It was fifteen minutes after midnight, and there was no sign of Victor. The car idled in the darkness just beyond the sign—Merit—23 miles—Mitch tense in the driver’s seat, and Dol leaning out the back window.
Sydney paced the grassy shoulder and tried to call Victor one last time.
It went straight to voicemail.
Sydney hung up, and found herself about to text June—before she remembered that she no longer had her own phone. Which meant that Sydney didn’t have June’s number anymore. And even if she did . . .
Syd shoved the burner phone back in her pocket. She heard the car door open, Mitch’s heavy steps in the grass as he approached.
“Hey, kid,” he said. His voice was so gentle, as if afraid of telling her the truth. But Syd already knew—Victor was gone. She stared at the distant skyline of Merit, shoved her hands in her coat, felt her sister’s bones in one pocket, the gun in the other.
“It’s time to go,” she said, returning to the car.
Mitch turned on the engine, pulled back onto the highway. The road stretched ahead, flat and even and endless, almost like the surface of a frozen lake at night.
Sydney resisted the urge to look back again.
Victor might be gone, but there was still that thread, tangling their lives. It had led Sydney to him once before, and it would lead her there again.
No matter how long or far she had to look.
Sooner or later, she would find him.
If Sydney had anything, it was time.
III
AFTER
EON
HOLTZ shivered, not at the sight of the corpse on the steel table, but from the cold.
The storage room was fucking freezing.
“Not so tough now,” muttered Briggs, her breath a cloud of fog.
And it was true.
Lying there, under the cold white light, Eliot Cardale looked . . . young. All his age had been contained in those eyes, flat as a shark’s. But now they were closed, and Cardale looked less like a serial-killing EO and more like Holtz’s kid brother.
Holtz had always wondered at the gap between body and corpse, the place where a person stopped being a he or a she or a they, and instead became an it. Eliot Cardale still looked like a person, despite the shockingly pale skin, the still-glistening bullet wounds—small, dark circles with serrated edges.
Nobody knew how Haverty had been able to render Eli human—or at least mortal. Just like they didn’t know who had shot the EO, or who had killed the ex-EON scientist—though everyone seemed to assume it was Victor Vale.
“Holtz,” snapped Briggs. “I’m freezing my ass off, and you’re making moony eyes at a corpse.”
“Sorry,” said Holtz, his breath pluming. “Just thinking.”
“Well, stop thinking,” she said, “and help me load this thing.”
Together, they maneuvered Cardale’s corpse into cold storage, which was basically just a permanent stretch of deep drawers in the basement of the EON complex, dedicated to indefinitely housing the remains of deceased EOs.
“One down,” she said, scribbling notes on her clipboard, “one to go.”
Holtz’s eyes flicked to the other body that waited, patiently, on its own steel plank.
Rusher.
Holtz had avoided looking at his old friend as long as possible. Not just because of the gunshot wounds that stood out in livid marks against the old scars, but because he couldn’t believe his eyes—Dominic had survived so much. They’d served together for four years, and worked here, side by side, for another three.
And all that time, Holtz had never known what Rusher was.
Rios was always telling them not to make assumptions, that EOs weren’t ducks—they didn’t have to walk like one and talk like one and smell like one to be one.
But still.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” he murmured. “Makes you wonder how many are out there. And here. If I was an EO, you better believe this is the last place I’d be.”
Briggs wasn’t listening.
He couldn’t blame her.
EON was in a state of emergency. They’d gotten the place back under lockdown pretty quickly, but they’d still lost four EOs in the process, a third of the soldiers were in medical—five had died. The gala mission had been a total disaster, EON’s first unkillable EO was dead, possibly from the efforts of their own ex-employee, and the director hadn’t even bothered to come to work today.
Holtz needed a drink.
Briggs sealed the doors to cold storage and they climbed back to the main levels.
Holtz swiped through security and stepped outside, grateful that his shift was finally over.
