Page 21 of My End

I blinked up at the ceiling with my arm draped across my forehead and let out a groan.

Three in the afternoon.

My whole damn internal clock was sideways.

Night shift had fucked me up in more ways than one. Half the time I didn’t know what day it was, and when I did, it felt like it didn’t matter. Every day in this house ran on the same toxic cycle of control and protocol. The rules only seemed to shift when Boone was in residence.

Boone was due back today.

Soon.

I threw off the thin blanket, sat up, and scrubbed both hands over my face. My muscles ached from sleeping like the dead. The nights had been long, with just more watching and more waiting than doing, but that wasn’t what wore on me.

It was the pretending.

Pretending not to care. Pretending not to flinch when some of the shit I overheard made my fists curl. Pretending I wasn’t cataloging every detail for the day I brought the whole damn house down.

I stood, cracked my back, and shuffled into the bathroom.

Pissed. Washed my hands. Let the water run cold before I splashed it over my face.

Then to the shower. It was hot, scalding, and enough to bring me fully online.

I stood under the spray for longer than I should have. My fingers pressed into the tile wall, and my head bowed under the stream like the water was a baptism I didn’t earn.

I turned it off, grabbed a towel, and dried off fast.

Then dressed.

Cargo pants. Black T-shirt. Standard issue for this place.

But it was the lack of weight on my shoulders that threw me. Every day for years, I’d put on my cut first like armor or second skin. Now?

Now I walked around bare.

Naked without it.

Six days without the Fiend’s patch, and I felt like a goddamn ghost.

A knock sounded on the door just as I was sliding my boots on. I rose and crossed the room.

Jim stood on the other side, his face stone and solid like always.

“Boone is fifteen minutes out,” he said without preamble. “I want you outside and waiting when he arrives. Everyone will be there.”

I nodded once. “Understood.”

Jim turned on his heel and left without another word.

I closed the door, leaned back against it, and exhaled.

This was it.

This was what I’d been waiting for.

Boone.

He was the puppet master. Gibbs might have been the street-level devil, but Boone? Boone was the hand pulling all the strings from a marble tower in D.C.