Page 19 of Caught in the Crossfire

“This doesn’t change anything,” I whispered as my tears wet his shirt, right next to the bloodstains.

“I know,” he responded. His arms tightened around me. His cheek pressed against the top of my head while his chest rumbled. I knew Max well enough to know he was trembling, barely holding back emotion.

“I’m still going to kill you,” I added. Iwantedthe words to bite,to sting, but there was no venom. My brain rebelled, but my body gradually calmed. My heartbeat slowed. My breaths evened.

“I know.” His fingers smoothed my hair away from my face as he pressed me firmer against his chest.

“Signal jammer,”I blurted, jerking awake again.

I’d been in and out of sleep. My body was shutting down. Not fully dying, but slipping into sleep mode. If I wasn’t awake, if I was pressed against Max’s body, I didn’t have to think about this ship. I didn’t have to think about the cargo hold. I didn’t have to think about the men who hurt us.

Max had told story after story of when we were kids, soothing me from waking nightmares. I’d closed my eyes and tried to picture us back then. Tried to believe that we could be kids again. That maybe this was just like that one time when our parents had taken Cas, Max, and me to that cabin in Vermont over Christmas. We’d stayed up all night playing games, and as soon as dawn broke, we’d passed out in the giant fort we’d made in front of the fireplace. When I’d woken up, I’d been tangled between the two of them with Max on one side and Cas on the other.

But it wasn’t a cabin in Vermont. It was a ship in the middle of who-the-fuck-knew, and I was so cold that I’d stopped shivering. We hadn’t been given food or water. My mouth was sticky and disgusting; my stomach was so painful it was nauseating. The dehydration headache combined with the headache from crying had left me a husk.

No wonder I had forgotten.

“Max,” I whispered, croaking like a frog.

He didn’t answer. His arms were still wrapped around my back, but they weren’t as tight anymore. I looked up, and he was asleep.

He looked so peaceful in his sleep. I hadn’t seen him look so vulnerable since before his father had died. He had changed after that. Cas and I had always thought it was because he’d lost both his parents, and that still would have been perfectly reasonable for what he went through.

Something about what he said earlier—how he buried his younger self along with his dad, and how he’d been hiding all this shit from us—made me feel like it all originated somewhere else. Therehadto be a missing piece he was still hiding from me, but my brain struggled to link two thoughts together.

When had he found out about what my dad was doing? How long had he known?

Even as I asked myself the questions, I knew he’d never tell me.

I looked at my ring, silently praying that the guys were getting close. It had been days by now, hadn’t it? Surely Ciel would know where I was. But then my eyes flicked up to the signal jammer nestled right behind the camera with the flashing red light. I’d seen it before, but had forgotten.

Would the tracker even work with that signal jammer in place?

I had to get rid of it.

That was how we could get out of here.

I couldn’t reach the jammer by myself. It was too tall, and I was too short. Even if I somehow climbed the bars—I barely had enough energy to lift my head—I still didn’t think my arm could reach it.

But Max might.

“Max,” I whispered again.

This time he shot awake, eyes wild and frantic, reaching for a weapon that neither of us had. “What is it?”

“Shh.” My fingers brushed his cheek. “It’s okay.”

He breathed heavily, looking down at me between his arms.He blinked for a few seconds, then let go of his grip, and I sat back.

“What’s wrong?”

I kept my voice low in case the camera had audio. “Don’t look at it, but earlier I saw a signal jammer behind the camera in the corner.”

To his credit, he kept his eyes locked on me, but I saw his body shift slightly. “So?”

I glanced down at my hand, rubbing my finger over the ring. “Ciel put—my guys put a tracker in my ring.”

He looked down at it, and his features schooled into his mask. Back to the old Max, again. I sat back farther, outside the ring of his arms.