His car sat waiting on the employee side of the lot. It was a sleek yellow speedster, the kind that took on an animal grace—it didn’t just drive. It prowled and growled and rumbled and purred, and the other EON soldiers loved to give him shit for it, but Holtz hadn’t craved many things since he’d gotten out of the army—just fast cars and pretty girls—and he was only willing to pay for one of them.
He climbed behind the wheel, engine revving pleasantly as he jacked up the heat, still trying to shake off the chill of cold storage, the lingering shock of the last twenty-four hours. As he pulled through the gate, Holtz cranked up the radio, trying to drown out the sound of the gravel drive. He shook his head—EON, he assumed, could surely afford to have paved their private road, but apparently they didn’t want to encourage any traffic. So if you were a civilian, hitting gravel in this area was a sign you’d gone the wrong way.
Though some people didn’t get the message—like this asshole, Holtz thought, looking down the road.
A car had parked on the shoulder, a low, black coupe, its taillights glaring and its hood raised.
Holtz slowed, wondering if he should call it in, but then he saw the girl. She’d had her head bent over the engine, but as he drew up beside her car, she straightened, scrubbing at her forehead.
Blond hair. Red lips. Tight-fitting jeans.
Holtz rolled down the window. “This is private property,” he said. “I’m afraid you can’t stop here.”
“I didn’t want to,” she said, “the stupid thing just up and died.”
Holtz caught the edge of an accent, a melodic lilt. God, he loved accents.
“And of course,” the girl went on, kicking a tire, “I don’t know shite about cars.”
Holtz eyed the low black beast. “That’s quite a car for someone who doesn’t know shite.”
She smiled at that, a dazzling, dimpled smile. “What can I say?” she said in that musical voice. “I have a weakness for nice things.” She pulled her hair up off her neck. “Think you can help?”
Holtz didn’t know shite—shit—about cars either, but he wasn’t about to admit it. He got out and rolled up his sleeves, approaching the engine. It reminded him of the fake bombs he’d had to defuse in basic training.
He toggled and poked and made low humming sounds as the girl stood at his shoulder, smelling of summer and sunshine. And then, miraculously, his fingers brushed over a hose and Holtz realized it had simply come free. He reconnected it.
“Try starting it now,” he said, and a second later, the coupe’s engine rumbled to life. The girl let out a joyful sound.
Holtz shut the hood, feeling triumphant.
“My hero,” she said with mock sincerity but genuine affection. She dug through her wallet. “Here, let me pay you . . .”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“You bailed me out,” she said. “There has to be something I can do.”
Holtz hesitated. She was out of his league, but—fuck it.
“You could let me buy you a drink.”
He braced himself for the inevitable rejection, wasn’t surprised when the girl shook her head. “No,” she said, “that won’t do. But I’ll buy you one.”
Holtz grinned like an idiot.
He would have gone with her right then, left the black coupe on the side of the private road and driven her anywhere she wanted, but she apologized—she was running crazy late, thanks to the breakdown—and asked if he would take a rain check.
Tomorrow night?
He agreed.
She held out her hand, palm up. “Got a phone?”
He offered up his cell, flushing slightly when her fingers lingered on his, their touch feather light, but electric. She added her name and number to his contacts and passed it back.
“Tomorrow, then?” she asked, turning toward her car.
“Tomorrow, then . . .” Holtz looked down at the entry in his phone. “April.”
She glanced back at him through thick lashes, and winked, and Holtz climbed into his yellow speedster and drove away, still watching April, haloed in the rearview mirror. He kept waiting for her to disappear, but she didn’t. Life was strange and wonderful sometimes.
And tomorrow, he had a date.
* * *
JUNE watched the yellow car shrink into the distance.
Idiot, she thought, starting up the road, this time on foot.
By the time she reached the gates of EON, she looked for all intents and purposes like Benjamin Holtz, Observation and Containment, age twenty-seven. Loved his little brother and hated his stepdad and still had nightmares about the things he’d seen overseas.
“What’s this?” asked the security guard, rising from the booth.