Next of kin (we're all born renegades)

storm_petrel

Jensen gets to talk to Sarah for five minutes exactly, every seven days. He pushed hard for an online video feed, because he has to see her face, know she’s all right. He’s learning exactly how far he can push, before things get. Well. Ugly.

Today, Sarah’s got a bruise on her cheekbone that she’s trying to hide with the heel of her hand. Her blue eyes look hot, like she wants to cry but isn’t. Emma’s in her lap, her little fingers clutching the thin grey cotton of Sarah’s t-shirt, either his or one of Michael’s, left behind after basic.

“Stay safe, Jay,” says Sarah, and her voice cracks a little at the end, but her eyes are fierce. “I mean it.”

Jensen nods, because his throat is too tight to say anything. Emma leans in closer. “It’s okay,” she says. “I love you,” and her voice is steady, the way only a kid can say those words, like they’re a rock solid certainty.

The connection cuts out before he can answer her.

***

Every time he sees Sarah in the video feed, Jensen thinks they should be better at this, that they should have some secret sibling code that’s Enigma on steroids to the rest of the world. Then again, if Jensen had known there was a psychopath after his family—well.

He would have done a lot of things differently.

There’s a man with a gun, just off-frame. Jensen only had to see him once.

***

The first time Jensen meets Max, he’s cuffed to a chair with a dislocated jaw. He got grabbed off the street, no fireworks, just smacked in the head and shoved in the back of the van while he was reeling and trying to think straight.

At first, Jensen had thought maybe the guy was NSA, but the Democrats are in charge, so that probably meant the chances of getting pistol-whipped and kidnapped by government-type goons was pretty slim. At the very least, they’d probably have to hold his hand and apologize while they broke his fingers.

The guy sitting across the table is wearing a thousand-dollar suit and a flag pin. There’s a laptop on the table next to him. He’s smiling at Jensen. “Hi Jake,” he says. His voice is pretty normal, but Jensen’s taking his threat cues from the large men with Sig-Sauers flanking him, and the fact that he’s cuffed to a fucking chair. “I’m Max,” the guy goes on. His name isn’t Max, thinks Jensen. No one’s name is Max. “Jensen, Corporal Jacob Anthony. God, it’s so nice to finally meet you. I’ve been an admirer of your work for, oh, I don’t know. Months, at least.”

Jensen’s an RTO in the 2^nd Brigade Combat Team in the 82^nd Airborne Division. He doesn’t think that’s what Max is talking about.

“Just, really beautiful work,” Max says. “The peripheral CIA servers have the best security Uncle Sam can buy, but just a little while back there, what did I hear?” Max throws up his hands in a parody of surprise. “Someone got through! Someone got through, had a look around, and left, this is the best part,” Max grins, shows his even white teeth, “on a secure government server, someone left a file full of pictures of penguins.”

Jensen doesn’t wince, but it’s a near thing. He’d been back stateside after his last Afghanistan deployment. He’d been fucking bored.

Max nods vigorously. “So here’s the thing, Jake. You’ve got a God-given talent there that’s being criminally wasted by the US military. Playing radio jockey in the ass-end of Afghanistan, really? I’ve got some really fun plans for our country, and an enterprising young man like yourself could quickly become indispensible in my organization.” Max smiles again. “Lots of room for advancement, and what the hell, I’ll even throw in dental.” He leans forward, lacing his fingers together on the tabletop. “So what do you think, Jake? Want to finally take that DD and come run with the big boys for a change?”

It’s hard to talk with a dislocated jaw, but Jensen is nothing if not fucking determined. “I think,” he says carefully, “That maybe you should consider many, many years of therapy, man. You can work out some of the issues which I think might be impeding your growth as a rational person, and also, how about letting me go now?”

Max tilts his head to the side, and pouts a little. It’s fucking creepy. “So you definitely won’t help?”

Jensen closes his eyes, because his jaw really hurts, and because this is probably the part where they break out the car batteries and acetylene torches, and he really doesn’t want to think about that yet. “Yeah, pretty sure I’m gonna have to say no.”

Max nods. “That is really too bad, Jake, I have to say, because I really wasn’t looking forward to this part.” He tips his head, assessing. “Actually, maybe I was looking forward to it.” He pinches his gloved fingers close. “Just a tiny bit.”

He flips the laptop screen around. Sarah’s face, tear-stained and bruised, fills the video feed. Her voice is choked with rage. “Jay, don’t you fucking dare do anything he says,” Sarah says, and then she’s yanked away hard.

Jensen’s heart drops somewhere below his stomach. For a second, he can’t remember how to breathe.

Someone shoves Emma in front of the camera. Her eyes are huge, and she’s shaking hard. “Uncle Jake,” she says, and she must see his face, because she says, quickly, “It’s okay! It’s okay!” Like he’s the one who—

Jensen wants to throw up. Max smiles, closes the laptop.

“Still no?” asks Max, and Jensen wants to watch him die slowly. “I mean, if you need a little more convincing, I’ve got some very qualified people on the ground with your sister and her little girl. Her daddy’s dead, isn’t he?” Max shakes his head. “Iraqi IEDs can really tear families apart, it’s a tragedy, really.” He pauses, considering. “Still, it’d probably be even worse for her to watch Mommy and the Very Bad Men go a few rounds, you think?”

“All right,” says Jensen. He can hardly get the words out.

Max cocks his head, eyes wide. “You sure? I don’t want you to feel pressured, or anything like that, Jake. Tell you what, if you want to think it over some more, we could start with the kid first. I mean, most guys you hire might balk at the idea of kids, but I could always bring in a specialist—“

Fuck watching, Jensen want to kill this guy slowly. With razor blades and his bare hands. He’s never actually wanted to kill anyone before, not even in Iraq, really, and the force of that knowledge hits him hard, like bile in his throat. “I said all right,” Jensen says again. “I’ll do it. What do you need done?”

Max claps his hands, once. “This is great!” he says, “I knew we were going to get along.”

***

Jensen’s got no guards. The apartment Max set him up in isn’t wired, as far as Jensen can tell, and Jensen’s good at finding bugs and cameras. The only way Max can track him is through the GPS chip in his cell phone.

Max, the fucking psychopath, probably likes to leave the option of running open. Jensen could run. He could probably even get away.

He can’t even think about trying it.

Max gave him the BlackBerry at the beginning. “Direct line from me to you,” he’d said. “I understand you’re going to be busy, and I respect that, I really do. So I call, you don’t pick up, well, that’s okay. Maybe you’re on the can, who knows? Second time you don’t pick up, well, you’re starting to hurt my feelings. Third time—” Max had shaken his head. “Third time, your pretty blond sister and that sweet little girl aren’t going to look pretty for the man in the white coat, okay, Jake?”

