Big D slid the photograph across the table.
“Used to be somebody’s house.”
Serena studied the long windows and the neglected garden.
“It still appears to be.”
“Now it’s where people do business they don’t want done in an office.”
Ezekiel leaned closer. The building had acquired additions over the years: a square extension at one end, a covered passage, a second roof that did not quite match the first. He recognized the sort of place. Too expensive to leave empty, too awkward to sell without a story about its potential.
“Who owns it?”
D gave him a name.
Ezekiel did not recognize it.
“What’s his connection to Rocko?”
“Money,” Crystal said. “They’ve worked together before. We don’t know whether he invited Rocko or just let him use the place.”
D opened another photograph on his phone.
The image showed a man beside a car, his face caught in profile.
Ezekiel recognized him.
Recognition tightened his stomach before he could decide what to do with it.
Serena noticed his hand stop moving.
“That is him?”
“Yeah.”
Rocko looked ordinary.
That offended her more than she expected.
He wore a pale shirt, had one hand in his pocket, and appeared to be listening to somebody outside the photograph. There was nothing in his expression that explained the locked rooms or the woman whose ankle had swollen above her shoe.
“Recent?” Ezekiel asked.
“Last night,” D said. “The driver sent it.”
“Does Rocko know he took it?”
“Not as far as we know.”
Ezekiel returned the phone.
“What happened before this?”
D frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“The picture. Did he arrive, leave, stop to talk?”
“He’d just arrived.”
“And afterward?”
“Went in.”
“So somebody took him there. Somebody else opened the door.”
Crystal nodded.
Ezekiel looked at the building again.
“Then he’s got help. We need to know whether they’re helping him hide, helping him leave, or waiting for him to finish something.”
Serena turned toward him.
He was already looking beyond the man in the photograph.
Big D named a payment.
This time it was an actual number.
Ezekiel went quiet.
Serena had learned enough about prices to understand the change in him. This was more than clothes and groceries. It could buy time—time to recover, to look for her home, to make decisions without every one of them costing something they could scarcely spare.
D saw that they understood.
“Half before. Rest when we’re done.”
“When what is done?” Serena asked.
He leaned back.
“Rocko stops being my problem.”
“That is still not an answer.”
D looked toward Ezekiel, who waited.
Irritation crossed D’s face. He looked down at the photograph.
“I want him gone. I want his people to stop coming after mine. I want to know what he’s planning before it lands on my doorstep.”
“And we want answers,” Ezekiel said. “About the people with those weapons. About her house.”
“Then we want some of the same things.”
“Some.”
Crystal set her mug down.
“We start by confirming he’s still there and finding out who he’s with. Nobody here knows enough to promise the rest.”
Serena nodded.
That she could agree to.
D considered them both.
“You’ll look into it?”
“Yes,” Ezekiel said. “But don’t spend the favor twice.”
D gave a reluctant smile.
“You always were difficult to do business with.”
“That’s because I can count.”
Crystal brought out a laptop.
Ezekiel recognized it before she put it on the table.
“You still have that thing?”
“It still works.”
“It worked badly three years ago.”
“Then this should be a happy reunion.”
She turned the screen toward him.
There were photographs, messages, and a folder of documents gathered by people who were better at collecting things than explaining what they meant.
Ezekiel began making space on the table.
Serena watched the change in his posture. He settled differently in front of the machine, more comfortable than he had been studying the house.
“What are you doing?”
“Seeing whether any of this actually belongs together.”
He opened several files, closed one, and asked Crystal where another had come from.
D tried to answer.
Crystal corrected him.
Ezekiel waited until they agreed.
“You used to do this,” Serena said.
“Some of it.”
Big D smiled.
“Man was going to be our computer genius.”
“System administrator.”
“Exactly.”
“Not exactly.”
Crystal leaned against the counter.
“He and his cousin used to spend whole weekends fixing computers and yelling at games.”
“We weren’t yelling at the games.”
“You were yelling at somebody.”
Ezekiel ignored her.
Serena rested a hand on the back of his chair.
“What does a system administrator do?”
“Depends where you work. Keeps things running. Accounts, computers, servers. Figures out why something everybody needs suddenly decided to stop working.”
“And you wanted that?”
“Yeah.”
The answer came simply.
She heard what he did not add.
Before life took other turns.
D nodded toward the screen.
“Can you get into whatever Rocko uses?”
Ezekiel looked up.
“What does he use?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I don’t know either.”
“You used to get into stuff.”
“Given time. And something I could actually work with.” He tapped the laptop. “This doesn’t make me a wizard.”
Serena’s mouth moved.
He noticed.
“Don’t start.”
“I said nothing.”
“Loudly.”
By the time Crystal refilled the coffee, Ezekiel had separated the useful material from the hopeful guesses.
Two documents concerned a different property with a similar name. One photograph was old enough that the extension visible in the newer image had not yet been built. A message everybody had treated as confirmation was somebody repeating the original driver’s account.
