Page 264 of Operation: Defiance

Chapter Eighty

Raine

I should get up. Eat something. Drink water. Instead, I move to the seventh name on the Coherent Path contractor list.

Brett Wallburn.

ID: C-96

My mouth goes dry. I know that number. For a beat, the tremor in my fingers stops me from working the trackpad. I force a slow, deep breath. Four counts in. Hold. Six out.

Switching back to my log file, I scroll all the way to the end. The disposal cluster is only thirteen lines. The last four are biometric checks. Heart rate and blood pressure. One rising dangerously high, the other falling so far, I could barely stand when Asher unlocked the restraints.

Two movement codes.

Seven more, grouped together. Contractor C-96 delivering three separate shocks of increasing amplitude with a cardiac stability check after each one. Then, a request for authorization that was answered four minutes after Asher put me in his car.

I know what that authorization was for now. Who Brett Wallburn is. Why his ID appears at the end of every log file that ended in disposal.

He’s Voss’s Grim Reaper.

Inara picks up on the fourth ring. “Raine?” Her voice is rough, thick with sleep and exhaustion.

“I’m sorry. I…I shouldn’t have called. You were up all night.” Guilt pulls a wince free. “I’ll call you lat⁠—”

Something rustles over the line. “What do you need?”

Inara doesn’t ask what’s wrong. She assumes something’s wrong and moves straight to how she can help. I don’t have a framework for people like that. I’m still learning how to accept they exist.

“Backup. There’s…a person in Georgetown I need to have a very convincing discussion with. He doesn’t know it’s non-optional.”

Two seconds pass. Maybe three. “Scale of one to ten. One being a strongly worded conversation, ten being an international incident.”

“Three. Maybe four.” I hold my breath. She could still say no. She should say no.

A relieved sound—almost a sigh—carries over the line. “I probably don’t have to worry about bloodstains, then? It’s laundry day and all my black sweaters are dirty.”

The tight knot lodged in my chest starts to loosen.

“Probably not.”

“Okay.” The sleep is completely gone from her voice now. “What time?”

“I’m in Bellevue. If I leave at ten⁠—”

“I’ll come to you. Text me the address.” Another pause, and her voice softens. “Have you eaten?”

The question catches me off guard. I have to actively think about when I last moved from this chair. “I had yogurt. At…four thirty.”

“I’ll bring food. Forty-five minutes.”

The line goes dead, and I simply stare at the phone. At the hospital, she’d offered her friendship. I filed it away as something I didn’t know how to do.

I still don’t. But I text her the address anyway.

Inara pulls up to the curb in a powder blue convertible. I tug the bright orange floppy hat down over my eyes, and lower myself carefully into the passenger seat.

“Donuts,” she says, gesturing to a pink box sitting next to the gear shift. “And a large coffee. Black.”