Chapter 5

The van descended toward the river road with me inside black vinyl, each turn rolling my bruised shoulder against the rail while the engine rattled around a body unable to prove it was alive.

Gray light entered through the zipper, yet my hands would not close and my heart answered each breath slowly, as though deciding whether to follow me back; the furnace ahead would decide for it.

“Moreau wants her burned before the old man wakes,” the passenger told the driver. “If he remembers who touched his pills, we have a problem. If Dante calls, the furnace is already running.”

“What about the needle marks and the drug on the floor?” the driver asked. “If the dose failed, the furnace won't,” the passenger replied. “Ash doesn't bruise.”

The bright arc of liquid across the treatment-room tile returned with horrible clarity. Moreau had prepared enough to kill me, but I had knocked more than half of it away before Dante ordered him to use the minimum; the furnace was not their preferred method, only the correction waiting when I refused to die on schedule.

The locks clicked above my head. I stopped listening for Dante, then caught myself doing it again. What was I waiting to hear—the van turning back, his voice ordering them to unzip me? By the time regret found this road, the furnace would leave him only ash. I commanded the one body I still controlled.

I worked my thumb until my fingers curled, then folded the false label's aluminum edge into the zipper stitching; a pothole threw me sideways and sliced my thumb, but I welcomed the sting because pain meant the drug was losing me.

The rear lock turned and a flashlight moved across Moreau's seal before a guard demanded the transport papers, forcing the driver to present Dante's authorization.

Paper snapped open outside. “Dante Moretti signed this, but his note says to hold the body,” the guard observed, keeping the beam on the zipper. “Open it.”

The driver raised Moreau's seal, but the guard kept his flashlight on the zipper. “Open it.” Fingers approached while I emptied my lungs, then a horn sounded and the doors slammed again before the seal broke.

The van accelerated before the gate had fully opened. “Dominic said no delays, and Moreau signed the final order,” the driver snapped. “We don't stop again. She goes straight into the furnace.”

So Dante had tried to stop the transport. My chest pulled toward that scrap of hope before anger caught it. Only now? Only after my body was on the road and could no longer inconvenience him?

I pushed two fingers through the cut and dragged the zipper to my shoulder. Cold air struck my face, but two armed escorts filled the rear window; jumping would only move my death beneath their headlights.

My bleeding thumb found the emergency release cable, and although the first pull did nothing, the second opened the door a hand's width and admitted a strip of gray morning light that looked painfully like freedom.

Headlights strobed across the rear window before an escort's voice cut through the phone. “Rear door!”

“The latch slipped.” The driver's answer came too quickly for the lie to sound natural.

“Stop the van,” the escort ordered, his voice sharpening through the speaker. “We check the body.”

I pulled the door shut before their headlights found my face, and when the gray strip vanished, panic tightened around my ribs; I had lost this opening, but at least I knew the release worked.

The driver reported the latch closed and thirty seconds remaining; the escort ordered no one to open it again before arrival.

Hands rolled me through heat and orange light until the gurney wheels struck a conveyor, where a woman stepped between my body and the furnace and blocked the escort's impatient signal. “I need the tag and an intake check.”

The escort ordered her to start the furnace, but she held two fingers against the damp plastic above my mouth while heat thickened inside the bag. At last, the fragile movement of my breath became something another person was willing to believe.

Her voice cut through the mechanical roar. “Stop. This body is breathing, and the tag is wrong.”