Chapter 19 · The Minute They Bought

"Stand down. Hold positions."

The voice cracked out of the comm panel by the door, flat and clipped, and it wasn't Knox's.

I froze with the tray still balanced on my forearm, glass vial rattling against steel. "Who is that."

Knox didn't answer. He was already moving, palm flat on the panel, eyes locked on the little red numbers ticking down behind the mesh screen. Eleven fifty-eight. Eleven fifty-seven.

"Knox."

"Give me a second."

"You don't have a second, that's the whole problem." I stepped in close enough to smell him — sweat and cold steel and something underneath it, smoke that never quite washed out of his collar. "Your crew just backed off. Why."

"Because he told them to."

Outside, past the mesh, the wash corridor had gone quiet. No more boots. No more crowbar dragging along the frame, testing for a seam. A minute ago there'd been four men and a battering ram outline against the frosted glass. Now there was nothing but the drip of sprinkler runoff hitting concrete.

"That's not good news," I said. "Men who back off aren't men who left."

"I know that."

"Do you.