Chapter 28 · The Blackout Wire

The red dots crawled across my bloody hands.

Two of them. Steady as a heartbeat. They slid over the needle, the black thread, the torn skin on my thigh where the razor wire had bitten me an hour ago.

I didn't move. I had six stitches in. I wanted the seventh.

"Drop the needle, Mrs. Corvo."

Not a stranger's voice. Lucian's. Low and flat, from somewhere behind the lasers.

"Give me ten seconds," I said. "I'm almost done."

The iron door of the pump house banged open and the wind came in with it, salt and marine diesel and cold. Boots hit the concrete. Six men, maybe more, fanned out around the rusted fuel manifold. Every barrel was pointed at me.

I pulled the thread through and tied it off with my teeth.

Then Lucian walked in.

He wore no coat. Rain had plastered his black shirt to his chest and his knuckles were split open. He looked like a man who'd been tearing the city apart with his hands, which, knowing him, he had.

He stopped four feet away. His eyes went to my leg, then to my face.

"You ran," he said.

"I left."

"Same thing.