“So we had three people saying the same thing,” D said.
“One person saying it three times,” Ezekiel replied.
Serena leaned closer to the screen.
“That window.”
He enlarged the photograph.
“What about it?”
A pale mark ran down the wall beneath an open window in the newer addition.
“Something has been discharged there repeatedly.”
“Water?”
“Perhaps. I cannot tell from a photograph.”
She pointed toward containers stacked beneath the covered passage.
“Those might matter too.”
D looked at them.
“Cleaning supplies.”
“Possibly.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I think I would need to see a label before claiming to know what they contain.”
Ezekiel glanced at her.
Serena met his eyes.
“What?”
“Nothing. Keep going.”
She studied the image.
“If they have brought laboratory work into an old house, the building may not have been prepared for it. Storage, ventilation, waste. People can own useful instruments without understanding how to use the room around them.”
“You know about that?” Crystal asked.
“Chemistry was part of my education. So were practical sciences.”
Ezekiel turned in his chair.
“You never mentioned that.”
“You have not asked everything yet.”
“Apparently.”
She smiled faintly.
“Sabine considered ignorance of ordinary materials a particularly embarrassing way to injure oneself.”
Crystal looked amused.
“I think I would’ve liked her.”
Serena’s expression softened.
“Yes,” she said. “I think you would.”
Outside, Ezekiel stopped beside the car.
“We need practice.”
Serena looked at him.
“At what?”
“Us.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
He saw the expression and sighed.
“Working together.”
“I understood.”
“Sure.”
She stepped closer.
“You make yourself very easy to distract.”
“That’s one of the problems.”
Her smile lingered, but she listened.
He looked down at his mostly healed arm.
“I’ve boxed a little. Been in fights. I know what it feels like when somebody’s about to swing. But you move, and by the time I realize where you’re going, you’re already there.”
“You want me slower?”
“I want to know what you expect from me.”
Serena considered that.
“And you should tell me when I expect too much.”
“Planning on it.”
She brushed her fingers against his hand.
“Then let us learn.”
Crystal let them use the cleared end of the garage.
It smelled of old wood, warm rubber, and the detergent somebody had spilled near the washing machine. Afternoon light fell through the open side door. The concrete was bare except for a few scuffs and a painted line whose original purpose nobody remembered.
Ezekiel rolled his shoulders carefully.
“Light,” he said.
Serena inclined her head.
“Of course.”
The first exchange ended with his hand caught and her looking apologetic.
He stared at their joined wrists.
“That was light?”
“I did not strike you.”
“Encouraging.”
She released him.
On the second attempt, she moved just as quickly.
Ezekiel stopped.
“You’re doing the same thing.”
“I am using less strength.”
“Speed’s part of the problem.”
Serena opened her mouth, then closed it.
He waited.
“I see.”
She had been trying not to hurt him. She had not been allowing him enough time to learn.
The next attempt was slower.
He moved with a recognizable guard and an economy she had not expected. His feet were less polished than his hands, and he favored one side when uncertain, but there was experience beneath the roughness.
“You have been taught,” she said.
“A little.”
“Why did you describe yourself as though you knew nothing?”
“Because I’ve met people who know a lot.”
She approved of that answer.
For a while, they worked without talking much.
Ezekiel grew more comfortable as the movements became familiar. Serena began noticing where his judgment compensated for what his body could not do. He rarely committed merely because an opening looked inviting. When he did, he watched her answer.
“You think too much,” she said.
“Been told that.”
“It was not entirely criticism.”
“Good. Because the other option seems to be getting hit.”
When she asked him to try getting past her, he glanced toward the doorway.
“Crystal?”
Serena turned.
He slipped by.
She looked back to find him several paces away.
Nobody stood in the doorway.
“That was dishonest.”
“That was successful.”
“You asked another person to distract me.”
“I asked an empty doorway.”
She stared at him.
Then she laughed.
Ezekiel bowed.
It was a poor bow.
She liked it anyway.
“Again,” she said.
This time, he changed his approach. He used the space available, made her move around something rather than meet him where she preferred, and once put an old cushion between them when she reached for him.
She caught it.
He was already elsewhere.
“Would you throw the furniture too?” she asked.
“If the alternative’s losing teeth? Absolutely.”
She lowered the cushion.
“Good.”
He looked surprised.
“You expected me to object?”
“A little.”
“I would object if you let someone beat you because the available chair seemed impolite.”
He grinned.
For the first time, the practice felt like a conversation they both understood.
It went wrong when she moved sharply toward his injured side.
She had no intention of touching the wound.
Ezekiel did not know that.
His arm tightened reflexively, and Serena stopped so abruptly that he nearly collided with her.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
“Your pulse changed.”
“Because I thought you might.”
She looked at his sleeve.
He touched her wrist.
“I’m all right.”
She nodded, but her attention kept returning to the arm.
He noticed.
“You’re watching the injury instead of me.”
“I know.”
“That’s going to happen the other way around too.”
She looked up.