GPS is easy to deal with. Jensen gets a Roomba on Ebay, has it express-delivered to the apartment. Ten minutes and a screwdriver is all it takes until it’s activating and moving on a random number pattern. He tapes the GPS chip to back case. Anyone watching the signal will get to watch its exciting procession from the kitchen to the hall to the bedroom and back again over the course of eight hours.

“Track this, motherfucker,” he says, as the Roomba trundles off.

He’s been talking to himself. It’s a bad habit, but there’s no one else around, and anything is better than silence. When it’s quiet, Jensen thinks too much.

He thinks about going back to Sarah’s house, or what’s left of it, but that’s a stupid idea. Anyone might recognize him. “It’s really such an American tragedy,” Max had said, also back at the beginning. “Brave young soldier like yourself, killed in a house fire with his beautiful war widow sister and her little girl, right before your next deployment. I understand the authorities suspect—faulty wiring?” Max shakes his head. “The silent killer.”

Jensen pulls up the headlines for the Hanover local paper. Local Family Killed in House Fire, says the little subline near the bottom of the front page. A fire broke out in a local home on at approximately 2 AM Thursday, claiming the lives of three people. Combat veteran Cpl. Jacob Jensen (25), Sarah Jensen Corwin (29) and her daughter Emma Corwin (7) were all killed in the blaze, which Fire Chief Wayne Lee reports was likely caused by faulty wiring in the master bedroom. The rest of the article’s buried on page A12, where it talks about Jensen’s combat service (two tours in Iraq, with an upcoming deployment to Afghanistan), Sarah’s last book (The Fabulous Girl’s Guide to Going Green) and Emma’s soccer team (Under-8 Girls Flower League, Petunias). It ends with an admonishment to ensure all smoke alarms in the home have working batteries.

The funeral’s a week later. Jensen watches the handful of people emerge from St. Thomas in the bright June sunlight, until they move beyond the range of the traffic camera. Small crowd, a few of Sarah’s co-workers from Dartmouth, Michael’s two sisters. John Leaming and Dave Raven, who’d gone through basic with him, years back. No one from his unit—they’re already in Kandahar by now.

Basically, no one who’s going to stay up nights with a flow chart and growing pile of evidence until they dramatically realize his family’s been kidnapped by a psychopath. Jensen sighs, and shuts the feed off. “Looks like it’s just you and me,” he tells the Roomba. He doesn’t get an answer back, but he wasn’t really expecting one.

Max calls him that night. The clock on the phone says 3:14 AM. “Just a little warm-up exercise,” says Max. “There’s a nice little business that’s keeping some files a little too hush-hush for my tastes. Now, obviously, there’s always ways around these things, but all their security’s done in-house, and blowing the crap out of three city blocks—well, that’s just inelegant, isn’t it? All the screaming and the yelling and the flames—“ Max waves his fingers. “Nope, this is a job for you, Jake Jensen.”

Jensen’s slept maybe ten hours in the past week. His eyes feel like they’re full of ground glass. “Lay it out for me,” he says, and hopes he sounds like something other than a guy slowly losing his mind.

“Well,” says Max, “Turns out someone’s been doing a little soft-shoe around one of my overseas operations, and really, that’s just getting on my nerves. I mean, can you say rude? I swear, it doesn’t matter how many heads you put on pikes, metaphorically, ha ha, speaking, but people just keep poking in your business. You’re not doing that, are you, Jake?”

"No," says Jensen as flatly as he can, and very carefully doesn't think about the hard drive hidden in the bag of frozen peas in the freezer.

Max laughs. “Good for you, buddy. You keep your eyes on the prize and this’ll be over before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’ Actually, never mind, I have no idea how long it would take you to say that. Maybe you’re a fast talker. Anyway, as I said, there’s a little outfit putting together surveillance on one of my little projects, and I want you, Jake, to go wipe all copies of their files. Mackenzie-Shakar,” says Max, and pauses. “Shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

Mackenzie-Shakar International. Jesus. The undisputed reigning champion of the corporate data-security world. Those guys make Goliath look like a kid’s lemonade stand, and Jensen drops his head to rest on his knees. Absolutely can’t be done, he doesn’t say. Are you a fucking lunatic? almost, almost makes it out. Instead, Jensen says, “Time frame?” His voice sounds dead in his ears.

Max laughs. “Oh, Jake, that’s why I like you, you just roll with those punches. Well, let’s say it’s going to be highly problematic if Mackenzie-Shakar still have that data in six weeks or so. I strongly recommend you have a working infiltration plan by then, because—well, Jake, I’m going to be a little put out if you don’t. And I can think of two very sweet, very pretty reasons why you don’t want that to happen, can’t you?”

***

Jensen’s got a list, in his head. It’s actually The List now, having been present at the front of his mind long enough to justify the capital letters. Things Max has done that make Jensen want to kill him. Item number 1, top of The List, obviously, is Sarah and Emma. Items number 2 through fucking 219 are every dirty deal between here and Mongolia that he can tie back to Max. Turns out there’s a lot of them, if you know what to look for and have pretty much given up on sleeping as a recreational hobby. He’s got a jump drive with every scrap of evidence, every file from every agency, all the bank statements, every shipping manifest. Max’s whole dirty life, or enough bits and pieces to make anyone flinch hard, at least.

At the bottom of The List, maybe Item ∞ for convenience’s sake because it’s getting crowded out by everything above it, is the fact that Max’s taken away—well, it’s hard to describe it. His family—because when it comes down to it, Sarah and Emma are all he’s got, really— and his place in the American military hierarchy, which, for better or worse, has been where he’s belonged for the past seven years. Max has taken away everything that’s even close to what Jensen could call home, so some day (soon, soon) the fucker’s going to pay.

***

Three weeks later, Jensen’s got a second jump drive of dirt on Max, no good idea where Sarah and Emma are—the signal’s being bounced too erratically, it keeps leading back to different IP addresses, on different fucking continents, so he knows they’re fake—and a perpetual low-grade migraine behind his eyes.

He’s also spent in excess of three hundred hours trying to get through Mackenzie-Shakar’s security. Jensen thinks this might be easier if Max hadn’t burned down Sarah’s house, which was where he stored all his custom-built tech when he was on deployment. But really, he could do this from a Cray XT5 Jaguar or a stripped-down 3G iPhone, and the result would be the same—he’s not getting through. It takes over three hundred hours before that fact’s pounded into his head, but Mackenzie-Shakar’s firewall security is just too good.

If Jensen had nine months, six highly-skilled friends with no social lives and his very own NASA-level mainframe computer, he might be able to hack Mackenzie-Shakar. Unfortunately, he’s got three weeks, a psychopath breathing down his neck, and NASA doesn’t hand out their tech to anyone who asks nicely. And as for friends—

“Too bad you don’t have any manual dexterity,” he tells the Roomba as it trundles past. “You could help me crack this fucking firewall.” The Roomba doesn’t answer, but that’s okay. Jensen knows the Roomba shares his pain.

