Page 48 of Riggs
Kellan squats in front of me, phone raised, the screen filling with my bruised mouth, my messed hair, the fury I can’t blink away. “There she is,” he murmurs. “God, I missed your light. Remember when we used to make magic on rooftops? Before handlers. Before your… wall.”
“His name is Riggs,” I try. It comes out muffled, ugly. My wrists burn where the zip ties bite. I work them against the plastic, not to escape—yet—but to mark my skin. Blood is a breadcrumb. He taught me that without saying it.
Kellan tips his head. “He’s a prop. Props come and go. We’re the story. We always were. You and me.”
I let my gaze wander, committing details to memory again in case I live on memory alone. But everything about this situation has my mind rolling in place. Like a hamster in a wheel. I try to remember details, but none of them are useful.
Kellan reaches out like he’s allowed and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. I flinch so hard it hurts. He sighs, aggrieved. “Don’t be dramatic. We’re going to talk. I’ll post a teaser so they know it’s romantic and then we’ll?—”
I bark a laugh against the gag. Romantic. I want to spit. I want to bite. I want him to understand this isn’t right.
The door to the office cubby clacks and I jerk. He’s strung a backdrop in there—cream muslin, a ring light plugged into a janky power strip, a stool like a confessional. There’s a script on the desk. It starts,I forgot who I was without you, Kellan,in block letters cut from printer paper and glued to a card. My stomach turns.
“Brice said—” I start, uselessly, then stop. I don’t want to give Kellan any more names to swing at.
“Brice is soft,” he says, contempt sliding in where charm used to live. “He wanted anincident. I’m giving you anarc. He’ll thank me when he’s trending.”
He lifts the phone again. The lens stares. I stare back, full of hate, and refuse to cry. If he posts anything, he’ll post my anger. Not my fear. My fear belongs to me and to no one else. I keep breathing. In. Hold. Out. Hold.
A tiny change sweeps the room—a pressure shift, a silence that thickens. It’s almost like time stands still. The driver flicks his eyes to Kellan and straightens without meaning to.
“Time,” Kellan mutters, standing. “Let’s begin. Say what I wrote, and I’ll?—”
A voice cuts through the room, calm as a straight line. “Mr. Stevens,” it calls, bored and official. “APD. Let’s talk before this gets ugly.”
My heart slams once, hard. The police. Heat rushes up the back of my neck, a solvent for fear. I don’t blink. I’m afraid if I blink I’ll miss it.
Kellan’s smile cracks, and the shine in his eyes turns brittle. He grabs the rope, yanks it higher on the column like he cansomehow hide me better by making me smaller. “They don’t know we’re here,” he hisses to the driver. “It’s a bluff.”
Another voice—steady, low—threads in from under the roll-up. “Vanessa,” it says, just for me. “I’m here.”
Everything in me holds and then lets go. The room tilts toward true north. “Riggs,” I try to say, and the gag turns it into a broken vowel. He hears me anyway. I know he does. I can feel hisyesin my chest.
“Step back from the woman,” Turner says, conversational, like he’s ordering tacos. “Show me your hands. Let’s not do this the hard way.”
Kellan rips the handkerchief from my mouth like he’s performing some act of mercy. “Don’t say his name,” he snarls. “Do you know how many nights I?—”
“Every night a choice,” I rasp. My voice is scratchy and raw like sandpaper. “You made this. You don’t get to call it love.”
He stares at me like I’ve spoken a language he refuses to learn. His hand twitches like he wants to touch me again. The driver hisses, “Bro,” and starts to edge toward the office.
“Don’t,” a third voice says, close and flinty, and I glimpse a big man’s shadow slide at the roll-up’s edge. Lalo. The driver freezes, instinct winning over stupidity.
“Mr. Stevens,” Turner continues, closer now, patience thinning but not gone, “last chance.”
Kellan goes very still. He looks at the phone in his hand, at me, at the slit of light, and you can see him building three different cuts in his head. In none of them does he lose. He takes a breath like an actor finding his mark, grips the rope with both hands, and?—
Men move—shadows resolving into Lalo, Turner, and Riggs,my Riggs, filling the doorway in a charcoal shirt and a face that will never, ever be a prop. He doesn’t look wild. He looks… quiet. The kind of quiet that makes stupid men stop moving.
“Hands,” Turner says, voice clipped. “Now.”
Kellan bolts for performance—jerks the rope, drags at me like he can pull me into his cut. He doesn’t get far. Riggs is already there, silent fast, intercepting the rope with one hand and taking Kellan’s wrist with the other, twisting just enough to make bone talk without tearing ligaments. It’s a precise correction, not a fight. Kellan yelps, drops the phone, and it skitters under the folding chair and dies facedown.
“What the fuck,” the driver whines to no one brave enough to be him, and Lalo peels him off the door with a control hold that looks like a hug and ends in zip ties.
“Good,” Turner says dryly, stepping in with cuffs. “Let’s discuss your sudden passion for arts and crafts in a room with glass and a lock.”
Kellan is still talking. He doesn’t hear himself. “She loves me—this is—this is—” He’s looking for the word when Lalo, bless him, supplies one: “Over.”
