Chapter 9: Confessions Under Fluorescents
The world compressed to the scent of antiseptic and the hard line of Rowan’s body against hers. The supply closet was a narrow cave, shelves digging into her back, the hum of a fluorescent light a persistent buzz in the quiet. Rowan’s hand remained over her mouth, not to hurt, but to silence. His eyes, wide and urgent behind his glasses, held hers.
“Not a sound,” he breathed, the words a whisper of warm air against her skin.
On the other side of the door, Silas moved. A heavy thud—the examination table, she guessed—was dragged across the floor, barricading them in. The sound was final, a dull scrape that sealed their fate.
Footsteps echoed in the hall outside. Slow. Deliberate. They paused right outside the supply closet door. Elle’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird beating against a cage. She could feel the vibration of each step through the thin walls. Rowan didn’t flinch. He held her gaze, his own breathing deliberately slow and deep, a silent instruction for her to follow.
The footsteps moved on, fading down the hallway.
They waited in the thick silence for a full minute, then two. Finally, Rowan slowly lowered his hand. His palm was damp from her breath.
“Clear,” Silas’s voice was a low rumble through the door. The table scraped back.
The door opened, revealing Silas’s grim face. The hallway was empty. “We can’t stay here.”
“We’re not,” Rowan said, his voice regaining its clinical edge. He turned back to the shelves, his movements efficient. He grabbed a roll of cohesive bandage and a packet of ibuprofen. “But we’re not leaving this until I’ve stabilized her wrist. And until we talk.”
He didn’t wait for agreement. He took her injured hand, his touch returning to that careful, professional precision. He wrapped the bandage in a firm, practiced pattern, the blue material stretching and locking to itself. The support was immediate, a welcome pressure that dulled the sharpest edges of the pain.
“Okay,” Rowan said, his voice dropping again, losing its medical detachment. He looked from her to Silas, who had stepped fully into the closet, making the cramped space feel minuscule. “Listen carefully, little rabbit.”
The nickname, spoken in that quiet, intense tone, sent a shiver down her spine. It wasn’t condescending. It was a possession.
“We’re going to leave. Separately. Silas will take you out the back, the same way you came in. I’ll leave in ten minutes, through the front.” His gaze was unwavering. “Then, you’re going to tell us everything. Every last detail about the man in that locket. No more falls. No more lies of omission.”
“He wasn’t alone,” Silas added, his voice a gravelly counterpoint to Rowan’s. “Jasper remembered. The guy who hired him, Kael, he was taking orders from someone. On the phone. Jasper heard him say ‘she has to be a clean loss.’” Silas’s jaw tightened. “That doesn’t sound like a simple arson for insurance, Elle. That sounds like a hit.”
The words landed like physical blows. A clean loss. The fire hadn’t been a tragedy; it had been a mission. And she was the objective.
She felt the air leave her lungs. The neatly stacked supplies on the shelves seemed to waver. Rowan’s hand came up, not to her face this time, but to the back of her neck, his fingers applying a steady, grounding pressure.
“Breathe,” he commanded softly.
She did, a ragged gasp that burned in her chest.
“The locket,” Silas prompted, his eyes sharp. “You snatched it. Why?”
Her free hand fumbled in the pocket of her jeans, pulling out the small, tarnished silver heart. It felt cold and heavy, a relic from a life that was supposed to be ash. She held it out on her palm.
“It was my mother’s,” she whispered. “I never took it off. But the night of the fire… I did. I was packing a box for donation, feeling sentimental, and I put it in there. I forgot about it until the flames…” She swallowed. “I thought it was gone. But he had it. Kael had it in his pocket. Like a trophy.”
Rowan took the locket from her. He examined it, his brow furrowed. He pressed the tiny catch on the side. It didn’t open.
“It’s stuck,” she said. “It’s been stuck for years. I could never get it open.”
Silas took it from Rowan, his big fingers surprisingly deft. He turned it over, studying the seam. He pulled a multi-tool from his pocket, selecting the finest blade. With painstaking care, he inserted the tip into the almost invisible crack between the two halves of the heart.
He applied a subtle twist of pressure.
There was a tiny, metallic ping.
The locket sprang open.
A small, faded photograph of Elle’s mother smiled up from one side. The other side, meant for a picture, was empty. But tucked into that empty space, folded into a tiny, tight square, was a slip of paper.
Silas carefully extracted it, his movements slow and deliberate. He unfolded it on the flat of his palm.
It wasn’t a love note. It was a string of letters and numbers, handwritten in her mother’s elegant script.
AXR-73B
Below the code, a single name was written.
Orion.
Silas looked from the paper to Elle, his expression unreadable. “Who the hell is Orion?”
Elle could only stare, the world tilting on its axis once more. Her mother’s secret, kept for a decade, had been burning in a box next to her all along.