So if he can’t get through digitally, that leaves an actual, physical, on-site data wipe. Jensen rubs his eyes and closes the laptop. “Wonderful,” says Jensen, out loud. “I always wanted to die in an elevator shaft.”

That night, when he strips off his shirt in the bathroom, Jensen actually has to stop and stare at his reflection. He’s dropped maybe fifteen pounds under his fighting weight, like the time during his first Iraq deployment when the supply trucks got hit and his company spent two weeks on the 1200-cal desert diet. His collarbones jut alarmingly, and the hollows at his temples and under his eyes are so deep, they’re actually in shadow under the harsh fluorescent light. He looks like shit.

“Jesus, you look like shit,” Sarah says, redundantly, when she sees him in the video feed the next morning. Her hair’s hanging lank around her face, and there’s a cut at the corner of her lip.

“It’s not a contest, you know,” Jensen says, before he can stop himself, but Sarah just snickers, helplessly.

“Asshole,” she says, and hugs Emma tighter.

“Hey sunshine,” Jensen says to Emma. “Don’t listen to your mom when she swears, okay? How’s tricks?”

Emma frowns. “They gave me Twilight to read and it’s stupid,” she says. “I want Calvin and Hobbes.”

“Oh, yuck,” says Jensen feelingly. “Why don’t you make paper airplanes with the pages instead?”

Jensen spends the next five minutes advising his seven-year old niece on the poor life choices generally facing teenage girls when they have undead boyfriends, describing folding patterns to maximize aerodynamic lift in paper airplanes, and tapping out his phone number, over and over on the table’s surface. While Emma nods and interjects commentary regarding the unlikelihood of playing soccer for Team USA while dating a vampire, Sarah’s eyes follow his fingers. Sarah’s smart. Maybe she can figure something out. Jensen knows he’s getting nowhere on his own.

When the feed cuts out, Jensen leans back in his chair and stares at the ceiling for a long time. Twilight, Jesus Christ. That’s definitely just made Item 237 on the List.

***

The next morning, Jensen barely has time to answer the phone before Max is yelling at him, “—it’s like living in a cartoon, I’m surrounded by fucking imbeciles—“ and then his voice drops into a normal speaking register. “But you’re not one of those, Jake, are you? And because I know you’re so very good at what you do, I’m pushing up your timeline just a tiny little bit. You’re going to get me those files by the end of the week, right?”

The bottom drops out of Jensen’s stomach, and, because he hasn’t done it in at least five minutes, he briefly visualizes Max dying in a fiery pit. Time, he needs more time, there’s got to be a way out of this, a way to stall Max, a way to get to Sarah and Emma—

Max is still talking. “—well, it was a little hiccup, and the Ducati was a total writeoff, which was the worst part, really. Anyway, get me that information by Friday, or blah blah blah, you know what happens. And spare me your excuses, I’m in no mood today.” He hangs up before Jensen can answer him.

Jensen stares at the phone, and when he can think rationally again—it takes a minute—he knows something’s happened, something that’s rattled Max right out of his smug, complacent headspace. It doesn’t take extensive research to discover every American media source is screaming their heads off about unexplained explosions all over the Port of Los Angeles.

***

Three days later, Jensen’s staked out in the little green space across from Mackenzie-Shakar International in Manhatten, taking surreptitious pictures with his phone and trying to convince himself that breaking in to do a solo, on-site data-grab isn’t instant suicide when he notices his tail for the first time.

He’s been on edge for weeks and weeks, every nerve kicking over into hyper-paranoia each time he leaves the apartment. Otherwise, he probably never would have noticed the guy. He’s pretty nondescript, white guy, maybe forty. Black suit, maybe a little scruffier than the rest of the lunchtime office crowd. There’s something hinky about him, though, some vibe he’s giving off. Like he’s a shark, flicking through the reef fish, and okay, Jensen is never leaving the Discovery Channel on in the background while he’s working ever again.

When he glances back, the guy’s a little closer. Maybe. It’s hard to tell. Maybe he’s just some harassed-looking office-drone out for a lunchtime stroll who thinks Jensen’s crazy. Jensen hops off the concrete divider wall, phone in hand, and ambles along the block. A minute later, he glances back. Guy is still following, closer now. Shit.

If he’s covert security for Mackenzie-Shakar, Jensen’s fucked. Hell, if he’s a regular cop, that’s probably just as bad. How he’s going to explain being alive and running around when the Army thinks he’s dead—

--and why the hell’s he standing around like an idiot? Jensen flips the phone into the pocket of his black windbreaker, slings his pack over his shoulder and slips into the crowd.

Four blocks away, and the guy is closing the gap. Jensen picks up the pace, but he’s moving out of the office district and the pedestrian crowds are thinning. With his cover quickly vanishing, he’s going to have to start running pretty soon. The guy’s still a block and a half back, which gives Jensen a decent head-start, until a van changes lanes abruptly and yanks up to the curb.

Panic floods his mind for an instant and Jensen bolts, unthinking, into the alley. Stupid move, now he’s cornered himself, but after what happened when Max picked him up—there’s a chain-link fence in front of him, garbage blown around the base. Jensen’s halfway to the top when something hits him, hard and sharp in the back of the shoulder. He grabs at it, pulls out a hypodermic dart.

Jensen has a brief, giddy flashback to watching Man From UNCLE reruns with Sarah when he was about six. “Oh, what the actual fuck is this?” he asks the world in general, but there’s no one to answer before he hits the ground. Illya Kuryakin bullshit, he thinks, and then he passes out.

***

When Jensen wakes up, he’s cuffed to a chair in a disgustingly-painted room. The colour looks like the inside of a pancreas. It’s funny, he thinks, the things he notices when panic is trying to claw its way up his gut and flood his brain.

Stalker-Guy’s is standing in front of him. He looks pissed. Something in the lines of his face suggests this is his default expression. There’s a shoulder holster visible under his jacket. If Jensen’s hands were free, he’d be keeping them in plain sight while sitting very still. Stalker-Guy’s also brought friends to the party. There’s a black guy standing behind him, arms crossed, weight shifted a little to his left leg, and a girl, absolutely fucking gorgeous if he could get his eyes past the knife. She’s holding it casually in her right hand. She looks like she knows how to use it. She looks like she’s looking forward to it.

Fuck. And here Jensen thought the one benefit of working for a psychopath was that he’d protect him from the other psychopaths. Clearly, he’d been wrong. Item two-hundred-he’s-lost-fucking-count for The List.

There’s another guy blocking the door. Long dark hair, wearing a beat-up cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes. Jensen can hardly see his face. What he can see looks scary, but at this point, Jensen’s pretty sure he’s projecting. Scary’s definitely staring at him. He’s got his fingers on the butt of a little S&W revolver, like he’s waiting for a reason. Jensen stays very still.

