Chapter 18 · Her Badge, His Problem

The corpse is fresh.

Kade can tell because the blood pooling under the guard's split chest is still dark red, not the rust-brown it turns after a few hours in the heat. The furnace room stinks of iron and burnt hair. The body is slumped against the cracked furnace wall, head tilted back, mouth open like he died trying to scream.

Mira's badge is pinned to his chest.

Kade doesn't move. His core is still buzzing from cutting Sella's chain, and the mark on his ribs feels like someone pressed a hot poker into the bone. He can hear Mira behind him, boots scraping on the stone floor as she steps through the gap in the wall.

"Don't touch it," she says.

He wasn't planning to. He's staring at the badge because the last time he saw one of those up close, it was the night Mira dragged him out of his apartment with steel at his throat. The pin is bent. The metal is scorched black around the edges, like someone tried to burn it off and gave up halfway.

"You know him?" Kade asks.

Mira moves past him, crouches next to the body. Her jaw is tight. "Gareth.