Page 85 of Slashed Bonds

I thought it was the Underground. It was him.

There’s one door in the room that’s closed.

The closet. Everything else is open, drawers shut but not locked, bathroom door ajar, window cracked an inch for air. The closet is shut, and there’s a single thread of teal string caught under the bottom edge of it, bright against the dark wood.

I’ve looked at it four times.

I’m not going to open it. I have my own closets.

Knox is somewhere in the house.

Loose. Unsupervised.

Causing whatever mischief an eighty-pound dog causes in a building full of Alphas who’ve decided he’s the mascot.

I heard laughter from the kitchen ten minutes ago and a sound that might have been a chair going over, and I didn’t get up.

The second line loves him. That’s real.

He’ll find me if he needs me. That’s the arrangement. He’s never once failed to find me, in five years, in buildings much worse than this one, and if he’s currently in a corner quietly eating one of these men’s shoes, that’s a problem for the man and the shoe.

I called Maddie from the truck.

Before I came in. Sitting in the lot behind Viper House with the engine off and the dome light on and my skate bag on the passenger seat, because there are things you do before you walk into a building full of Alphas, and one of them is tell somebody where you are.

She picked up on the first ring. She always does. She’s got my ringtone set to something that sounds like a fire alarm, and she’s never once apologized for it.

“You’re alive.”

“I’m alive.”

“You didn’t text. You said you’d text after the barn thing, and that was four days ago, and I’ve been sitting here composing your eulogy. It’s excellent. There’s a section about your eyeliner.”

Typical Maddie fashion.

I guess you can say I consider her a best friend. That tier that emphasizes she’ll ride and die for you. I try not to linger on it for too long, though.

Emotional commitment always makes me want to commit felonies instead of embracing I still have a few people in my life that dare care.

“I got recruited.”

Silence.

Then, at a pitch that made the truck’s speaker crackle:

“BY WHOM?”

I told her. Not all of it. The rink, the offer, the three Alphas, the fact that one of them had been my masked arrangement for two and a half years and had knelt in a lobby.

I heard something hit a table.

I also listen to her take a deep steady breath.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Okay. I need you to understand that I am going to be there Saturday, and I need you to understand that nothing you say in the next thirty seconds is going to change that, so don’t waste your breath, and I need to know one more thing.”

“What?”

“Have you eaten today?”