuckles.

Once.

His head snaps sideways and he goes down. I don’t need a second punch.

The third card player runs for the back door. Roman is already there. My brother catches him by the collar, spins him around, and puts him on the ground with a single punch to the solar plexus. Then Roman stands over him and looks at me, and what I see in his face is pure satisfaction.

Three down. One left.

The man on the couch. Gray hoodie. Thick neck. Small eyes that are now so wide I can see the white all the way around the iris. He’s reaching under the cushion. I let him find what he’s reaching for. I let him pull the gun out, a cheap nine-millimeter with electrical tape on the grip, because I want him to have it in his hand when I take it away.

He points it at me. His hand is shaking so badly the barrel traces small circles in the air between us.

“Stay back,” he says. “Stay the fuck back, man.”

I walk toward him. Slowly this time. Not because I need to be slow, but because I want him to feel every step, want him to watch me close the distance with the gun pointed at my chest and understand, finally, that the weapon in his hand is meaningless.

He pulls the trigger. The shot is deafening in the enclosed space, a concussive blast that rings off the cinder block walls. The bullet hits me in the left shoulder. I feel it punch through muscle and lodge against bone and the pain is bright and clean and I do not stop walking.

His face collapses. Every structure that was holding his composure together fails at once, and what’s left is raw, animal terror. The face of a man who just shot someone at close range and watched them keep coming.

I take the gun from his hand. He doesn’t resist. His fingers open like a child releasing a toy. I toss the gun behind me and hear it clatter across the concrete.

“The girl,” I say. My voice doesn’t sound like me. It sounds like something that lives in a cave and eats things that wander too close. “The jogger. Along the river. Tell me what you were going to say.”

He’s shaking his head. Tears are cutting tracks through the grime on his face. “I didn’t, I was just talking, I didn’t—”

“You slowed the car down to look at her.”

“I didn’t do anything, I swear to God, I just looked—”

“You wanted to pull over.”

“I was talking shit, man, I didn’t mean—”

I look at the old steel covering my hand. No. Not for this one. I pull the knuckles free and let them hit the concrete. The clang echoes through the warehouse.

I want to feel this.