Claimed in transit

Chapter Six: Delivered

The rest of the drive passed in a silence that had weight to it, the kind that sits between two people who've just seen something in each other neither of them meant to show.

Kane kept his eyes on the road. In the back seat now, since he hadn't been able to put her back in the trunk after what had happened in the woods, though he told himself the change was practical, not anything softer, she sat with her wrists bound loosely in front of her, watching the back of his head with an expression he couldn't see but could feel anyway.

The address on the paper led to a house on the edge of a gated development, expensive, quiet, the kind of place that never had police called to it because the people who lived there made sure of that. Kane pulled up the long drive as the sun finally cleared the horizon, and a man he didn't recognize was already waiting on the steps, arms crossed, watching the car approach with the patience of someone who did this often enough not to be curious about it anymore.

"You're late," the man said, when Kane got out.

"Tire blew." Kane kept his voice even, the same voice he used for every handoff, betraying nothing of the last three hours. "Wasn't going to risk driving on it."

The man grunted, unbothered, and gestured for two others to come forward from the house. Kane opened the back door, and for one long moment, as she was pulled out into the daylight, blinking against it, her eyes found his again, over the shoulder of the man gripping her arm.

He didn't know what he expected to see there. Not gratitude, he hadn't earned that. Not quite the hatred from the woods either. Something in between, something that looked almost like a question, and Kane had no answer to give her before she was walked up the steps and through the front door, and it closed, and she was gone.

He was paid in cash, counted out without ceremony, and given nothing else, no explanation, no name for the house, no reason he was allowed to ask for. He got back in his car and drove away from the gated development with the money folded in his jacket and something else sitting in his chest that money had never put there before.

He told himself it was over. He told himself, the whole drive back into the city, that he'd done the job, delivered clean, and that whatever he felt about it now was a luxury he didn't have room for.

He almost believed it by the time his phone rang.

"Cross." The voice on the other end was the same warehouse contact from the night before, brisk, businesslike. "Got another one for you. Today, if you can."

"What is it," Kane said, though he already knew he wasn't supposed to ask.

"Briefcase. Small job, good money. Client wants it delivered personal, no drop point, straight to him." A pause. "You available?"

Kane looked out at the city going gold in the early light, thought about the money already in his jacket, thought about the eyes that had looked back at him from the top of those steps, and told himself this was different. A briefcase. A simple errand. Nothing like the last twelve hours.

"Send the details," he said.

The address came through a few minutes later, along with a time, and an instruction that struck Kane as slightly unusual, though he couldn't have said exactly why. Deliver in person. Wait for confirmation before leaving. Client insists on privacy, no other drivers, no substitutions.

Specific, for a briefcase. Kane read the message twice, felt something small and cold move through him that he didn't have a name for yet, and told himself it was nothing. Clients got particular sometimes. It didn't mean anything.

He picked up the briefcase from a courier waiting outside a downtown office building, unremarkable, locked, no heavier than it should have been, and slid it into the passenger seat instead of the trunk, an instinct he didn't examine too closely.

He had a few hours before the drop. Enough time to eat, to let the exhaustion of the night finally catch up to him in a diner booth somewhere quiet, enough time to sit with the strange, unfamiliar weight sitting in his chest that had nothing to do with the briefcase in his passenger seat and everything to do with a pair of eyes he couldn't stop seeing, watching him from the top of a stranger's steps.

He didn't know yet how little time he actually had left.