His mind kicks through the details. No way they’re cops, not with this little rendition-style setup. Not government types, either, not with a looker like Knife Girl on hand. The Company tends towards faceless white guys with shitty tailoring and shorter haircuts than Scary over there. Which leaves private security or something else entirely.

It’s the something else entirely that’s scaring the shit out of him.

Don’t you dare fucking show it, Jensen tells himself, and shoves the panic down as hard as he can. You better front like the hardest motherfucker there is, or this guy is going to end you.

The inside of Jensen’s mouth feels like something’s died violently in there. Methohexital, maybe. He hates drugs. “Can I have some water?” he asks, but leaves off the please, because kidnapping psychopaths don’t deserve the good manners. He sounds good, he thinks. Calm, steady, maybe a little bored. Stalker-Guy snorts, but the black guy leaves and comes back with a bottle of water, which he twists open and holds to Jensen’s mouth. Jensen gulps until the taste of dead something goes away. Wonderful. He’s calling this guy Least Psycho.

Unfortunately, Least Psycho’s part into today’s fucked-up little Christmas play seems to be stepping back and glowering. Too bad, thinks Jensen. Least Psycho had definitely been a frontrunner for Jensen’s favourite person of the day.

Instead, he gets to deal with Stalker-Guy. Boss, Jensen amends in his head, because it’s all over his body language. He stands like every one of Jensen’s least favourite officers, the idiots and the glory hounds who got guys killed. Fucking ridiculous, and Jensen’s suddenly angry. He can’t even call it irrational, because it’s been a shitty two months, in the epic definition of the word, and now some new asshole’s got him cuffed to a chair.

He’s getting really goddamned tired of this.

Easy, easy, he thinks, you got to get out of here, Sarah and Emma need you—but Stalker-Guy cuts off that train of thought. “We know you’re working for Max,” he says, and he’s got a voice like someone’s pulled it over gravel. “You’re going to tell us the name of his target in Mackenzie-Shakar.”

For a brief, dizzy instant, Jensen actually thinks about telling him. Then he thinks about the chances of leaving this shit-ugly, pancreas-coloured room alive if he does. “Your mom,” he says, and it lacks creativity, but what the fuck ever.

The guy punches him twice, very precisely, first in the solar plexus and then in the face. White light explodes across Jensen’s vision, and he tastes blood. He probes at the inside of his cheek with his tongue and spits on the floor. “Fucking ow,” Jensen says, when he can breathe again. He’s fronting like crazy, because this is going nowhere good, and if he’s good, maybe they won’t see how close he is to losing his shit. “Ow,” he repeats, and spits again.

Stalker-Guy doesn’t hit him again, though, just turns his back and walks away. His crew follows, and the door slams, and the lights go out. It’s pitch-black, but it saves Jensen having to look at the shit-ugly paint job. One bright spark.

After five minutes, Jensen starts to sing, very quietly.

***

Jensen’s worked his way through the greatest hits of Journey and has started in on the Sex Pistols when the door opens and the lights snap on. Jensen blinks his eyes into focus and sees Scary, standing in the threshold.

He’s got his hat pushed back a bit, and Jensen can see his face now. Good-looking, in a kind of beat-up way. If Jensen went for guys anymore. Which he doesn’t. Latino Mister Darcy, he can almost hear Sarah say. Tall, dark and broody.

He’s the stillest guy Jensen’s ever seen, which is weird as fuck. It’s like if Jensen turned his head, the guy would just fade backwards into the air. Jensen’s given up on trying to figure out who the hell these spooks are, although this one’s maybe some kind of ninja. Who’s still just looking at him.

So he smiles at the guy, his best shit-eating grin. There’s probably still blood on his teeth. “You want to uncuff me? It’s been an awesome day, really, but I got things that need doing.” Like breaking into the ninth circle of Hell in the world’s most secure security company, he thinks. Saving my family from a crazy psychopath. The usual.

The guy tips his head and just looks at him, his face unreadable. He might be thinking about letting Jensen go. He might be thinking about punching Jensen in the head. It’s a crapshoot.

“You should answer his questions,” Scary says, his voice a low, accented drawl.

It’s kind of sweet, the way Scary cares about his well-being. Like Jensen’s walking out of here alive. He’s seen their faces, after all. “Not today, dear,” he says, and grins again. “I have a headache,” and he starts humming No One is Innocent between his teeth.

Scary watches him for a disconcertingly long time before he leaves and the lights go out again.

***

It would be nice to think his adrenaline glands would burn out after a while, but no such luck. Jensen sits in the dark for what feels like hours, trying to fight it but feeling panic crawl slowly up his gut. Max is going to be looking for a report soon, and Jensen’s phone is nowhere close, even if he had a free hand. Settle down, he tells himself, but that’s not going to fly. He takes a deep breath and clenches his hands behind his back, slowly, until his knuckles turn white. He’s probably twenty pounds under his fighting weight by now, and there’s three men with guns and one knife-wielding girl out there. Jensen thinks about the odds for a moment, and then stops thinking.

“I really have to piss,” Jensen says to Least-Psycho. Guy’s probably come in to make sure he’s not picking his cuffs with the power of his mind. If there’s cameras in the room, Jensen can’t see them. He tugs at the handcuffs. “Help me out here?” Least-Psycho gives him a look that’s nowhere near impressed. Jensen opens his eyes wide behind his glasses and tries to look harmless.

Eventually, the guy’s basic hardwired decency wins out. “Fine,” he says, and steps behind the chair, unlocking the cuffs. He steps back with the gun raised before Jensen can get his hands loose. “Give me trouble,” he says, “And I’ll shoot you in the foot. Deal?”

“Spiffy,” says Jensen, and pushes the door open, Least-Psycho and the gun following about six feet behind him, too far to make the grab. They’re on the ground floor of some low-rent office building, thinks Jensen. Most of the furniture is gone, but there’s power sockets and internet hookup cables still dangling from the ceiling. His jacket and the rest of his gear are piled on a table by the wall. As they pass, he can see the hard outline of the phone in his jacket pocket. It vibrates hard, suddenly, tugging the jacket along slowly towards the table’s edge.

Max, thinks Jensen, and how many calls? His throat is suddenly too tight. Least-Psycho doesn’t seem to notice. No one else is in sight.

The bathroom’s a single-toilet affair, with a sliding window. Jensen flicks his eyes over it, then says, “Could you not watch for two fucking seconds here? A little privacy, maybe?”

Least-Psycho tips his head forward and gives him a pointed look. “Do I look like I was dropped, man?” The gun doesn’t waver.

And that’s basically Jensen’s entire plan, shot, until there’s a muffled thump in the other room. His jacket, tugged along by the vibrating phone, dropping off the table.

Least-Psycho’s good, he’s only distracted for maybe half a second. But Jensen’s really fucking desperate. The instant Least-Psycho’s eyes are off him, Jensen kicks him in the nerve cluster high on his thigh, as hard as he can. The guy grunts and starts to go down, but he brings the gun up and pulls the trigger before Jensen can grab his head and pull it down into his knee.

