Blood and Vows.

Chapter 21 — Between Breaths

The call rang into a silence that felt deliberate. Once. Twice. Three times. Alex watched the burner’s tiny screen draw a line of dots and then stop. No pickup. No redirect. No message. She tried again because sometimes nerves make hands repeat what minds already understand. Same rings. Same blank refusal. She ended the call with her thumb and let the phone rest face down on the crate beside the worktable. The barn swallowed the small sound the way it swallowed most things: straw-soft, dust-dull, as if noise were a debt it could pay in installments. Samantha opened her eyes. She looked gray and glazed around the mouth, but the pupils tracked. “He didn’t answer.” “No.” Alex checked the bandage again, not because it needed it—she’d built it to stay—but because movement steadied thought. The gauze had caught a fresh, thin bloom and then stopped. The skin beneath was angry, edges drawn together by the butterfly closures, the sling taking most of the drag. The shock had moved into that sullen phase where bodies negotiate with pain like it’s a union. “He usually answers,” Samantha said after a beat. It came out more like a memory than a complaint. “Usually doesn’t exist tonight.” Alex stepped away from the table to listen at the door, a habit more than a hope. The lane beyond the fence sounded like a city deciding whether to sleep or to drink coffee. No boots. No low voices that belonged to men who made doorways into jobs. No cars idling with the patience of money. “He’ll see the missed calls. Or he won’t. Either way, planning around an absence beats waiting for a ghost.” “That a field rule?” “That’s a life rule.” She looked back. “How’s the spin? Any worse?” “Mostly the same. The ceiling still looks like chessboard squares, which seems suspect, but I’ll allow it.” The corner of Samantha’s mouth twitched toward humor and then gave up halfway. “Good. Keep letting me know if anything changes. Small is fine. Small tells matter.” Alex dragged a crate closer and sat where Samantha could see her without lifting her head. The barn’s shadow made a kind of tent around them. Between two beams, a spider chose now to finish a thread. Samantha studied her for a moment. “You really do this, don’t you.” “What—bandages?” Alex asked, deadpan. “I read a very short book.” “I mean the other thing.” Samantha swallowed. “Moving while rooms are still burning.” There was a point to keep hedging. It had protected Alex for years. It had also put a target around everyone she’d spared truths to. She rotated the burner with her palm and looked at the blank screen as if it might decide to behave differently just because she didn’t. “I’m an agent,” she said. The words came out simple, unornamented, heavier than anything else in the room. They didn’t bounce. They landed. Samantha blinked once. “Like… federal.” “Like trained to do the sort of work that usually gets credited to luck if it goes right and to someone else if it doesn’t.” Alex kept her tone flat enough to be kind. “There’s a file with my name on it and a longer file with other people’s names I’m supposed to forget. You can guess how that’s going.” “Badly,” Samantha said, and managed the smallest smile. “I knew you weren’t a lawyer.” “Sorry to disappoint.” “It’s reassuring, actually.” Samantha’s hand found the edge of the table, closed without force. “When I thought you were a lawyer, this all felt… unhinged. With ‘agent,’ it just feels like the worst offsite of my life.” Alex huffed something that might have turned into a laugh if the night had been kinder. “The dress code is about the same.” Silence stretched, not unfriendly. The barn creaked in the way old wood creaks when the temperature changes its mind. Somewhere outside, a bottle rolled, hit a stone, and decided to be still. Samantha’s gaze drifted to the crate with the phone. “He still didn’t answer.” “No.” Alex rubbed a knuckle along her bottom lip, a habit from years ago that twenty bad days had failed to kill. “He’s either under a ceiling that blocks signals, being followed by people who can’t be taught, or he’s doing what he always does and deciding answers are weapons to be chosen later.” “You hate him,” Samantha said quietly. “I hate everything about the gravity he brings with him.” Alex looked down at her hands and found them steady. “And I hate that he isn’t the worst thing on the board.” Samantha closed her eyes as if that cost less. When she opened them, something tired but exact had settled in. “I’m going to say something and I need you not to tell me I’m being dramatic.” “Try me.” “Selma is terrifying. Her smile is a blade. But the person I—” She stopped, found the word she wanted, and took it. “—fear is Fernando.” Alex felt the name in her shoulders before