A black hood is unpleasant for anyone. For Shawna, it was something closer to unbearable.
She'd spent the last several days moving through the city in blinks — rooftop to rooftop, street to street, anywhere her eyes could reach. The ability had stopped feeling like a skill and started feeling like breathing. Losing her line of sight now, even temporarily, even just walking through a warehouse district with someone's hand on her arm, produced a specific kind of dread that she hadn't expected and couldn't quite talk herself down from.
Clay didn't mention this part.
"Clay." She kept her voice low. "Why didn't you tell me they'd do this?"
"Shh, darling, it'll come off soon—"
"Mouths shut." One of the escorts, not interested in the conversation.
Clay shut his. The reason he hadn't warned her, of course, was that warning her might have produced objections, and Clay had needed her to come. Not just for his safety — though there was that — but because he'd had a plan from the moment he'd watched her teleport through a set of prison bars.
They walked a deliberate, winding route for over ten minutes before the hoods came off.
The warehouse was dim and smelled of concrete and cigarettes. A single desk lamp threw a circle of light across a table where a middle-aged man in a well-fitted suit sat counting banknotes with the unhurried attention of someone who trusted the count more than the people who'd brought the money.
Marcus didn't look up immediately. He didn't need to.
"Eighty thousand," Clay said carefully. "Everything I owe. It's all there."
Marcus turned the last bill over, set the stack down, and finally looked at him. "Eighty thousand. Not a penny short." He tossed one bundle casually to the side. "We're practically even."
Shawna frowned. "Practically?"
The gun came up before she finished the word.
Something happened in Shawna's chest — the accumulated unease of the last ten minutes finding an exit all at once — and she almost moved. The instinct was immediate and total: get out, get somewhere with a sightline, go.
But she didn't.
She thought about Roy. About the half-second she'd lost to the same instinct, and the man who'd taken a bullet to the stomach while she was recovering from it.
"Instinct can save your life or it can kill you," Jude had said, after. "Overcome the reflex, assess the situation, then act. That order matters."
She made herself breathe. Made herself look at Marcus's hand instead of the barrel.
His fingers were still. He wasn't squeezing the trigger — he was watching her. Testing her.
Why is he testing me?
The answer arrived at the same moment Marcus glanced sideways at Clay with the look of a man checking that his information was accurate. Then he raised the pistol slightly and fired.
Shawna was already gone.
The shot punched through empty air. Marcus turned, and found her behind him, breathing hard, looking like someone who had just narrowly survived something terrible.
Good, she thought, keeping the performance in her face. Let him think that.
The smile that spread across Marcus's face was the particular kind that belongs to men who have just confirmed a thing they planned to use.
"Not bad." He lowered the gun and laughed, genuinely pleased. "Clay, you weren't lying to me. I'm very satisfied."
Shawna looked at Clay. "You told him about me."
"Shawna, listen—" Clay held up both hands. "We had to explain where the money came from. There was no other way to do this. Marcus is reasonable, I promise."
"He's right, I'm a reasonable man." Marcus settled back, the gun resting on the table now, unthreatening. "Eighty thousand, not a penny short. As agreed — we're square." He paused, letting that sit, then: "And because I'm a reasonable man, I'd like to offer you both something better than square."
He leaned forward.
"Think about what we could accomplish. My connections, my infrastructure, my information channels — and your ability. We're talking about a different category of operation entirely. Jewels, paintings, proprietary blueprints, the private secrets of people who can afford to pay very well to keep them private." His voice dropped into the register of someone describing a future he'd already visited. "Two people from nowhere, the bottom of this city, becoming something that makes the people at the top nervous. Estates in every country. The kind of money that stops having a number."
He trailed off.
Shawna's expression had done something during this speech that Marcus hadn't planned for. He looked at Clay, registered the longing on his face, looked back at Shawna's face, and reconsidered his approach.
Right. They're a couple. Probably shouldn't have led with the 'endless pleasures' part.
"In short," Marcus said, adjusting, "what we can build together is beyond what either of you can imagine alone."
Clay opened his mouth.
"Police! Everyone down!"
Every entrance to the warehouse opened simultaneously. Armed officers poured in from four directions, flashlight beams cutting through the dark. The response from Marcus's men was immediate and chaotic — gunfire, shouting, the specific panicked energy of people who had been caught in a place they weren't supposed to be.
Marcus took a round in the leg and went down.
Clay and Shawna were already gone.
They came out on the street behind the warehouse and ran for the car. When they reached it, two officers were already standing at the trunk, the money bags open on the asphalt between them, counting.
Clay made a sound that wasn't quite a word.
Shawna grabbed his arm and pulled. They hit the street, found an unlocked car two blocks over, and Clay drove.
"Marcus is finished," he said, when he could speak in full sentences again. His eyes were red at the rims and he was breathing through his mouth. "That cop you mentioned — he closed the net. It's over for Marcus." He swerved around a light. "We have to leave Central City. Right now. But we need money first, Shawna, we can't go anywhere without—"
"Clay."
"Please, just one more time, I'm asking you—think about what we talked about, the trips, everything we said we'd do, we just need enough to—"
"You promised me." Her voice was quiet. "After we paid Marcus back, you said we were done."
"What does that matter now?" His voice cracked up into something closer to a shout. "Shawna, you broke me out of prison! You robbed an armored truck! We're both wanted — we can't live here anymore, we can't live anywhere openly, so what exactly are you holding me to a promise for?"
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