Least-Psycho drops, and Jensen thinks about grabbing the gun, shooting the guy in the head. He kicks it out the door instead. His fingers probe his right hip. There’s blood leaking through the rip in his jeans, and under that, a deep bleeding gouge where the bullet grazed him. There’s no fucking time, though, so Jensen pulls himself onto the toilet tank, hauls the window open and slithers out, feet-first. He hits the ground hard enough to send shocks up both his legs, but he stumbles into a run, his hip a mass of burning pain, blood slick under his fingers. He needs to get to another phone, needs to call Max before Max realizes he’s compromised, before Max can call the men guarding Sarah and Emma. He needs—

—something hits him hard in the back of the head. Jensen goes down.

***

When he wakes up again, Jensen’s back in the chair in the pancreas-coloured room, sporting a brand-new bandage on his hip and a splitting headache. His gut churns hard when the light hits his eyes, and he winces. Hello concussion, my old friend.

He blinks until there’s only one Stalker-Guy in front of him, just in case the guy’s actually twins, because that would be a tired fucking plot point, and Jensen realizes he’s not really thinking in straight lines around the same time Stalker Guy says, “You want to try this again?”

“Sounds like the best afternoon ever,” says Jensen. There’s something rattling in his head, he’s sure of it, and a lump about the size and shape of a rifle stock, throbbing at the back of his skull. Thank you, Scary. He’s pretty sure it’s Scary’s handiwork, at least, judging by the enormous fucking rifle the guy’s carrying now. Overkill, definitely.

“I’ll lay it out for you,” says Stalker Guy, “Since you don’t seem to be getting the point here. I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them, or things are going to go very badly for you. Understand?”

“Oh, definitely,” says Jensen, not looking up. His head is killing him. “Then you’re going to suck my dick and let me go, right? Asshole.” His voice breaks a little at the end, too late to cover it.

Stalker-Guy’s suddenly in Jensen’s face, and oh god, this is bringing on flashbacks to basic, which he does not need right now. His stomach heaves, and he clenches his teeth hard.

“You know what kind of man you’re working for, don’t you?” Stalker-Guy asks, and the contempt in his voice is pretty fucking plain. “This is the kind of guy who kills people because they get in his way, because they don’t even matter to him.” Jensen flicks his eyes away, but the guy’s relentless, grabs his jaw and forces his face up until they’re eye to eye. “This is the guy you’re in bed with, you know. This is a guy who kills kids, twenty-five Bolivian kids because they were in the wrong place. Think about that.”

Oh fuck, that massacre in Bolivia, he knew that had Max’s dirty fingerprints all over it. Item number what-the fuck-ever for The List. Stalker-Guy’s still got Jensen’s jaw clamped in his fingers, five points of painful pressure driving into the bone. “Kids,” he says again. “I saw them die. They were burning.”

His voice is hoarse, and if he was fronting for Jensen’s benefit before, he’s not now. Then he seems to shake himself out of it, and grips Jensen’s face tighter. “Give me the name,” he says.

“Fuck off,” says Jensen, misery making his throat tight. The room’s starting to spin.

“The name,” says Stalker-Guy, and reaches down and pushes his thumb hard into the bullet graze on Jensen’s hipbone.

Jensen makes an inhuman noise, and right then, suddenly, he knows he’s going to break, and he knows he’s going to give it all up, eventually. The knowledge comes like a punch to the solar plexus, and his stomach heaves, and right now, Jensen would do anything, anything, to get this guy to back off. It’s pathetic, but the stress and the pain are combining in this dizzy, nightmare blur and Jensen’s actually sort of past his limit right now.

So he yells, “Sister, he’s got my sister,” the actual truth, like that’ll do him any good, and then he pukes all over Stalker-Guy’s shoes.

In this spinning, stinking room, Jensen actually wants to die. If Stalker-Guy pulled a gun right now, Jensen would lean his forehead against the barrel and count the seconds until the guy pulled the trigger. He closes his eyes because his throat’s burning and locked up tight and he’s about to cry like some punk kid, and Sarah and Emma are going to die because he wasn’t fucking good enough, smart enough—

And then Stalker-Guy says, “What?”

His fingers are suddenly, awfully gentle on Jensen’s face, and this is a trick, has to be, but when Jensen opens his eyes, Stalker-Guy actually looks kind of stricken, like maybe he thought Jensen was some kind of psycho—

“Oh, you bastard,” says Jensen, “You didn’t think I was working for him for fucking kicks, did you?” and then he throws up again.

Everything gets a little hazy then, and when Jensen comes back, Least Psycho and Stalker Guy are in a heated argument. “Son of a bitch,” says Least Psycho, and he sounds like he means it. “He’s just a fucking kid, Clay. Bastard’s got his sister.”

“I know,” says Stalker Guy—Clay—and he sounds tired. He crouches in front of Jensen, who’s having trouble keeping his head up. “Hey,” he says, but his voice is a little softer now, “Pay attention. Where’s Max got your sister?”

Jensen shakes his head, and oh, that was a bad idea, but he doesn’t puke again. “You think he’d still have Sarah and Emma too, Jesus, she’s just a kid, you think he’d still have them if I knew where they were?” Dimly, Jensen remembers he wasn’t going to tell these people anything, but once he starts talking, he can’t actually stop. “They didn’t have anything to do with it, he said he’d kill them if I didn’t do what he wanted, I tried everything, but I couldn’t backtrack their signal, and oh, Christ, if I don’t get the files from Mackenzie-Shakar, he’s going to kill them.”

He has to stop to breathe, then, and bizarrely, Jensen feels almost better, now that someone else knows. “Huh,” he says, “Just like group therapy.”

Stalker-Guy-Clay looks angry now, but maybe like the anger’s not directed at Jensen this time. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything in the first place?”

Jensen looks at the guy—Clay—in his rumpled suit and savage eyes and the dark stain on his leather glove where he punched Jensen in the mouth earlier and says, “Well, forgive me if I didn’t realize you were the goddamn white knight.”

Knife Girl actually laughs, a brief, bitten-off sound. Everyone turns to look at her. “Yes?” she says, archly, then tips her head to the side, assessing. Jensen gets the feeling he’s being carefully dissected, every angle considered and catalogued. Finally, she looks at Clay and says, “You should let him go.”

Clay makes a frustrated sound. “Yes, Aisha, of course we’re going to let him go.” And really, Jensen’s mostly relieved, but there’s still maybe a five percent change that they’re total psychopaths and are fucking with him for kicks. He’ll take those odds, though.

Knife Girl—Aisha—rakes her gaze over him again. “He’s not getting far on his own,” she says, “Not in that shape, at least.”

Jensen would like to protest, but she’s got a valid point. His hip’s started bleeding again, under the quick bandage job, and the fact that he hasn’t puked on Clay’s shoes again speaks more to sheer force of will than anything else.

