Page 133 of Fractured Loyalties
And for a second, everything else falls away.
Not the danger. Not the threads. Just this—the hum of the room. The heat between our fingers. The question neither of us wants to ask.
What happens if we lose?
The answer is too ugly to name.
So I finish my coffee.
And we start preparing to leave.
The drive is short.
But it feels longer, like the city is holding its breath around us. Every stoplight lingers half a beat too long. Every pedestrian moves just a little too deliberately. Like the whole street’s rehearsing something.
Elias drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting loosely on his thigh. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t look at me. But I can feel the coil of him beside me, all steel and storm, counting exits before he even hits the turn signal.
My building comes into view, and I already feel it—that static curl at the base of my skull. The thing that told me, last time, that Caleb wasn’t just a ghost.
“The northwest corner’s clean,” Elias murmurs. “Camera looped. Window paths hold.”
I nod, but I don’t relax.
He parks in the alley behind the complex, second level of the old loading dock, where no one bothers to check plates. We exit fast, fluid. Like we’ve done this before. Because we have. Just not together.
The back stairs creak in places. He clocks each one without asking. I let my fingers graze the rail, not for balance, just to remember how this place used to feel.
We reach my door.
It looks untouched.
But it’s not.
“Someone ran a print reader over the lock,” I say. “The paint’s still curing.”
Elias’s head tilts. He steps in close, brushes the edge with a gloved thumb. “Recent.”
I key in the code. The pad blinks. Accepts it.
But I don’t open the door.
He steps in front of me. Uses his shoulder to press it open just wide enough to slip through.
Then he disappears inside.
I wait.
Count to fifteen.
He comes back. Eyes sharp. “Clear. But something’s off.”
I enter.
The air smells wrong. Not dirty. Not foreign. Just off.
Like something opened and never closed. Like a thread still fraying.
I move to the kitchen. The cupboard door is half-open. My favorite mug sits in the dish rack—wrong side up. I never do that. Elias trails behind me, touching nothing, watching everything.
