Chapter 11 · The Hold That Won't Give

"Twenty grand." Calder said it flat, like he was reading a receipt. "That's what they're offering the dockmaster to crack the gate."

I sat up too fast and the blanket slid off my shoulder. "Twenty grand for me?"

"For the ledger." His jaw ticked. "You're the bonus round."

That word — bonus — landed somewhere under my ribs and stayed there. I pulled the blanket back up, and it was the only cover I had left, because my coat was still soaked through and hanging in the wet locker, and my shirt was somewhere on the panic room floor, torn at the collar where his hand had gone through it last night.

"They stopped hitting the hatch," I said. "That's not mercy. That's a change of plan."

"That's Denny putting a price tag on you over an open channel." Calder set the handset down on the shelf like it might go off. "Everyone on that dock frequency just heard your name attached to a number."

My stomach dropped somewhere below the floor. "So they know I'm alive."

"They know you're worth buying." He looked at me then, really looked, the way he did before he decided something. "That's worse.