“Yes, I know that,” says Clay, and crouches down in front of Jensen again. “Listen to me,” he says, “If we help you get your sister back, and your niece, would you take Max down? Could you do that?”

Jensen looks at him, and he knows his eyes are wide with disbelief. “I’ve spent a month digging up every dirty secret I could find, which is not happy reading, let me tell you. He took my family away from me. The only person I’ve talked to in two months was the goddamn Roomba. I would set him on fire and laugh while he burned,” he says, and means every word.

Clay makes a sound that’s almost a laugh, and okay, it’s possible that Jensen unfairly grouped him with the other psychopaths of his acquaintance. Guy’s got kind of a nice laugh. He nods at Least-Psycho. “Pooch, uncuff him.”

Up close, Least-Psycho-Pooch has got a pretty epic black eye from where Jensen kneed him in the face. “I’m sorry,” the guy says as he works the cuffs loose. His eyes dart to Jensen’s hip as he curls warm fingers around Jensen’s bruised wrist, checking his pulse. “I mean that, I do.”

“I’m sorry I kicked you in the face,” Jensen answers, and slides down to the floor. The floor is good. No one can cuff him to the floor, after all. Scary’s still blocking the door, looking at Jensen like he’s something that’s crash-landed from Mars, but Jensen’s not planning on running.

He starts to laugh, suddenly, and it’s completely unexpected and completely out of his control. Jensen’s aware of people moving in his peripheral vision, of Clay crouching in front of him again, the look in his eyes a mix of real concern and oh-fuck-he’s-actually-crazy. Jensen wishes he could stop, wishes he could reassure the guy, but all he can do is drop his forehead to his knees and laugh until he can hardly breathe.

It’s just, out of everything that’s happened so far, he really honestly hadn’t been expecting actual good guys to show up.

***

Max isn’t happy, but Jensen’s only missed two calls, so he’s under the prescribed limit. Jensen silently thanks every deity in every organized religion he can think of while Max says, “Well, you better have good news for me, Jake.”

“I have a way in tomorrow, on the 9 AM foot traffic,” says Jensen, lying through his teeth, but it’s somehow easier, here, in a roomful of people who know what’s going down. He’s got Max on speaker, and Clay is hovering, his fists clenched. “I need two minutes at the mark’s terminal and a sniper to cover my exit.”

Max fucking laughs. “Well, Jake, if I do everything for you, how will you ever learn? You can have a sniper if you find one yourself in the next twenty-four hours. Tick tock, Jake,” he says, “I want all that shiny intel gone, and I’m told your pretty sister is getting lippier by the day. Women,” Max sighs, and hangs up.

Jensen looks up at Clay, and it’s nice to know that expression’s not directed at him, for once. Clay is actually kind of reassuring-looking, really, when all that rage is pointed in another direction. “So,” says Jensen, as lightly as he can, “Is that your crazy, life-ruining psychopath too, or are there more of him?”

Pooch is staring at the phone. “You know,” he says, to no one in particular, “Every time I think I’ve hit the limit on reasons to kill that bastard, he goes and gives us a new one.”

“I’ve got a List,” says Jensen seriously, and the room has started to sway a little again, which doesn’t feel like a good sign. He closes his eyes for a second.

Somewhere in the dark, later, he’s on a bed and someone’s shaking him awake. Jensen comes up swinging.

“Just me,” says Scary. He’s got bandages and a roll of gauze in his hand. Jensen rolls over on the mattress, and tugs the waistband of his shorts down so Scary can check the dressing. Scary’s got quick hands. His eyes are dark and intense, and he glances up at Jensen while he works.

“How’s your head?” he asks, and Jensen probes the short hair at the back of his skull, winces at the lump there and the dried blood that crackles under his fingertips.

“Bruise-y,” he answers, and Scary ducks his head.

Scary doesn’t say anything, just finishes changing the dressing on Jensen’s hip. He rolls to his feet, and his eyes dart to the bed, then to the door. Jensen catches his wrist. “I stole your bed,” he realizes, and without really thinking about it, he shifts over. He’s not sure why, but it’s dark and it’s late, and turfing a man out of his own bed’s not a friendly thing to do, even if he did concuss Jensen earlier. Scary hesitates for a moment, then curls down next to Jensen on the mattress.

It’s quiet, just the two of them side by side in the darkness. Jensen can make out Scary’s profile in the dark. Fuck it, he’s awake now. “What’s your name, anyway? I mean, I’ve got a name for you in my head, but it isn’t particularly nice, even if I think it is accurate.”

One corner of Scary’s mouth quirks. “Cougar,” he says, very quietly.

Jensen snorts. “No way is that your name, unless your mom was an awesome lady, but okay. Cougar. I can handle Cougar.”

Scary—Cougar, Cougar—doesn’t say anything else, but he shifts a little closer. It’s cold in the room, so Jensen’s not complaining. He hasn’t been this close to anyone—outside a severe beating, at least—in too long to even think about, and suddenly, abruptly, Jensen’s shoved up as close as he can get against the guy.

Fuck, no, Jensen tells himself. This isn’t real. He’s just exhausted and shocky and desperate for skin-contact, that’s all. But because he’s an idiot, he doesn’t roll away, just stares wide-eyed at the guy in the darkness. Cougar looks back at him for a moment, impassively. Then he makes a soft sound that might be something like a laugh.

"Go back to sleep," h says. “It’s all right.”

And Jensen snickers, almost helplessly, because things are so far from all right, they’re not even in the same planetary orbit. And then, somehow, he falls asleep, with the slow burn of Cougar’s thigh pressed against his own.

***

The phone chirps, and Jensen’s off the mattress and grabbing it before he’s even awake. The number’s blocked, and he has to squint at the message for a moment before he registers what he’s seeing.

track me \o/

It could be a trick, but Jensen’s pretty sure Max wouldn’t sign messages with a double fist-pump emoticon. “Sarah, you fucking genius!” Jensen whoops, and almost falls on his ass when every part of his body reminds him how much he’s hurting. Cougar, who’s apparently pretty quick on the uptake, catches him under the shoulder before he can hit the floor. As soon as his feet are under him, though, Jensen barrels out the door.

Outside, the world looks like a rattrap motel off the highway, possibly somewhere in New Jersey, and the sun is shining like a motherfucker. Jensen pounds on the adjacent door until it opens.

“Laptop, laptop, get my laptop, come on,” he says to Clay, who looks like he’s half-asleep and still subscribing to the Jensen-is-actually-crazy theory. “With my gear in the black bag, come on, come on, where’s the phone adaptor cable, outside pocket—“

It’s basically impossible to backtrack a signal from a GPS chip in a smartphone with a blocked number that’s transmitting from inside a building. Jensen does it in nine minutes, sitting on threadbare motel carpet with his back to the wall. He only remembers the last thirty seconds, when he overlays the georeferenced grid onto the best satellite map he could pull out of the Homeland Security database and sees all the little points converge into one big bright hey over here just outside of Baltimore.

