"Fine," she said. "I’ll be good."

Christopher narrowed his eyes at her. He’d heard that tone before, the kind that came out smooth and agreeable right before someone put a knife in your ribs. He wasn’t buying it.

"Wait a minute." He glanced sideways. "Rebecca, tie up her wrists."

"What?" Lucy’s glare could’ve stripped paint off a wall.

"Again?" Rebecca blinked at him, visibly confused.

"Just tie them at the front, she won’t need her arms for what she’s gotta do," he said, keeping his voice even and his eyes locked on Lucy like she was a grenade with a loose pin. "Or are you telling me a grown-ass woman and a marine can’t squat behind a bush without full use of her hands?"

He got nothing back but a cold, flat stare that could’ve frozen the air between them.

Rebecca hesitated, shifting her weight. "Is that even necessary?"

Christopher let out a slow breath through his nose. The kind of sigh that carried a whole conversation in it.

"And you wonder why we treat you like a kid."

Rebecca’s face twisted. Something between offense and frustration pulled at her features before she clamped it down.

"Fine!" She snapped the word like a branch underfoot and stepped toward Lucy, pulling out the cord. "Sorry about this," she muttered, working quickly. "The only two males in my group are both weirdos, I swear."

"I saw that," Lucy said, dry as gravel.

"Thanks for the compliment," Christopher said from behind them, a thin smile crossing his face though his gun never moved an inch from where it was trained on Lucy. He watched her hands, her feet, the slight shift of her shoulders. Everything.

When Rebecca finished and stepped back, he spoke.

"Get back, Rebecca."

She moved aside without arguing this time.

"Now you move ahead." He jutted his chin toward the door. "Go on."

Lucy moved. She passed through the open doorway and stepped out into the afternoon, and the light hit her all at once, pale and wide and relentless after so many hours buried in the dark of wherever they’d been keeping her. She squinted, jaw tightening slightly at the discomfort of it, her eyes taking a moment to adjust.

Outside, the world was quiet the way it only got after everything fell apart. The kind of quiet that had weight to it.

Rebecca fell into step behind her, glancing back at Christopher. "You know you’re pointing a gun at a defenseless woman, right?"

"I prefer to think of it as pointing a gun at a dangerous woman who used to be a marine," he replied, not missing a beat.

"She’s not dangerous right now," Rebecca said.

Christopher kept his eyes on Lucy’s back. "She won’t hesitate to kill you the second she gets a shot at it. Stop being so naive, Rebecca."

Rebecca scoffed under her breath.

Christopher sighed again, heavier this time. "Look, we both went to Lexington Charter. We learned all the same things, the same standards, same code of conduct. I get it. But that world doesn’t exist anymore." He let that sit for a second before continuing. "We can’t afford it."

"I know that!" The words came out sharper than she probably intended, months of frustration riding the edge of them. "You and Ryan both you never stop. Every single time. I’m already drowning in lectures from Rachel, I don’t need you piling on too."

"Believe me, I’m more than happy to leave that to Rachel and Ryan," Christopher said with a small shrug, his tone almost casual. "But right now you’re here with me, which means you’re my responsibility. So don’t do anything stupid."

"What did I do that was stupid?" She turned to look at him, eyes sharp.

"Getting cozy with her, for one." He nodded toward Lucy. "You know how many people she’s had a hand in killing? Innocent people."

"Stop lying," Lucy said ahead of them, not bothering to look back. "I never killed any innocents."

"I wasn’t talking to you," Christopher said flatly. "Just keep walking until you find a decent bush."

Lucy’s pace slowed just slightly. "I’m going to kill you," she said, low and without much heat to it which somehow made it worse. "I don’t care if you’re still in high school."

"I’m not a highschooler, idiot," Christopher snorted. "And you’re at my mercy right now, so walk."

Rebecca turned on him, arms crossing over her chest. "Is that how you talk to women?" She gave him a look like she was genuinely reconsidering everything she knew about him. "No wonder Cindy left you."

Christopher rolled his eyes, completely unbothered. "She didn’t leave me. We were never together to begin with."

"And now she’s closer to Ryan than she ever was with you." Rebecca tilted her head. "Does that make you happy?"

