The Bloodline She Burned novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Roster

The Crown camera left, and the cafe stayed quiet for a long minute.

Gabriel came down the last step, took a marker from the counter and wrote five blank lines on the whiteboard behind the register.

"Who are your five?" he said.

Roz looked at the board.

"Nina," she said. "She was Crown's support until they cut her."

Nina put down her rag. "Who told you that?"

"You kept your hood up the whole time Dane was talking, and it has a Crown patch on the sleeve."

Nina studied her for a moment and then wrote her own name on the first line.

"Fine. But I am not healing for a captain who can't use a map."

"I'm the captain," Roz said.

Gabriel capped the marker. "No. I'm not on your roster. I'm banned, remember? Your name goes on the sheet. Mine doesn't."

"You're still my coach."

"I haven't said yes."

"You wrote five lines on the board."

He looked at the board and then at the marker, and Roz saw him decide not to argue.

"Get your coat," he said. "We need a sniper."

The sniper was nineteen and worked the fryer at a diner on the east side.

Gabriel drove them there in a van with a cracked windshield and a heater that only ran on high.

They found the boy on his break behind the building, sitting on an overturned bucket with a small gaming laptop on his knee.

Grease had soaked through his apron.

He was playing Breakline on a connection borrowed from the dentist next door, and his shots landed from the far end of the map.

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