“Oh, fuck yeah!” Jensen crows, and punches the air victoriously. Then he looks up and sees Clay and Aisha staring at him, and it occurs to him that he may have been actively monologuing every step of the process. Out loud. “What?”

***

Pooch drives like a fucking maniac. Aisha tails him in the second truck the whole way down the I-95. Jensen’s fighting post-concussion nausea most of the way, but if he weren’t about to puke, he’d be extremely impressed.

He’s almost jittering out of his skin, which is not helping matters in the slightest. Then Cougar, sitting in the backseat with one hand on his rifle case, rests his other on Jensen’s shoulder, and, abruptly, some of the tension flows out of him, like grounded lightning. He doesn’t say anything when Jensen wordlessly reaches up and threads his fingers over Cougar’s, but he doesn’t pull away, either.

***

It goes down like a fucking dream.

These guys are amazing, and Jensen kind of wants to hang back and just observe professionals at work until he realizes that he’s supposed to be taking an active role in this rescue. He checks the cylinder on the little Smith and Wesson revolver Cougar gives him, and gets in position.

Sarah and Emma, according to the phone’s GPS signal, are in a warehouse on the broken-down periphery of the Baltimore waterfront. Here, the whole area looks caught in the decrepit stage between abandoned and falling-down. It’s a great place to hide his family, and suddenly, Jensen’s in front, moving fast between the cover of the rusted-out machine parts, long strides eating up the cracked pavement. The warehouse is maybe three hundred yards ahead, the choppy grey water of the bay behind it, the late afternoon light glinting off the windows.

Someone touches his shoulder, and Jensen glances back. It’s Cougar, his rifle case slung over his shoulder, hat pulled low. “Steady,” Cougar says, softly, and then he’s gone, scaling up the rusted fire escape on one of the peripheral buildings.

They hit the building fast and quiet, Aisha leading. She knifes the first guard before he can even make a sound, and they go through the big warehouse door, fanning out when the corridor branches. So far, the thermal scan he’d pulled down from the re-routed Intel satellite’s been accurate, one man on the door, three more supposedly patrolling. Clay and Pooch follow the corridor one way, clearing rooms as they go. Jensen’s got Aisha on his six, and she’s so quick, so quiet that it actually calms Jensen down a little. He takes a deep, slow breath as they pause at a corner, backs to the wall.

Aisha darts around the corner, and she’s pulling the trigger on her Beretta before Jensen can even start moving. There’s a scream, and half a second later, someone starts shooting down the other hall, from Clay and Pooch’s direction. Jensen launches himself out, and he and Aisha start running, jumping over the guard she’s shot. He never even had a chance to pull his gun.

Another guard clears the corner and lines up a shot on Aisha, so Jensen shoves her as quickly as he can and snaps up Cougar’s revolver as they both start to drop. The kick from the little gun’s stronger than he expected, but the shot’s good, and the guy staggers. Aisha pushes him off. “You didn’t need to do that,” she says, which Jensen’s going to take as a thank you. She pulls him to his feet—this chick is built—and they keep going.

All the rooms in the warehouse look the same, dirty windows and junk shoved up against the walls. Then Jensen finds the guard post, and there’s monitors showing the display from the cameras—

—and in scratchy, black and white surveillance footage, there’s Sarah, crouched defensively in the middle of a stripped-out room, her arms wrapped around Emma to shield her. Jensen’s heart rate kicks up into an even higher gear. Then, on the screen, the door’s shoved open, and one of the guards grabs Sarah, shoves a gun into her ribs and hauls her to her feet. Emma yells something, and Sarah says, stay there, maybe. Jensen can see her mouth moving as the guard hauls her out the door. It doesn’t shut behind them.

He’s frozen for maybe half a second before Aisha grabs his arm. “Come on,” she says, and her voice is low and dangerous.

Down the next hallway, he gives up on subtlety, and just hopes Aisha can cover him. “Emma!” he yells, and his voice echoes off the walls.

He practically feels the answering scream vibrate the air. “Uncle Jake!” and then Emma cannons through the door and leaps straight into his arms like gravity can’t hold her. She wraps her arms and legs around his waist and clings, her face buried in his shirt.

Jensen can’t holster the gun, so he wraps one arm around her tight and squeezes as hard as he can. “Hey sunshine,” he says, and his voice sounds choked, so he takes a deep breath and tries again. “Emma,” he says, and that sounds better, because she twists in his arms and beams like the sun coming out. Jensen hugs her against his chest and says, “Get down and get behind me and Aisha here, okay? Let’s go get your mom.”

Jensen rounds the last corner fast, Aisha tight on his heels with Emma shielded between them, and the last guard is suddenly there, silhouetted in front of the dirty hall window. He’s got his arm around Sarah’s throat, the barrel of his Glock jammed against her ribs. “Don’t come any closer, you fucker, or I’ll do the bitch,” he says, and jabs the gun hard. Jensen skids to a stop, Emma clinging tight to his shirt. He can see Aisha at the edge of his periphery, cold and furious, but staying still.

“Emma,” says Sarah, her voice tight, “Stay behind Uncle Jake, okay, baby?” Every line of her body is strung with tension, like she’s going to break at any second.

Then Jensen starts to laugh. Actual, honest laughter, and the guy looks confused for a flicker of a second before he yells, “Shut up!” and shoves the muzzle flush against Sarah’s side. “I shoot her, we see who’s laughing then, huh?” the guy snarls, sweat standing off his temples.

Jensen just grins. “I gotta say, man, Max and I had a few profound ideological differences, so I’m not really sorry about how this is about to go down, but first I have to point one thing out. You know what’s the best part of not working for a murderous psychopath anymore?” Jensen’s eyes are following the perfect little point of red light tracking up the guy’s body. “It’s having friends in high places.” He glances back at Emma. “Sunshine, you’d better close your eyes.”

There’s a sudden sound of glass breaking, and suddenly the guy’s on the ground, clutching his leg and yelling. Sarah stumbles free, shakes it off and grabs Jensen’s shoulder to steady herself. “Hi Jay,” she says, and her tone is light but her fingers are digging into his shoulder hard enough to bruise. Her other hand finds Emma’s head. “Did you close your eyes, baby?”

“Yes, Mom,” says Emma dutifully. She’s got her face pressed against Jensen’s side, her fingers clutched in his shirt.

“Good,” says Sarah. She flickers her gaze over the man on the floor, who’s still moaning and clutching his leg, and then, very deliberately, she picks up the Glock. “Jay,” she says, “Get Emma out of here, please.”

Jensen’s torn for a second, because on one hand, Sarah’s been locked up for weeks and probably needs to sit down and think this over for a year or so, but on the other hand, she’s got a very large gun. In the end, it’s not a hard decision.

