Page 48 of Deathless
"He's there," Rhadamanthys confirmed. "Alive. Running intelligence operations."
Lorenzo pressed harder against the pine until his knuckles went white. Since the network burned, he'd checked his phone like the laws of telecommunications might bend if he just looked often enough. And now someone had told him Rafael was two hundred kilometers away and breathing.
"We leave tonight," Jasper said, voice stripped to nothing but logistics. "Four of us take the plane. Everyone else follows by boat."
I found my mother with Valentina and the elders. Took me five minutes to explain the plan. My mother listened, gave me one nod, and told me to get the hell out of her way so she could work. Valentina agreed. These women smuggled people across the strait the same way they had since before I was born, and they weren't about to start doubting themselves now.
The plane sat on a dirt strip an hour south, right where I'd left it. A small twin-engine Cessna that had seen better decades butstill had all its important parts attached. I did the preflight check while the others loaded gear.
Jasper moved around the plane's exterior with me, checking flaps and fuel levels without being asked. We'd done this before. Brussels, Prague, that disaster in Gdansk. The routine lived in muscle memory, and we fell into it without speaking because speaking meant acknowledging each other.
Lorenzo threw his bag in the back and immediately pulled it out again to check that he'd packed his sat phone. Then checked again. Then a third time. He couldn't hold still, kept shifting his weight like his body had forgotten how to just exist in one place.
"Last time I got on a plane with you, we crashed in New York," he said.
"Someone shot us down," I corrected. "And the fact that we survived proves I know what I'm doing."
"Semantics."
"Lorenzo." I grabbed his wrist. His pulse hammered under my fingers. "Hermano. He's alive. Rhadamanthys confirmed it. We'll be there by dawn."
"I know." He shoved the bag back in and climbed into the cabin. "I know."
He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
Rhadamanthys settled into the co-pilot seat with his revolvers across his lap and his Stetson somehow still intact despite everything. Jasper took the seat behind me, two feet back and a thousand miles away.
I ran through the startup sequence. Fuel mixture, throttle, magnetos. The engines coughed and caught. The propeller started turning, and the whole frame shook the way it always did, rattling like it might fall apart before we cleared the trees.
We didn't fall apart.
I pulled back on the yoke, and we lifted off into the dark, heading west toward the coast and whatever waited in Casablanca.
The wheels hit therunway three hours later, and I let the Cessna bounce twice before she settled. I killed the engines and sat with my hands on the yoke while the prop wound down and the vibration faded through my palms.
My mother was out there somewhere with Valentina and forty people on the strait crossing. I was here to get Eight back before Zeus broke her past saving.
Karim's white van waited in the salt air. We loaded the gear without talking and climbed in.
The markets buzzed with vendors setting up their stalls. The call to prayer drifted across flat rooftops. The familiar scent of fresh bread came through the window, but my stomach clenched too tight to care.
Then Karim took a turn I didn't recognize.
Mierda. I dropped my hand to the gun at my waistband. “New route?”
“Construction,” Karim grunted.
The streets narrowed before we turned into a dead-end alley. Karim killed the engine. I reached for the door and it openedfrom the outside. Someone yanked me out and slammed me face-first into the wall. Stone scraped my cheek and tasted like blood. They disarmed me quickly and started checking for more weapons.
"Don't move. Hands behind your back."
I turned, and a gun pressed into my spine.
Zip ties bit into my wrists. Fabric came down over my head, and the world went dark. I couldn't pull air right through the hood pressing against my face.
"Jasper!" I twisted toward where he'd been. "What the..."
The gun jabbed my ribs. "Shut up."
