Page 90 of The Order of Disorder

Plastic crinkles; fabric tears. “Pulse coming up,” he says.

The floor shudders; a motor growls inches from my spine. I blink, force the blur into shapes. Van. I’m on the floor of what looks like an ambulance, sitting upright against a bench seat. A foil blanket crinkles around me.

In front of me, strapped to a backboard, is Wyatt. From here I can see his swollen-shut eye, his shirt glued to him with blood.

The world tilts again. Tires bump gravel. I flinch. A siren blurts once, like a throat-clearing cough, then cuts.

“Unit Six, burn victim, Code Three,” another voice barks. The scent of October air rolls through the open driver’s window.

A shout outside, muffled, and then we lurch forward; the faint clang of a gate rattling behind us.

“Clear,” says the passenger. Jake? The driver downshifts, steady hands on the wheel. I glimpse paramedic green on his shoulders.

My stomach flips; sweat chills on my back.

Damian’s face hovers again, pen-light stabbing my pupils. His eyes are red around the edges, brimming with fear.

“Max, focus on me,” he orders. “Tell me where you are.”

The question scrambles inside my skull. Cage. Stage. Coffin. My mouth works but no words land.

“Her brain’s still swimming,” he tells the cab. “Narcan yanked the curtain back, but she was deep.”

Someone up front swears quietly. The dash radio sputters: “All units responding to multiple ten-seventy-ones at the old Fremont Airstrip—” Jake kills the volume with a snap.

I swallow, try again. “Billy?” The name rasps out, tastes like ash.

No one says anything. My foil blanket crackles with my movement.

“Small sips,” Damian murmurs, tipping a bottle to my lips. Water tastes alien, like I’ve never met it before.

The van hits smooth asphalt and the vibration eases. Wind whistles through a cracked window up front. I gag and shove the bottle away.

My gaze skitters to the driver’s mirror. Eyes meet mine there—coffee-dark, familiar, agonizingly alive.

Ryder.

I blink and the eyes are still there.

Sanity frays. I rasp, “You’re dead.”

“Yeah?” All I can see are his eyes, but they crease with a smile. “Guess I missed the memo.”

I lurch forward and the foil blanket crackles like static off broken speakers. Every cell in my body tries to decide between sobbing and screaming. The van doubles, then triples, edges warping as if the glass itself can’t process what I’m seeing.

“You’re alive.” It’s almost a whisper, like it’s too unbelievable to say out loud.

My brain rifles through impossible explanations—angel, ghost, morphine mirage—before landing on the simplest, most devastating truth: I was wrong.

I could stare at those eyes in the rearview mirror forever. I’m starved for them.

“Still kicking, baby.”

The term of endearment makes me choke with emotion.

“How?”The word cracks on my lips. “I saw the bullet go through you.”

Jake twists in his seat. “I found him that night, after you were taken. Storm fried a perimeter sensor,” he explains. “Except it wasn’t the storm, it was cut. I couldn’t sleep and saw the alert. Drove out to check the node and found Ryder in the driveway. Clean through-and-through, high left chest. Missed the engine room by an inch.”