her head. She sat more upright. “Because of reputation or because of something you’ve seen?” “Both,” Samantha said. “In rooms with a dozen men who believe they’re wolves, he’s the only one who doesn’t talk. He just… waits. And then people go quiet around him like they’ve realized they’ve confused hunger with appetite.” She swallowed again. “He never raises his voice. He doesn’t need to. He looks at you like he’s already decided which part to unscrew first.” The barn dimmed and sharpened at the edges. Alex reached into the inside pocket of her jacket and pulled out the thing she never took out: a small, stiff-sided photo, the size of a credit card, laminated years ago because grief had a way of rubbing corners raw. She set it on the crate under the weak light. Samantha turned her head, curious, and then still. “Do you know him,” Alex asked, and the question took effort because it had to be simple and because everything behind it was not, “as Jacob?” Samantha went paler in a way that wasn’t shock. It was the body deciding that truth gets its own color. “Yes,” she said, barely audible. “And as Fernando.” The barn let the sentence sit. Alex didn’t pick up the photo. She didn’t have to. It looked back at her with the same mouth she’d memorized; the jaw was a fraction softer than now, the eyes a shade less iron. A man who had learned how to be exactly what he needed to be to whoever needed him to be it. A fiancé with a hand that fit hers so well she’d thought that meant something eternal instead of rehearsed. Samantha’s lips trembled. “I’ve seen him in the villa since I started on the accounts. At first only across rooms. Then closer. He liked to make me count cash out loud and then tell me which numbers I’d said wrong even when I hadn’t. It was… childish, except when it wasn’t. And then tonight—” Her breath hitched, a small choke of memory. “—when you showed me that picture the first time back in the city, I thought my brain was doing that thing shock does where it tries to name monsters. But it’s him. It’s the same person. I don’t know how that’s possible, but I know what I saw.” Alex nodded once, the sort of nod you give an executioner when he asks if you’re ready. “It’s possible because he wanted it. People are very possible when they want things.” “I told myself there were two men,” Samantha whispered. “An enforcer who smiles like an apology, and a man you once loved who was… something else.” “There’s only one,” Alex said, and the words felt like they had to learn how to cross her mouth. “He changed costumes. I fell for the one he wore in daylight.” Samantha looked at her, not with pity, not with professional interest. With an ordinary human gaze that said: that sentence cost blood. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t be.” Alex slid the photo back into the inside pocket and closed the jacket over it like a lid. “Sorry doesn’t do much work.” “What does?” “Distance,” Alex said. “And angles. And people who tell you the truth even when you don’t want to hire it.” “We’re doing that now,” Samantha said, a little breathless, as if truth carried altitude. “Telling it.” “We are.” Alex picked a sliver of wood from the table and flicked it onto the floor, a minor act of control. “So keep going. Tell me exactly what you fear with Fernando. Not as a metaphor. What do you think he does if he has a day and a room?” Samantha didn’t look away. “He talks until you admit you hear him in your blood. Then he stops talking. And then you hear him anyway.” Alex let the image sit because it had to. If she swatted it away, it would come back larger. “That’s useful,” she said after a moment. “Truth makes maps.” “And lies?” “Lies make holes. He’s very good at holes. So are we, if we’re not careful.” She took a breath that wasn’t quite steady and made it steadier on purpose. “Listen. There are three routes out of this city that don’t get watched when you watch them. Two go through places that break cars. One goes through people who break people. None are perfect.” Samantha wet her lips. The motion betrayed thirst more than nerves. Alex handed her the water again. She drank obediently and made the face of someone who has learned how much he hates water while realizing water keeps hearts from turning into chalk. “In all three,” Alex continued, “we need thirty minutes without a tail. That’s not a request I can make of the city. It’s a request I might be able to make of a person.” “Sebastian,” Samantha said. “Sebastian,” Alex acknowledged. The name tasted like rust and mint. “He cuts corners that don’t look like corners until you step through and realize walls were always optional. He can buy space quickly. He can also sell it later. Both facts are true.” “I don’t care about later,” Samantha said softly. “I care