Joe was watching the cell block door when Shawna came through it, and something in his chest loosened slightly.
He knew more than she probably realized — Barry was a terrible secret-keeper, and Joe had been reading people for thirty years. He knew about the teleportation. He knew about Clay Parker's file, the gambling debts, the string of women Clay had borrowed money from and moved on from. He'd read it the way he read every file: looking for the person underneath the record.
A man like that, he thought, getting beaten to death by the gangsters chasing him would qualify as community service. The law protects his rights because it has to, not because he's earned it.
He'd spent the last twenty minutes running quiet odds on what came out that door: Shawna alone, or Shawna with Clay attached and a very short window before the alarm went up.
It was just Shawna.
"Did you make a decision?" he asked, keeping his voice neutral. "Are you still planning to help him?"
"No." She said it once and didn't add anything to it.
They walked to the car. Joe didn't push.
On the drive back into the city, Shawna didn't return the USB drive. She went home instead, to her rented room, and went through it methodically — looking for Clay's things.
She'd expected it to take a while. It didn't. Everything he'd left behind fit into half a small cardboard box, with room to spare.
She carried it to the door. Didn't throw it out. Didn't put it away. Just set it down and left.
Thirty minutes later, Iron Heights sounded a containment alarm. Inmate Clay Parker had been found missing from his cell. CCPD was contacted. A manhunt was initiated.
On a street in the city center, a man was shouting out of pure elation.
"Did you see that?! Shawna, that was incredible — it was like a jump cut, they didn't even register it — can we do that again? I want to do that again."
"Later." Shawna was driving. Her voice was flat, her expression flatter. "Which road is the truck on? Do we have time?"
The mention of money focused Clay like a lens. He pulled out his phone, opened a map, and started marking the route with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd been thinking about this for a while.
"Plenty of time. It's 5:17, the truck rolls at 6:00. Here's the route — listen, this is simple. I drive, you take the binoculars, teleport into the back, grab what's there, and come straight back to the car. Easy."
Shawna drove. After a moment: "Clay. How much do you actually owe Marcus?"
His expression tightened slightly at the edges. "Eighty thousand. But with your ability, that's one night. We pay it off tonight and we're done."
"And if I didn't have the ability — what was your plan for paying it back?"
Clay was quiet.
The honest answer was that there wasn't one. Clay Parker's financial history was a short list: steal, rob, gamble, borrow. The borrowing column had run dry — the gang wouldn't extend further credit, and he'd exhausted whatever goodwill he'd once had with friends and girlfriends by working through them in sequence. His looks had always been the one reliable asset, and looks required fresh targets.
He'd been in that cell running the numbers and coming up empty when Shawna walked in. The moment she'd disappeared from one side of the bars and appeared on the other, the arithmetic had completely changed.
She's the hand I was waiting for. He'd felt it immediately, the way a gambler feels when the card turns over and the table shifts. I win it all back with this.
"I would have worked for Marcus," he said finally, with the practiced gravity of a man confessing to something noble. "Gangster work is risky, but it pays. I was going to clear the debt and then get us both out of Central City — travel, Shawna. Wherever you want. That was always the plan."
Shawna looked at him.
She'd been listening carefully. She always listened carefully. She was looking for the thing she used to see in him — whatever it was that had made the rest of it forgivable, or at least ignorable. She looked for it in his eyes and found gray. Just gray.
"Honey." Clay noticed the stare and gestured forward. "Watch the road. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
She drove. She didn't say anything else.
The armored truck appeared right on schedule.
"That's it — go, Shawna, that's the one—"
She was already gone. One blink, and she was crouched in the rear of the truck, tucked behind a loaded pallet of currency bricks, breathing slowly while the two officers in the front compartment frowned at some sound they couldn't identify.
They turned to look. She was below their sightline.
They turned back.
The rear of the truck went light all at once, the suspension bouncing hard as several hundred pounds of cargo ceased to exist. Both officers grabbed their radios simultaneously.
Shawna was already back in Clay's car, a substantial amount of Central City's banking infrastructure in her lap.
Clay floored it. He was laughing.
He drove with the cheerful focus of a man who had rehearsed this moment many times. The division happened in motion: eighty thousand into one bag, the remainder into another, both into the trunk before they reached the other side of the city. He talked the whole way — about what came next, the angles, the opportunities, the particular genius of the plan as it had unfolded.
Shawna listened and said nothing.
At the gang's perimeter, Clay rolled down the window and addressed the men at the gate with the confidence of someone who had entirely forgotten where confidence had gotten him last time.
"I'm here to see Marcus. I'm paying back what I owe."
The men at the gate didn't say much.
Two black hoods came down over their heads before Shawna had time to form a sentence.
"Move. Boss wants to see you."