Page 239 of Fractured Loyalties
My lip curls. I kill the thread and toss the phone into the glove box. The USB from Vale’s desk waits on the passenger seat. I pocket it. It will feed me later. Right now, I want air that doesn’t smell like old carpet and dead money.
I call Lydia.
“Tell me,” she says.
“Kinley is finished,” I answer.
She is silent for five beats. “Copy.”
“Vale is off the board.”
Another pause. “You took the head before you cleared the body.”
“Sometimes the body stops moving when the head does.”
“And sometimes it thrashes,” she says. A click of keys on her end. “I’m scrubbing the Kinley relay. I’ll salt it so it points at a rival. If anyone comes sniffing, they won’t sniff here.”
“Text me if the street moves,” I say.
“I’ll do more than text.”
I end the call. My hands smell like cheap cologne from Vale’s coat. I roll the window down and let the air eat it.
At the red light by the viaduct, a man crosses with a dog that looks like a bundle of bones. The dog trots with its head held high anyway. It doesn’t realize it isn’t whole. I watch it until the light changes.
Mara will ask what happened. I will tell her the piece that keeps her steady and hold back the piece that pulls her under. I do not lie to her. I ration the truth.
The phone buzzes again. Not Lydia this time. A new number.
You’re late.
No signature. No context. No need. It isn’t Volker. It isn’t Vale. It reads like someone who knows where I would go next and wants me there faster.
I do not reply. I head for the safehouse.
The door glides open. The air inside smells like coffee and faint sugar. Lydia has the tablet on the counter again, screens tiled, feeds moving. Mara stands near the window with her arms folded tight under her ribs. The baton sits between them like a line they could both step over in the next second.
Both pairs of eyes find me.
Lydia’s scan my face. Her gaze drops to my hands. She nods once. She has always been fluent in what blood dries like.
Mara steps toward me and stops herself after one move. “Well?”
“Vale won’t touch you again,” I say.
She studies me. “Dead?”
“Yes.”
Something in her eases and tightens at once. Relief. Guilt. A shard of approval she will judge herself for later. She closes the distance and rests her palm against my sternum like she is making sure I am solid and not a story I told her.
Lydia slides the tablet into her bag. “We’ll have visitors at some point,” she says. “The kind who don’t know who their head is anymore and want one fast. I salted the line. It will buy us wiggle room.”
“Good,” I say.
“And Kinley?” Lydia asks, even though she already knows.
“He gave me what I needed.”
