Chapter 9 · Somebody Else Has The Key

"Hold still." Calder's knife caught the last knot at my wrist, blade flat against my pulse point so I could feel every degree the steel was warmer than it should've been.

"You've been saying that for ten minutes."

"And you've been flinching for ten minutes. Hold still or I cut skin instead of thread."

I held still. Not because I trusted the knife. Because his hand was wrapped around my forearm, right over the bruise-print his fingers had left there twenty minutes ago, and every time he shifted his grip the mark throbbed like it remembered him better than I wanted it to.

The thread finally gave. Cotton, thick as fishing line, sewn tight enough that whoever did it meant for nobody to find it by accident.

Something small dropped into his palm. Folded twice, waxy, the size of a stamp.

"What is that," I said. Not a question. A demand dressed up polite because my hands were still pinned.

"You tell me." He unfolded it one crease at a time, close to his face, close enough that I watched his jaw tighten before his eyes even finished reading. "Dock frequency. Channel nine, backup band.