"Genuinely?" He smiled and it seemed real enough. "Yeah. My best friend and one of my best girl friends getting close? There’s no better feeling when you actually care about people."

Rebecca stared at him for a beat. "Right. With Ryan as a best friend, no wonder you turned out as weird as he did."

Christopher laughed. "If weird means careful and wary? Fine by me, I’ll be the weirdo." He was still smiling when he shifted his attention back to Lucy, the amusement bleeding away into something more focused. "I think you’ve walked far enough. Unless you’re trying to loop back toward the hotel thinking I wouldn’t catch on?"

The sarcasm was dry from Christopher.

Lucy spun around, eyes blazing. "I need privacy!"

"Privacy, hm..." Christopher murmured, more to himself than anyone else.

His eyes swept the area. They landed on the backyard of a house sitting just off the path, half-swallowed by overgrown hedges and the kind of weedy neglect that came from months of nobody being home. It was messy, tucked away, and good enough.

"Here," he said, motioning with the barrel of his gun.

Lucy moved ahead without a word. Rebecca and Christopher followed her through the gap in the low fence, stepping over a rusted garden chair that had long since tipped onto its side.

They’d barely stopped walking when Lucy turned around and hit him with a look that could’ve curdled milk.

"I can do it on my own," she said.

"I know you can," Christopher said. "That’s not the issue. The issue is the second I turn my back you’re gone."

"Come on!" Rebecca groaned, turning to face him like he’d said something genuinely offensive. "You’re just being gross about it!"

Christopher gave her a sharp look but Rebecca wasn’t finished.

"I’ll watch over her," she said firmly, planting herself in the conversation. "Will that work for you? And before you say anything, if she tries to run, I’ll scream, you come in with your precious gun that you’re so eager to use, and we’re all happy. Deal?"

Christopher held her stare for a moment. Then he gave a single short nod.

Lucy glanced back at Rebecca. "Thanks."

"It’s fine," Rebecca said simply, already moving to follow her.

Christopher took a few steps toward the side wall of the house, leaned his shoulder against the old brick, and turned his eyes away from them both. His gun stayed raised, resting easy in his grip not pointed at anything, just ready. The garden around him was dead quiet save for the distant shuffle of wind through dry grass and the occasional creak of something settling in the empty house behind him.

He could hear them murmuring from a distance, low voices, too far to make out the words. He didn’t try to listen. Wasn’t his business.

"What a pain," he muttered, shaking his head slowly. "Should’ve gone with Ryan and left this whole thing to Rachel."

But that wasn’t how it had played out. Ryan had asked him specifically, had practically handed it to him because Ryan knew that Christopher, having been there when they took Lucy, understood what she was capable of. A man who wouldn’t let his guard slip. Someone who wouldn’t be soft about it.

And Rachel was better placed keeping an eye on Kunta. The girl was noticeably calmer around her, less coiled. Less likely to try something if she was the one in the room.

So here Christopher was.

Babysitting.

He exhaled through his nose and shifted his weight against the wall.

It had been barely two minutes.

"C...Christopher!"

Rebecca’s voice cracked through the quiet like a gunshot, high and ragged with panic.

He moved before he’d even fully processed it, boots hitting the ground hard as he rounded the corner and burst into the yard to find Lucy standing upright, her bound wrists in front of her, forearm locked tight across Rebecca’s throat from behind. Rebecca’s hands clawed at Lucy’s arm, her face already flushing, feet barely finding the ground.

"Don’t take another step," Lucy said, eyes locking onto Christopher the second he appeared. "Or I snap her neck."

Christopher’s jaw clenched so hard he could feel it in his teeth. His gun came up.

"How in the hell did this even happen?!" He leveled his glare at Rebecca over Lucy’s shoulder.

In flat he was more glaring at Rebecca than Lucy...

"She... she asked me to help her—" Rebecca managed, voice strained and thin.

"Help her?" Christopher’s voice climbed despite himself. "Help her crouch down? Seriously, Rebecca?!"

"I...I’m sorry—"

He let out a short, furious sound and forced himself to breathe. His eyes moved back to Lucy, steady now, whatever heat had flared in him tucked back behind something colder.

