Three held his ground. “You sure you can’t find us another place to crash? Doesn’t have to be fancy. Cellhouse would be fine.”
jCharles stopped, threw a look over his shoulder. “Don’t do that. It’s insulting.” Three felt the admonishment, the hard tone. A tense moment lingered, jCharles letting Three know he was serious. Then, he opened the hatch and headed back inside, softening the blow as he went. “Besides, Mol would kill me.”
Three knew it wasn’t fair, coming into their lives and at the same time, trying to maintain distance. But the trouble on his trail now was like none he’d known before. And he’d sworn he wouldn’t bring that to their doorstep. Not again. Never again.
He stayed on the roof late into the night, not wanting to face Mol again. Not wanting Wren to see him. Not wanting Cass to look in his eyes again. His mask was cracking, he knew. And he couldn’t afford for any of them to see that for the first time in long years, Three was standing on the edge of tomorrow, and was desperately afraid.
Twenty
Sunlight streamed in through a crack in the shade, a pure white sliver that fell warm across Cass’s cheek. Her eyelids fluttered, drew open heavily. She felt herself waking, slowly, awareness leaking in like warm water pooling in from under a door. And as she woke, she was loath to move. The bed was more comfortable than any she could remember ever having slept in before, the sheets and blankets a secure cocoon of warmth and comfort that seemed to have been arranged and fitted to her exact frame. Wren was gone, but Cass felt so perfectly at peace that her usual desperate need to know where he was at all times failed to kick in. In the other room, no doubt. Safe. She could hear the low tones of Three’s voice through the door, a quiet rumble like distant thunder.
She rolled to her side and arched, stretching, scissoring her legs to different corners of the foot of the bed, feeling the sheets run smooth and cool across the bare skin of her legs. jCharles had given her a stack of quint the evening before, which her bloodstream had greedily accepted. Cass relaxed her stretch, accessed GST. It was nearly noon. She’d slept for fourteen hours.
She sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed. Took a deep breath. A smile crept to her lips. She felt good. Better than good. She felt well. She slid out of bed, dressed, and padded barefoot into the adjoining room.
“Mama!”
The conversation stopped when Wren called to her. He hopped off the couch and ran over. She stooped to intercept him, and swung him up to hug him tightly. jCharles was sitting in one of the plush chairs. Three, as usual, was standing. Mol was seated on the couch, next to the spot where Wren had been moments before. She had a book open on her lap. Apparently she’d been reading to him.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Cass said.
“Hope we didn’t wake you,” Mol answered. “I was trying to keep them quiet, but you know how boys are when you get ’em together.”
“Thanks, Miss Mol, but I probably should’ve been up about six hours ago.”
Mol shot Three a flat look. “Now you’ve got her doing it.” Her eyes were red, slightly puffy. Cass guessed she’d been crying recently. “At this rate, you’ll have Twitch calling me ‘Miss’ before you go.”
Three was unmoved, his stone mask intact. He looked Cass in the eye without expression. Grim. Cass couldn’t help but wonder what had transpired while she slept.
“So what’s the plan?”
Three’s look lingered for an uncomfortably long moment. Almost angry.
“Tryin’ to work that out now, actually,” jCharles answered. “We seem to have a timing issue.”
Cass moved on into the room, letting Wren slide down to his feet as she did so. To her surprise, he went right back to the couch and plopped down next to Mol, close. Right up next to her. She dropped an arm around him casual, like family. Cass, aware of the tension in the room but unable to identify the reason, situated herself on the arm of the couch, neither sitting nor standing.
“Anything I can help with?”
“No,” Three answered in his direct way. A look passed between him and jCharles. She recognized the look, the one that Three used to indicate there would be no further discussion on the matter. jCharles either didn’t read it the same way, or didn’t care.
“Actually—”
“I said no, Twitch.”
“Options and time, man. We’re short on both. Don’t say no to me again unless you’ve got a solution.”
“I’ll go,” Mol offered.
“Absolutely not,” Three said without looking at her. jCharles glanced over, warm, but shook his head.
“I’m not a cripple. I can still handle myself.”
Cass got the sense everyone was talking around her, and she didn’t like it.
“I know, Mol, but I didn’t come here to bring you into this—”
“If you’re in it, we’re in it,” jCharles said, cutting Three off. He leaned forward on the edge of his chair, voice intense. “That’s how it works. Spatz Three, do you have any idea how tired it gets, you playing this solo warrior gig all the time?”
“jCharles,” Cass injected. “What’s the problem?”
Three looked her way, but jCharles ignored him.
“Schedule. We’ve got to be in two places at once. And neither of them are pleasant.”
“And I can’t go to one?”
jCharles looked back to Three, eyebrows raised. Cass saw the muscle of Three’s jaw working. Finally, he turned to her.
“I’ve gotta go see the Bonefolder’s people. They won’t talk to me without Twitch there. But he’s got a chem drop lined up Downtown.”
“Caught a lucky break on the timing,” jCharles added, “but with the quantity they’re moving, they won’t wait around. And it might be a week before I can get a handle on that much again.”
Cass understood now. And it offended her that Three wouldn’t consider letting her take care of the drop. She stood up.
“Then of course I’m going,” she said. “It’s for me, it’s my thing. I’ll handle it.”
“Too dangerous, Cass,” Three answered. “Greenmen don’t patrol down there. You don’t know your way around. You’re a wo—”
He stopped himself, but not soon enough.
“What, a woman? Who do you think I am, Three? I’m not some useless skew, you know. You think a crew like RushRuin picked me up because they felt sorry for me?”
If she hadn’t been so worked up, she would’ve noticed the sudden look of surprise and concern that passed between jCharles and Mol.
“jCharles, just tell me where I need to be and when. I can handle it.” jCharles looked back at Three, but Cass wasn’t having it. “Don’t look at him, he doesn’t have a say.”
Three smoldered but didn’t reply. Cass took small satisfaction in knowing he didn’t really have any other choice.
“One sec, lemme sig you the spot.”
He bursted the location to her. She pulled up a satellite overlay, gipsed the path, scouted the area via the image projected directly on her corneas.
“That’s what we call ‘Downtown’.”
Rows of concrete blocks were arrayed around a large central structure that looked like an old aircraft hangar. None of the wild color that painted the rest of the city was apparent Downtown. Everything was still cast in its original concrete gray. Cass realized the blocks were isolation units, individual prisons for what once must’ve been Greenstone’s most violent and deadly citizens. From the looks of it, the neighborhood hadn’t changed much. More garbage, maybe.
“How much product are we talking?”
“Forty-five hundred in tabs.”
Cass couldn’t help but jolt at the number. Even the labs she’d frequented back in Fourover never dealt in more than a thousand when it came to quint. Too potent. Too much risk to have all in one place. She was almost afraid to ask, but knew she had to. “For how much?”