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"You were paid to let him die."
The barrel digs into the back of my neck and shoves my face into the brick. Cold metal. Cold wall. My cheek scrapes. I can taste blood and cheap coffee.
"Yeah, I got the memo," I say. "You wanna move the gun so I can actually do my job?"
"Your job is to watch." Jax's hand shakes. I can feel it through the gun. "Calder Rook walks into that alley in thirty seconds. He takes two bullets. He doesn't walk out. That's the contract. You don't touch it."
"And if I do?"
"Then I shoot you first and tell Nia you ran off with the money."
Below us, the alley is empty. Rain slick on the concrete. One buzzing streetlight. Calder Rook is early. Of course he's early. The city's executioner, six-four, black coat, hands in pockets like he owns the kill floor. He doesn't look like a man about to die. He looks bored.
My wrist itches. The thin white scar there always itches when time's about to break.
"Ten seconds," Jax hisses. "Don't. Mara. Don't you dare."
I count anyway. That's my whole problem. I count.
Calder steps into the light. Two guys step out from behind the dumpster. No masks. No talk. One lifts a pistol. The shot is already happening in my head before it happens out there.
"Mara!"
I don't answer him. I drop.
I slam my elbow back into Jax's knee, twist out from under the barrel, and I'm over the fire escape rail before he can rack the slide. I fall two stories. I hit the dumpster lid, roll, hit concrete. My ankle screams.
"What the hell are you doing!" Jax shouts from above.
The first bullet fires.
Time tears.
This is the part no one gets. It's not pretty. It's not magic light. It's like grabbing a live wire with your teeth. The second the bullet leaves the barrel, the air goes thick, syrupy, wrong. I can see the eleven seconds it owns. The bullet's whole little future. From barrel to Calder's chest. Eleven seconds of certainty.
I reach for it. God, it burns.
"Come here," I snarl at nothing, at the air, at the bullet. "Come here, you little bastard."
I steal it.
I rip those eleven seconds right out of the bullet's path and shove them into my own lungs. The world snaps.
The bullet stutters mid-air. Like it forgot how to fly. It drops an inch. Just an inch. But an inch is everything.
It hits Calder's shoulder instead of his heart. He spins. Blood sprays the wall. He doesn't make a sound. He just moves.
He's fast. So fast. He grabs the shooter's wrist, breaks it, takes the gun, shoots the second guy in the throat. All in the time Jax is still screaming my name from the roof.
"You stupid bitch! You just voided a city contract!"
Calder's on his knees now. Hand clamped over his shoulder. Breathing hard. His blood is black in the yellow light. He looks up. Straight at me.
And I feel it lock.
My scar splits open.
Not bleeding. Burning. Like someone pressed a hot wire right into the skin. A line of fire races up my forearm. I gasp and grab it. The scar, that thin white line I've had since I was fourteen, turns red. Then black. Then it starts to tick.
I can feel his heartbeat in my wrist. Not mine. His.
"No," I whisper. "No no no, that's not how it works. That's not—"
Jax is gone from the roof. Running. Smart boy.
Calder pushes himself up with his good arm. He sways. His coat is soaked. He stares at me like I'm a ghost he was told to arrest.
"You," he says. His voice is low and wrecked. "You're the courier. Mara Venn."
"Stay back," I say. My hand is still clamped over my wrist. The ticking is getting louder. "Don't come closer."
He comes closer anyway. Of course he does. That's his whole thing. Dominant, calm, never asks.
"You stole from a death," he says. "You know what that costs?"
"I was saving your life, asshole!"
"You were paid to let me die." He stops a foot away. Too close. I can smell his blood, his sweat, rain on wool. His eyes drop to my wrist. "And now you're paying for it. Let me see."
"Don't touch me."
"Mara." He says my name like an order. Like a claim. "Show me your arm."
"I said don't—"
He grabs me. Not hard. But absolute. One hand around my wrist, fingers hot, pinning me. His palm is huge and rough and it swallows my arm whole. He turns it over.
The scar isn't a scar anymore. It's a countdown. Black numbers bleeding under my skin, ticking down. 11:00:00 and dropping. One second per his heartbeat.
His thumb brushes over it. The touch is light. It shouldn't feel like a shock. It does.
"Eleven seconds," he murmurs. "You stole eleven seconds from a bullet. And the contract chained it to you."
"What contract?" My voice cracks. "What are you talking about?"
"Every fatal wound I take now burns a day off your life." His eyes lift to mine. Dark, furious, almost scared. "You tied yourself to me, courier. We're linked. You feel that?"
I do. I feel his pulse hammering against my palm. I feel the heat of his hand. I feel how close his chest is, how his breath hits my cheek. My knees want to fold.
"Let go," I whisper. But I don't pull away.
"You should have let me die," he says, quieter. "Now you don't get to run."
Sirens wail three blocks over. The shooters' friends, or his backup. Doesn't matter. We have to move.
He doesn't let go. He yanks me against him, his good arm around my waist, hauling me up like I weigh nothing. Forced proximity, his coat around both of us, his blood smearing my jacket.
"You walk with me," he orders against my ear. "You breathe when I say. You understand?"
"Screw you," I snap, shoving at his chest. "I just saved your—"
He cuts me off by pressing my back to the alley wall. One hand still locked on my burning wrist, pinned above my head. His body cages mine. His face an inch from mine. I can see the sweat on his upper lip, the fleck of blood on his jaw.
"Say it again," he says, voice low and dangerous. "Say you saved me."
"I saved you," I breathe. And hate how it sounds like something else.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Then back up. The ticking in my wrist syncs with his breathing. Thump. Thump. Thump.
"Then you belong to me until I pay it back," he says. "Eleven seconds, Mara. That's eleven days of your life if I bleed out. You get that?"
Footsteps pound at the mouth of the alley. Boots. Many.
Calder doesn't look. He keeps staring at me, pinning me, claiming me with his eyes.
Then his knees buckle. The blood loss hits him all at once. He slumps, and I have to catch him or we both go down. His weight crashes into me. His forehead drops to my shoulder. Hot breath on my neck.
"Don't you die," I hiss, grabbing his coat. "You don't get to die after you did this to me."
He laughs, a wet, pained sound. "Orders were to arrest you. Guess that plan's shot."
The footsteps get closer. A flashlight beam sweeps the alley.
"Hands where we can see them!" someone shouts. "Rook! Venn! On the ground, now!"
Calder's head snaps up. His hand goes to his gun, even bleeding out. Even half-conscious, he's still the executioner. He shoves me behind him, shielding me with his own body.
I stare at the guns pointed at us, at his blood on my hands, at the black numbers ticking under my skin.
And then his eyes roll back, and he collapses straight into my arms, and the countdown on my wrist flares white-hot as a new voice says from the dark—
"Well. Look what you stole, little thief. You know you just broke the oldest—"