Page 125 of Make Them Cry
I stare out at the river as we swing onto the dock road, the water black and unknowable. Somewhere under that same sky, River is there. The thought tries to rip my ribs open. I keep breathingbecause Arrow told me to. Because Dean expects me to. Because River needs me to.
“Eyes up,” Render says softly. “We’re almost there.”
We cut our lights a block out and drift into a side lane. The warehouse rises out of the dark, a hulking rectangle with a roll-up door pitted from decades of weather and a personnel entrance hidden in the building’s crease. One lone light burns above the side door.
“Positions,” Dean says.
We fan out, bootfalls silent. Ranger ghosts left. Knight peels to the personnel door, hand on the jamb, head tipped like he’s listening to the building breathe. Arrow floats, out of everyone’s sight and somehow in all our pockets at once. I stack behind Dean and Sawyer at the roll-up, breath slow. I’m nervous as fuck, and I don’t know what to expect.
Rae whispers in our ears. “Motion ping inside—two signatures. One stationary, one active. Stationary is mid-warehouse, could be a chair. Active moving perimeter loop, slow. No audio.”
My throat closes.Stationary.River.
Dean’s voice is a current. “Rae, give us the flicker.”
The alley light stutters, twice. Sawyer takes that heartbeat of dark to slide the cutter’s cable under the roll-up seam, a garrote for steel. The blade whirrs through corrugated like it remembers every time it’s done this and enjoys it. On the second pass, he palms the cut, braces, and lifts. The door rises soundlessly, six inches, eight, enough for us to roll under on knees and hands.
We slip inside and become ghosts.
It smells like dust and old oil and the faint citrus of a cleaner some bored manager once used to look busy. I hear a footstep. Not ours. Ranger points. Sawyer melts that direction. Dean signals me to his hip and we move, slow, deliberate, toward the shadow of a chair and the glint of a cheap metal table under the skylight’s gray smudge.
She’s there.
River.
Hands bound. Head tipped. Breathing—I see the small lift of her shoulders, and something like prayer stutters in my chest. Dean’s palm says wait. I wait because waiting is how we get to her.
A silhouette unfolds from a stack of pallets on the far side—tall, carrying his boredom like a weapon. His shoulders pass a beam of weak light, and I catch the crescent scratch marks raked across his cheek.She fought.Pride detonates under my sternum.
Dean’s hand flicks. A whisper-soft glide. A hand around a mouth, a forearm press, the sigh of a body going down without a sound. He becomes a neat new shape on the floor. Sawyer’s already cinching wrists.
Rae in my ear: “One down. Second heat signature just appeared farther back. Coming around the forklift.”
Ranger says, “On it.”
There’s the faintest rattle and then Ranger is a shadow filling the path, moving like a lesson. The second guard goes quiet, fast. Arrow’s voice: “Perimeter’s clear.”
Dean gives me a nod I feel in my bones.Go.
I put my hands on River before my knees hit the concrete. “River.” It’s not a sound so much as a shaking exhale. Her head jerks up. Her eyes find mine and flood, then harden. She swallows a sob like she refuses to give this building even that.
“Hey,” I breathe, cutting the ties at her wrists with a single pull of the blade. “I’ve got you.”
“You came,” she whispers like there was a universe where I wouldn’t.
“Always.”
Her fingers dig into me like she’s checking that I’m real. “Helena—she?—”
Dean’s voice, calm behind me. “We’ll get to Helena. First we get you out.”
Sawyer’s already scanning her arms, her pupils, the set of her mouth. “Concussion check later. Right now? She’s good to move.”
Rae: “Heads up—two heat signatures just hit the far entrance. Unknown count outside. And—” she sucks a breath. “We’ve got a vehicle approaching fast.”
Knight’s already on the radio. “Arrow?”
“On the roof,” Arrow whispers. “Van coming in hot. I’ll stall.”