"Let her go," he said.

"You doesn’t seem to joke around with a gun, I’ll give you that," Lucy said, adjusting her grip so Rebecca sat squarely between them. "But from here? This distance? You might hit her just as easily as me. You want to risk that?"

Christopher’s finger rested against the trigger. He could feel it, the tension in his own hand, the slight tremor that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the effort of holding back.

"Damn it..."

"I’m walking out of here," Lucy said, her voice leveling out into something almost businesslike. "And she’s coming with me until I’m clear."

"Like hell you are." He took a step forward.

Lucy’s arm tightened. Rebecca made a small, choked sound.

Christopher stopped.

The silence between them stretched like a wire pulled too tight.

"If anything happens to her—" He started, voice dropping low and even, his eyes going cold in a way that was quieter and more dangerous than shouting.

"What?" Lucy’s lip curled. "You’ll shoot me? Already established that’s complicated."

"No." He shook his head, slow and deliberate. "We’ll go after your brother."

The shift in Lucy’s face was fast. Her eyes narrowed immediately coldly.

"Don’t for one second think I’m bluffing," Christopher said, holding her gaze without flinching. "I can put a bullet in you right now whether you do something to her or not. But it won’t stop there. We won’t stop there."

"Threatening my brother." Her voice came out tight, something jagged underneath it. "And you think you’re any better than Callighan?"

"Look at you," Christopher said, something almost like a dry laugh in his voice, though his eyes stayed hard. "Marine woman. Using a teenage girl as a human shield. That what they trained you to do over there?"

"You don’t know anything about me!" The composure cracked, just a hairline fracture, but it was there. Real heat bleeding through the words. "You think I wanted to work for people like that?! I did it to protect my brother. My only family. The only one I have left."

"Rebecca has an older sister," Christopher said, and his voice had lost its edge. "Her only family left who still gives a damn about her. And friends who’d tear this whole city apart looking for her." He held Lucy’s gaze without wavering. "So no. I’m not letting you walk out of here with her. Not a chance."

Lucy’s jaw shifted. Something moved behind her eyes, not doubt, not quite, but the early shadow of it.

"If I don’t show up," she said, "they’ll decide my brother’s useless to them. That’s how it works."

"You told us Callighan was a man of his word," Christopher said, throwing her own words back at her without any particular satisfaction in it. Just the reminder. Just the fact, sitting there between them.

"Callighan, maybe." Her voice tightened. "But he’s not the only one around. The others, I don’t trust them. I never have."

"And I don’t trust you," Christopher said plainly, no heat in it, no performance. He meant it the way you mean something you’ve already thought through three times. "So we’re even." He kept the gun level, kept his eyes on her hands. "Release her. I won’t say it again."

Silence followed.

Christopher watched Lucy’s face, watched the muscles along her jaw working slowly, grinding through whatever she was trying to decide.

Then her shoulders dropped. Just slightly. Just enough.

"I’m sorry," she mumbled, aimed at Rebecca specifically. Not at him. They were honest words.

She lifted her bound arms away from Rebecca’s throat with a slow motion and let them fall back in front of her.

Rebecca stumbled forward the moment she was free, catching herself and putting distance between her and Lucy in quick, unsteady steps until she was standing just behind Christopher’s shoulder. He didn’t look back at her. His eyes and his gun stayed right where they were.

"You done with what you came out here to do?" He asked Lucy. "Or was that an excuse to begin with?"

"I’m done," she said.

"Then move." He tilted the barrel forward, pointing the way back.

Lucy looked at him for a long, unreadable moment. Then she turned and started walking.

"Christopher..."

He heard Rebecca’s voice come up small behind him, guilty, trying to find the opening to apologize or explain herself or both at once.

"Please for god’s sake Rebecca," he said, not unkindly, the irritation in his voice worn down to something more like exhaustion. He glanced back at her, just once, brief. "Just stay behind me."

He couldn’t even be properly angry at her. That was the thing. Rebecca wasn’t careless because she didn’t care, she was careless because she cared too much. It was going to get her hurt one day. But right now wasn’t the moment for that conversation.

Rebecca pressed her lips together and gave a stiff nod, falling into step behind him without another word.