about out.” “I know.” Alex rubbed her thumb along the ridge of the crate, counting knots. “He didn’t answer. It could mean he’s busy making an answer bigger than a call. Or that he’s somewhere stupid on purpose. Or that a man with a pretty profile and a dead name is standing too close.” They were both quiet. The barn made small, considerate sounds, as if it had been built by someone who didn’t want to wake anyone up. Samantha shifted, grimaced, and re-found a position that did not make her want to curse. “Why did you tell me you’re an agent?” “Because you asked me for a promise a few minutes ago and I don’t give promises wearing masks,” Alex said. “Also because we’re past the point where lies do anything but rot the air. And because if I die, I don’t want you to be surprised by the people who come to clean up.” “That’s bleak.” “That’s logistics.” Samantha stared at the roof again, the chessboard squares she’d invented finding their own borders. “You’re not what I expected.” “Most days, neither am I.” Alex allowed herself to lean back until her spine sighed. “When I signed things, I thought I’d be a certain kind of useful. Turns out I’m useful in rooms with bad lighting and doors that don’t close right.” “And women bleeding on tables,” Samantha said. “And them,” Alex agreed. “I’m… not bad at that part.” “You’re not,” Samantha said, and it wasn’t flattery. It was inventory. “Thank you.” Alex accepted it the way you accept a glass of water in a house that isn’t yours: polite, alert, ready to put it down without leaving fingerprints. Outside, somewhere farther than the fence and closer than the river, a car revved too hard and then thought better of it. A dog barked twice and then remembered that barking gets you less sleep. The city settled into the hour when bakers curse dough and nurses curse clocks and men who make their money from secrets curse both. Samantha’s eyes found the burner again. “Try him once more.” Alex considered saying no. The word turned over in her mouth and decided to be pragmatic. She picked up the phone and dialed. Same rings. Same blank. She ended it before the line did. “He’ll call when he calls,” she said. “Or he’ll arrive instead of calling. He likes entrances.” “He likes theater,” Samantha murmured. “So does your employer,” Alex said. “My employer,” Samantha echoed, as if the noun had suddenly grown ill-fitting. “I think I quit an hour ago.” “Put it in writing,” Alex said. “I hear that helps.” Samantha’s lips twitched again, better this time. Color had crept back enough that the fever, if it came, would have something to argue with. “Do you ever stop moving?” “When it’s safe.” “When is that?” Alex tilted her head. “Not tonight.” The quiet that followed was companionable in a way Alex would have guessed she’d forgotten how to tolerate. She stared at the photo seam in her pocket and didn’t take it out. Samantha breathed in a rhythm Alex could start to predict. The barn, old and tired and uninterested in anyone’s drama, kept its end of the bargain and stood. Samantha spoke first. “I know what you think of him.” “Sebastian?” Alex asked. “Or my dead fiancé who isn’t?” “Both,” Samantha said. She blinked slow. “But I also know this: pride doesn’t turn bullets into air. Right now he’s the only lever we have that moves more than one thing at once.” Alex let out a small sound that wasn’t agreement and wasn’t disagreement. “I’ll keep trying.” “Good.” “Don’t thank me for that, either.” “I won’t.” Samantha turned her head enough to look at her straight. “I’ll thank you later if we’re alive.” “That’s a plan.” Alex glanced at the c***k in the door. The lane had gone completely still now, the kind of still that comes before delivery trucks and bad coffee. “We move at first light. If I can’t reach him by then, we buy our own space for thirty minutes and take the route that breaks cars.” “And if that breaks us first?” “Then we change plans in the middle of them.” Alex stood to keep her blood a little louder than her thoughts. “It’s a specialty.” Samantha considered that, eyes hazed but intent. “You’re very calm.” “I’m performing it,” Alex admitted. “Works on enemies. Sometimes works on friends. Occasionally works on myself.” Samantha exhaled, slow, and then—because the night had decided to be generous one more time—she spoke the thing that had been walking back and forth along the edge of her mouth since they’d come into the barn. “If he gets us alive,” she said, and the he needed no name, “he won’t let us go until he breaks us. Like toys.” The barn did not breathe. Neither did the city. For a long moment, the truth perched between them like something winged and heavy, considering its next flight. Alex nodded once. “Then we don’t let him get us alive.” Samantha’s eyes slid closed. “Deal.”