“Go,” says Aisha softly, and steps forward to stand with Sarah. She glances back at Jensen, and her eyes are hard and dark. “Take the girl. I’ll stay.”

Jensen’s got Emma on one hip, his gun in the other hand. He can hear Sarah talking in a low voice. “You threatened my little girl for weeks and weeks to keep me in line. My baby girl. You had to know this was coming—” and he’s halfway down the next hall before he hears the guy start screaming.

***

Outside, Jensen’s sitting on the ground with Emma in his lap. There’s a spot of light winking on the building a hundred yards away, and Jensen flashes a tired grin. Thank you, Cougar, he mouths, then turns his attention back to Emma. “I missed a lot of school,” she tells him, very seriously, then leans back against his chest. “And my birthday. But it’s okay. I knew you were going to come get us.”

Jensen smiles against her hair, because he couldn’t do anything else if he tried. All the adrenaline, all the stress of the last two months is draining away, leaving him exhausted here, leaning against the truck. “That’s all you, sunshine. How’d you get the message out?”

Emma looks pleased. “Scumbag B had his phone in his pocket today. So I had a really noisy seizure and Mom stole it.”

“You are just the coolest kid,” says Jensen, and he absolutely means it. He wraps his arms around her thin little shoulders, and rests his chin on her soft hair. There’s two shots, from inside the warehouse. Jensen covers Emma’s ears, then says, “Come on, I’m going to show you what accelerant is for.”

Emma discovers that Clay is excellent for climbing on while Jensen siphons gasoline out of the second truck’s tank. “It’s very nice to meet you,” she says seriously, hanging off his shoulder. “I’m glad you came to help Uncle Jake.”

Clay, to his credit, takes a seven-year old hanging off him in stride. “Your uncle’s very smart,” Clay says, “Good with computers, too,” then swings Emma over to his left hip so he can keep his right hand on his gun. Good with kids, Jensen thinks, and it’s enough to keep him from instinctively grabbing Emma back.

Aisha and Sarah appear in the doorway, Aisha with her arm around Sarah’s shoulder, talking softly. She nods at Clay. “It’s done.”

Pooch appears from behind the truck. “I finished sweeping it, so let’s just burn this mother—“ Jensen covers Emma’s ears, pointedly, and Pooch smoothly continues, “—blanker down.”

“Well said,” says Sarah. “Give me that gasoline.”

***

“Come with us,” says Clay, afterwards. Behind them, the warehouse is starting to burn pretty intensely, and Jensen’s expecting to hear sirens any second. He wasn’t expecting to hear that.

“No way,” says Jensen, and he glances back to where Sarah’s sitting on the hood of the truck, Emma on her lap with Aisha perched beside her, talking quietly. That woman is scary intense, but Sarah hasn’t run screaming yet, so Jensen figures she’s probably doing something right. Pooch is standing just out of earshot, but obviously standing guard, his big Magnum .44 in hand.

Jensen shakes his head. “I’m going to take my family, my Roomba and the four hundred grand I liberated from one of Max’s Swiss accounts, and we’re going off the goddamn map.”

Clay looks at him, assessing, and Jensen feels like he’s seventeen and staring down the recruiter again. “No,” says Jensen, because maybe with enough repetition, Clay will get the hint. “I talk a lot, like, really a lot,” he says. “I punch in my sleep. My disciplinary record sucks. The US Army thinks I’m dead.”

Clay doesn’t smile, but the crow’s feet around his eyes get deeper for a few seconds. “A lot of that going around lately,” he says, and walks away, hands in the pocket of his suit coat.

Over by the truck, Aisha pulls Sarah into a one-armed hug, then walks towards him. Aisha eyes him for moment, then nods. “You’re a good man,” she says, in a tone that suggests she doesn’t hand that compliment out too often.

Pooch hands him a slip of paper. There’s an address, printed in neat blue ink. “My wife and kid are hiding out, now,” he says, running one hand back over his shaved head. “After what Max did to your family—well, your sister and her kid can go stay with them. Safer, right?” He smiles a little. “Good luck, man.”

There’s a clatter behind them, and Cougar leaps off the fire escape and lands lightly in a crouch. He tips his hat at Sarah, winks at Emma. To Jensen, he just says, “See you around.” One side of his mouth pulls up into a small, lopsided smirk, like it’s some kind of foregone conclusion.

Jensen snorts. “I still owe you a smack in the head and a shot of methohexital, you asshole.”

The truck peels out, then, and suddenly it’s just them, standing in front of the burning warehouse. Jensen watches until they pass the corner warehouse and disappear out of sight. In his pocket, he can feel the keys for the other truck, parked maybe a hundred yards away. He can hear sirens in the distance, and unless he wants to explain to the cops why he (officially dead), his sister and his niece (also dead) are standing by a burning warehouse with gasoline on his hands, it’s really time to go.

“I really want pizza,” says Emma.

And that’s how they end up in a motel room outside Rose Haven, on the coast, with a stack of pizza boxes and a bottle of twelve-year old scotch. Emma’s asleep, her thin little body curled up tight and pressed against his ribs. Sarah’s lying on the bed next to him, the bottle balanced on her stomach.

“You going to be okay?” he asks her, and it’s a stupid fucking question, but they’ve been dancing around it all night. Sarah tilts her head towards him, and the expression she shoots him is still so very my stupid little brother asks stupid questions that it’s almost reassuring.

“Well, Jay,” she says, dryly, “I suspect I’m going to be fucked in the head for some time. But I’m not dead, and Emma’s okay, and you’re okay, so things could be so very much worse.”

Later, when they’re mostly drunk and sitting on the floor, Sarah leans against his shoulder and says, quietly, like she’s afraid to say the words, “You think he might be following us? That was the worst part, I think, knowing this psycho could just find us, and make us disappear.” She swallows, and Jensen wonders how she’s so fucking strong. She drops her head, and her fingers lace through Jensen’s. He squeezes them tight. “Jay, can he find us again?”

Jensen’s still sober enough to keep his fingers wrapped tight around the grip of Cougar’s little S&W revolver, which he’d sort of forgotten to give back. It’s a nice gun. Maybe he’ll keep it. “Inconceivable,” he says, and Sarah snickers against his shoulder.

“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” she says, and then they’re both on the floor, giggling until Emma sits up sleepily to stare at them, and says, “You guys are so weird.”

***

Nine days later, Jensen’s standing at the door of a rundown warehouse on the outskirts of Tucson. It seems like he’s spent a lot of time in places like this, lately. Cougar opens the door, and one corner of his mouth quirks up. It’s not the least bit attractive. Behind him, he sees Pooch handing Aisha a wad of bills.

Jensen glares, and says, “Sarah and Jolene made me go. And really, just for the record, I’m blaming this on Stockholm Syndrome.” He shoves his bag into Cougar’s arms and he shoulders his way inside.