Chapter 25 · Her Father at the Wall

"Open the gate, Gabriel. That's my father in that truck."

Gabriel's hand closed around my wrist before I could reach the control panel. His grip was hot, hard, and just painful enough to remind me who owned every gun on this wall.

"No," he said.

Behind the steel barricade, the prisoner truck crawled across the lower road. Its tires spat black slush. Two armored bank vehicles boxed it in, rifles aimed through their open windows.

My father sat in the back cage, wrists chained above his head.

He looked smaller than I remembered. Older. Blood ran from his temple into the collar of his shirt.

"You said we'd get him alive." I twisted against Gabriel's grip. "You said that was the deal."

"The deal was that I wouldn't hand over the mines. I never promised to let the bank walk away."

"They're not walking away. They're right there."

"And they have twelve rifles trained on your father's head."

I shoved at his chest. His coat barely moved. "Then stop standing here and do something."

His eyes dropped to my mouth for half a second.

That tiny pause made my skin tighten.