Chapter 11 · The Hold That Doesn't Open

Knox's hand closes over my wrist and yanks me sideways a half-second before the fifth strike lands.

Metal screams. The last hinge folds like foil, and the door doesn't open so much as give up, sagging into the frame at an angle nothing human should stand near. Water sheets down from the dead sprinkler heads. Past the wreck of the corridor, a voice I now know belongs to Marcus Hale says, calm as a maître d', "Cut the count. Prep the barrel."

"What's a barrel," I say, because my brain needs it spelled out even though my body already knows.

"Incendiary." Knox's mouth is at my ear, breath hot against the cold pouring off the ruined door. "Small. Enough to cook whatever's in that tray down to slag."

I pull the tray tighter against my chest. The match stem inside rattles against the sample dish, glass on glass, the only sound that isn't water or metal. "Then he burns his own son's evidence."

"He burns a liability." Knox's hand is still around my wrist. He hasn't let go. "That's not the same thing to him."

The overhead bank flickers and dies —