Page 4 of Thorne
Torque moves to her. Hand on her shoulder. I file that too—the connection between them, the way she leans into it without seeming to realize she's doing it.
"We need to move." Ghost's eyes sweep the room, dark with urgency. "Extraction window is closing."
I turn back to Julianna Stratton.
She hasn't moved. Hasn't flinched. She's still standing there with her bruised wrists and her defeated posture and those eyes that see too much.
I cross to her. Grab her arm. Spin her toward the wall.
Not gentle. I'm not here to be gentle.
I take her wrists—already purple from whatever Phoenix's people did to her—and run a zip tie around and through, cinching it hard. The plastic bites into the bruising.
For what she's done to my daughter, she deserves nothing less.
She makes no sound. Doesn't pull away, doesn't tense, doesn't try to create space. Just stands there and takes it.
That makes it worse somehow.
I turn her around, get my hand on her arm, and move her toward the door.
She goes.
No resistance. No drag.
She walks where I put her, at the pace I set.
And my body …
My body notices everything.
The heat of her skin under my palm. The brush of her hip when she turns too close. The faint hitch in her breathing when I tighten my hold.
Every one of those details lands somewhere low and unwelcome.
I hate that it does, because I hate her.
That part is true.
The other part?
The other part I shove down hard and pretend doesn't exist.
With her hands bound, she can't clip her safety belt. I reach across her—have to, no choice—and pull the buckle across her chest, clicking it home. My knuckles brush her breast. She goes very still while I do it. Neither of us says anything. I pull back and look at the canyon wall.
"Thank you." She speaks to the empty air between us.
I don't answer. She doesn't deserve the breath it would take for a response.
Ariel lifts us off the canyon floor.
The MH-6 is loud in the way all Little Birds are loud—filling everything, no insulation, the canyon walls dropping away as we climb. Nobody talks. I keep my eyes on the terrain below, onthe sightlines, on anything that isn't the two inches between her shoulder and mine.
She looks at the horizon.
Forty minutes. Nevada below in the early light, the dam, its servers, its caged god receding behind us. I watch her the way I'd watch a device I don't fully understand—tracking for signs of activation, change, some indication of what it is and what it plans.
She doesn't give me anything. Doesn't flinch when the helicopter banks. Doesn't look at the zip ties.
