Two in the morning, the ninth night, and the rented flat on the eighth floor is the only lit window on the street. You stopped sleeping on the third night; by now you know the sounds of them the way a person knows weather. Somewhere below, a bus brakes, and the radio on the counter answers it with a click and a voice you have learned not to flinch at.

Royce says it without looking up from the door, where he is re-setting the deadbolt and the chain and the little wedge of wood he puts against the jamb the same way every night, because the same way is how he stays alive.

Kasper is at the window with the curtain drawn back two inches, a rifle laid across his knees, and he has not spoken since the lights went out; the wax he rubs into the rail has worn a shine into the wood. Rufus Bannerman is at the kitchen table with a tablet and a paper map neither of them needs, re-marking a route for the sixth time, and the pencil is the only other sound in the room besides the radio.

You are the story. The byline that put a cartel's accountant in the ground and a price on your head. For nine nights these three have kept you breathing in a flat that exists on no lease, and tonight the air in it has changed: Royce has stopped pretending the door is the only thing he checks; Kasper has given up watching only the street; and Rufus has stopped pretending the pencil is for the map.

He sets the pencil down and looks at you for the first time in an hour.

Rufus says, and his voice is the same as the night he met you at the car: calm, final, tired.

Royce grins without turning around. Kasper's scope ticks once and settles on nothing.

Rufus says.