Chapter 21 · Six Hours, One Brother

Mara's hands were still shaking when she pulled up the live feed on her cracked tablet. The image stuttered, then locked: her brother Eli, cable-tied to a folding chair in what looked like an old factory floor. Blood crusted under his nose. His head hung forward.

Six hours. Bring Kade.

She set the tablet down before she crushed it. Her clinic smelled like burnt wire and the antiseptic she'd dumped over the operating slab after Kade had walked out with Silas's tracker sitting in his gut like a live grenade. She'd told him not to swallow it. He'd done it anyway, and now the man was somewhere in her back room, probably bleeding internally, definitely ticking down faster than before.

And Eli was tied to a chair because she'd dragged Kade Rourke out of a prison transport instead of minding her own business.

"You planning to stare at that screen till he's dead, or you want to move?"

Mara didn't flinch. Kade's voice came from the doorway behind her, low and too steady for someone who'd just turned himself into bait. She didn't turn around.

"They want you," she said. "Not him."

"Yeah. So we go."

"We.