“In the building,” he said, “when that weapon caught you, I stopped thinking about the guy holding it. Just for a second. I was looking at your neck.”
Serena remembered hearing him call her name.
“We cannot promise not to care,” she said.
“No. But we should know when caring makes us miss something.”
She considered that.
Then she touched his face.
He leaned into her hand before he could help it.
Serena kissed him.
The garage, the cushion, the careful distance between their feet all ceased to matter for several seconds.
When she drew back, his hands had settled at her waist.
“That,” he said, “was not helping.”
“Your pulse suggests otherwise.”
“My pulse is not in charge.”
“An unfortunate arrangement.”
He laughed against her mouth when she kissed him again.
From the doorway, Crystal said, “Now I’m actually here.”
They separated.
Not very far.
Crystal looked at the cushion on the floor.
“Learning a lot?”
“Coordination,” Ezekiel said.
“I can see that.”
Later, at the range, Serena discovered another thing he had understated.
He was a decent shot.
Not effortless. Not invariably accurate. But when he settled into the work and gave it his attention, the pistol did what he intended often enough to make her look at him differently.
He inspected the results with considerably less satisfaction.
“What?” she asked after they stepped away.
“The bad ones.”
“There are more good ones.”
“Good ones don’t cancel bad ones.”
She studied him.
He shrugged.
“I’ve practiced. My cousin used to come with me sometimes.”
“But the night you found me—”
“First time I shot at a person.”
She let the distinction settle.
Paper did not move toward him. It did not fire back. It did not remain in his memory afterward with the same terrible insistence.
She took his hand briefly.
He squeezed hers.
With the shotgun, he was comfortable enough to be credible and cautious enough to stop when his healing arm began complaining. He did not try to disguise it.
Serena was glad.
On the way out, she asked about the knife he sometimes carried.
“Last choice,” he said.
“Because?”
“Because having a knife and knowing how to fight with one aren’t the same.”
“That is a promising beginning.”
“To what?”
“Learning.”
He opened the car door.
“Thought you might say that.”
By evening, Ezekiel’s arm ached, and Serena had discovered several limits to her usefulness as an instructor.
She understood many things too instinctively to explain them well.
She also enjoyed touching him far too much to pretend the practice had been entirely efficient.
He seemed to have reached a similar conclusion.
“You smiled every time you caught me.”
“I was pleased with my student.”
“You were pleased with yourself.”
“Both can be true.”
He laughed and leaned back in the passenger seat.
Crystal had offered them a ride to look at the neighborhood around the property. D’s latest message said Rocko’s car remained there.
It was not proof he did.
Ezekiel had insisted they remember that.
As they approached, Serena lowered her window.
The air carried cut grass, hot pavement, a distant kitchen’s onions, and the bitter edge of something beneath them.
She stopped smiling.
Ezekiel noticed immediately.
“What?”
She breathed again.
A truck passed, filling the car with exhaust. She waited until it moved on.
“There is something familiar.”
“The house?”
She shook her head.
“I do not know yet.”
He watched her without asking her to hurry.
The scent came again, faint enough that a human might have mistaken it for the general unpleasantness of a busy road.
Serena remembered smoke in the upper passage.
Her hand tightened against the window frame.
“Casa Val,” she said.
Crystal glanced at her in the mirror.
Ezekiel leaned closer.
“The garden?”
“No. The night they came.”
She swallowed.
“It is similar to what was in the air.”
“Similar,” he repeated carefully.
“Yes. I cannot tell you it is the same substance from a scent alone.”
His expression sharpened.
“But it’s a reason to be careful.”
“A considerable one.”
For a moment, anger tempted her toward the building.
She could imagine reaching the door. Finding the people inside. Demanding that someone finally answer her.
Then Ezekiel’s hand covered hers.
She looked down at it.
Crystal kept driving.
Nobody suggested turning the car around.
They stopped several streets away.
Serena sat with the window open, letting the last trace of the smell leave her.
Ezekiel remained beside her.
“If that is what weakened me,” she said, “we cannot repeat what we did at Rocko’s first building.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
She looked at him.
He held her gaze.
“They know something about you. We’ve got to learn something about them.”
Crystal turned in her seat.
“D isn’t going to love another delay.”
“Then he can complain to me.”
Serena watched Ezekiel take out his phone.
His hands were ordinary. Bruised knuckles, a healing arm, no strength capable of tearing a door from its frame.
She had watched those same hands sort the photographs until uncertainty became something they could examine. She had felt them hesitate before touching her and steady when she asked them to remain.
She caught his wrist before he made the call.
He turned.
“What?”
She kissed him.
Briefly this time, though not by much.
When she released him, his expression had softened.
“For what?”
“For noticing.”
He brushed his thumb along her cheek.
“Hard not to notice you.”
From the front seat, Crystal sighed.
“Tell D I’m charging extra for this.”
Ezekiel laughed.
Serena settled back beside him as the call connected.
They would need a different approach.
For the first time that day, she was looking forward to discovering it with him.