n't

finds out - until the words stop sounding like English and start sounding like a lock I don't have the s

to Route

remember what these four warehouses become in four months - the last open corridor east of the river, the difference between a city that eats and a city

lights buzzing over cracked asphalt, not another car in sight. My own footsteps sound too loud walking up to the par

n the gate that was

t new brass on ten-year-old rust, feeling the par

" a voice sa

hard I taste it, and it's not until the second full second that I recognize the

comes out angrier than I mean it to, mostly be

dlock, head tilted slightly, the same stillness from the title office lobby, except now it reads less like calm an

ow what city hard

obody's cared enough in ten years to lock it properly." He crouches, runs a thumb along the padlock'

k I kno

rk eyes coming up to mine in the

u never told me why you

'd even seen them." He straightens up. "We can keep doing

barking - not a stray, not the ordinary background noise of a bad neighborhood, but

my wrist before I've even pr

me back toward the fence line, away fr

ha

out, which means somebody already knows exactly what we both figured out this week." His voice stays flat and fast, no

ammering in my ears, even with a dog closing distance somewhere in the dark b

ng thirty seconds ago. Damian pushes me down behind a rusted shipping container, close enough that I can feel him br

g a job he doesn't think matters. The dog barks once more, then subsides, and after a

nd's gone, longer than we need to, both of us breathin

ally, quiet, "on the same day my stepsister got caught on th

very still

t again,

lking about Route 9 data, and an audit, and making sure someone

us As

know

uriosity of the title office lobby, it's with the focused attention of a man who's just found the second half of an equation he

beam an hour ago, who's asking me the one question I haven't let myself answer out lo

is time, urgent, the kind of bark that means the handler's noticed the b

ing me up by the wrist. "You're going to tel

ry edge of the shipping container we're crouched behind, and for one frozen half-second before Damian yanks m