Page 10 of Reaper

She opened her mouth. Closed it.

“No movement without a club escort. Not to the bathroom down the hall, not to the kitchen three doors over, nowhere. The prospect outside that door goes with you, or you don’t go.”

“That’s—”

“No exceptions.”

She stared at me. Her keys caught the light, metal edges glinting.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“I’m not asking you to.”

She moved then. One step toward the door, quick and decisive, her body angled to slide past me before I could react. I’d seen it coming. Read it in the shift of her weight, the way her eyes darted to the gap between my shoulder and the doorframe. I stepped into her path without grabbing her, without touching her at all. Just filled the space. Chest level with her eyeline, close enough that I could smell the faint shampoo in her hair, something floral underneath the diesel and concrete.

My hand hovered near my belt. Not on the weapon. Near it. The way it rests when I’m standing still but ready.

She stopped. Had to. The alternative was pressing her body against mine to get through, and she wasn’t that desperate. Not yet.

We stood there, breathing the same air, close enough that I could count the flecks of gold in her brown eyes if I wanted to. I didn’t want to. I wanted her to understand that the door wasn’t an option, and that understanding had to come from her, not from me holding her back.

I reached past her shoulder. My arm brushed the fabric of her sweater, not quite touching skin. The deadbolt turned with a solid, final click. Metal against metal. The sound carried in the small room.

Lila looked down at her phone. It was in her left hand, screen dark, case cracked along one corner. She turned it over. Looked at the back. Looked at me. For a second I thought she might throw it. Might hurl the thing against the wall and watch it shatter rather than give it up.

She didn’t throw it.

She set it on the cot. Gently. Screen down. Like she was putting a child to bed.

The keys followed. They landed beside the phone with a soft clatter, metal on thin mattress, and her hand stayed there for a beat too long, fingers spread against the fabric, like she was saying goodbye to something.

Then she straightened. Turned. Walked to the far wall and pressed her back against it, arms crossed, and stared at the deadbolt like it had personally offended her.

The room settled around us. Diesel hum. Concrete cold under my boots. What had just happened hung between us, heavier than the silence, and neither of us was in any hurry to break it.

The hours settled into a rhythm I knew too well. Wait. Listen. Count the spaces between sounds. The room was small enough that there was nowhere to hide from each other—eight feet of scuffed concrete between the cot and the wall where I stood, and every one of those feet felt like a declaration.

Lila took the cot. I took the wall. The space between us might as well have been wired.

The generator hummed beyond the east wall, a low drone that vibrated up through the concrete into my boots. Muffled voices carried from the corridor, bootfalls, a chair scraping two doors down. The building creaked as the temperature dropped, old joints settling into a cold that got into your bones and stayed there.

I checked the door twice that day. First time, mid-morning, the prospect straightened against the corridor wall, paperback open in his hands.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Quiet. Truck came by on the access road twenty minutes ago, slowed at the junction, kept going. County plates. Didn’t stop.”

I nodded. “Keep the radio clear unless it’s not quiet.”

Second check, three hours later, from an overturned bucket on the other side of the corridor.

“Generator’s running rough. Dox sent someone to check the fuel line.”

“Anyone on the fence line?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

Before I shut the door again, she asked. Small voice, careful, like she wasn’t sure she had the right to it. “Did anyone call my neighbor? About the cat?”