Page 131 of Rage
“I know, Valen. I know exactly what happens. Send the others when you can.”
I hang up.
The north perimeter is a four-minute run from the east building. I do it in two and a half.
The depot is a prewar, low stone structure, half collapsed on the east side and boarded on the west. There are two men outside the main door—not the careful positioning of trained security but the loose arrangement of men who think they are in a place nobody will find.
They are wrong about that.
What happens next takes less time than it should. I’m not as precise about it as I was with Marcus. Marcus was a message,calibrated and contained. This is not a message. This is retrieval, and the distinction means I’m faster and considerably less interested in what happens to Victor. Amy is all I care about.
The door is not locked from the inside, and I find her in the back room.
She sits against the far wall, her wrists zip-tied in front of her, her face pale and absolutely furious. Not afraid, furious. The expression of a woman who has survived enough that fear has started to feel less useful than rage, which is a development I find, even at this moment, deeply compelling.
Victor stands across the room.
He looks at me when I come through the door. Something flickers across his face—not surprise, exactly, but recognition. He knew I would come. That was the point.
“Saint,” he says. He even smiles. “Right on schedule. Nice mask, and I have to say, I love the robe.”
I glance at Amy.
She looks back at me. Her chin is up. There is a small cut above her left eyebrow. The kind that comes from a struggle rather than a deliberate blow, and the rage in me goes from cold to something considerably hotter at the sight of it.
“Are you hurt? Did he…?” I ask, not wanting to say the words. My stomach is in knots at the thought. Things I plan to do with him run scenarios in my head.
She shakes her head. “No. Annoyed. Deeply, profoundly annoyed.”
An almost smile crosses my face before I can stop it.
Victor steps forward. “Here is what happens now. You walk back out that door. You go back to your room. You stay there. In exchange, she walks out of here unharmed, and I take my operation elsewhere. The Order gets what it wants, you contained, me operational, and nobody has to make anyuncomfortable reports to Silas about you fucking Amy in her dorms and how conveniently she is at your home.”
He knows about the nights.
Of course he does. That was the leverage. That was always the leverage.
I look at Victor Sokolov. He is afraid, and holding what he thinks is a winning hand, and he genuinely does not know what he is standing in front of.
“Cut her loose,” I demand.
Victor’s expression hardens. “I don’t think you understand. This is the only way they won’t drag you back into your little playpen.”
“I understand everything. I understand that you took her today because you wanted me here, in this room, making a choice that the Order can use to send me back. I understand all of it. And I’m still here. So cut her loose.”
Victor stares at me. Then he nods at the man who appears beside him. He cuts the zip tie.
Amy stands. She is steady on her feet. She moves toward me without being told, and I put my hand on her back, looking at Victor over her head.
“This is finished,” I say. “Whatever your father built on this campus. Whatever he promised you. It is finished. Not because the Order says so. Because I say so. And unlike the Order, I do not issue the same warning twice.”
Victor says nothing.
I take her out into the cold air, and I keep my hand on her back all the way across the north field and through the perimeter gate and back onto campus.
When we’re clear, she stops walking.
She turns to face me. “How did you find me so fast?”
