The PowWow

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Under Authority

"He's mine."

Jacob's voice, low and certain and final. Not a challenge — a statement about the way things were going to be.

My hand was still hovering where it had stopped. The heat hadn't left me. Not even close.

"Why?" I said.

He stepped up beside me. "Because you are angry."

I let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "You saw what he did to her."

"I did."

"Then you also saw I can beat him."

A beat. "Yes."

That stopped me harder than an argument would have. I turned.

"And that is not the point," he said.

"Then what is?"

"This is vengeance," he said. "And vengeance belongs to the Lord."

Clean. No weight behind it except the weight of being true.

I held his gaze. The anger was still there — burning, loud, looking for somewhere to go. But it had lost some of its footing.

I stepped back. One step. Then another.

The space between us opened and Jacob moved forward to fill it. He settled into his stance — lower than before, centered, still. Different from the gym two days ago in a way I felt more than I could name.

Nathanial watched the exchange with something like amusement resettling across his face. There it was — the confidence coming back. The certainty of a man who believed the only variable was which of us he was defeating.

"Back to you," he said, rolling his shoulders. "I was hoping."

Jacob didn't answer.

He just was.

Nathanial came first. Of course he did — fast, direct, force applied with the confidence of something that had always been sufficient.

Jacob met him.

No wide strikes, no space between them. Hands found arms. Shoulders found shoulders. Weight shifted and locked. Grappling — close, brutal, every movement happening inside the space where size mattered most and technique mattered more.

Nathanial drove forward, trying to overwhelm. Everything he'd used before, amplified.

Jacob gave ground.

Then stopped giving it.

Nathanial pressed harder, working against something that had decided it was done moving.

"Already forgot?" he said, voice tight with effort. "I beat you once."

Jacob's breathing came slow. Measured. "You beat me."

A hold broke. Another was taken.

"You did not beat the Lord."

Nathanial scoffed — a short, dismissive sound — and pushed harder, trying to break the stance, the balance, the thing Jacob had become. Jacob held. Then adjusted. Small. Subtle. In exactly the place Nathanial wasn't watching.

"My namesake," Jacob said, through the strain and against it, "wrestled with God."

Nathanial laughed. Sharp. Brief. "You're not your namesake."

Jacob's eyes lifted.

"You're right again."

A breath.

"But you're not God."

It was fast. Too fast, even for me to fully track.

Jacob shifted his weight — just enough, just the right fraction — and disappeared under Nathanial's centerline. Turned. Drove through with everything he had.

Nathanial lifted.

For one suspended moment, his feet left the floor.

Then impact.

He hit the wooden floor with a sound that settled the room.

Jacob followed him down — no hesitation, no pause, no moment of assessment. An elbow came across the throat. Not crushing. Controlling. The kind of ending that doesn't need anything after it.

Silence.

Nathanial didn't move.

I was already moving.

I dropped to one knee beside Alicia, hands working at the bindings. "Hey," I said, quieter than I'd said anything in the last ten minutes. "We're getting you out."

She didn't thank me. Didn't collapse. Just nodded — one nod, still defiant, still the same person who had been sitting with her eyes on him the whole time we'd been in this room.

Good.

The ropes gave. I pulled them free and handed her my phone.

"Call Rachel," I said. "Tell her where we are."

She took it without hesitation. No shaking. No delay. Just action — the way she'd been the whole time, underneath everything he'd done to her.

I stood and crossed back to Jacob. He was still standing over Nathanial — not pressing, not threatening. Just present. Making certain.

"Hey," I said, and held out my hand.

He took it. I pulled him up. He was breathing harder than he would have admitted, but steady.

"Thank you," I said.

Jacob looked at me. A small pause — the kind that was doing more than pausing.

"You did the same for me," he said.

He had. In a different room, a different fight, a different kind of moment. He had.

Behind us, Alicia's voice was calm and controlled as she spoke into the phone. Giving the address. Giving the facts. A detective, even now.

In front of us, Nathanial lay still on the mat.

For the first time since we'd walked into that lobby two weeks ago, he didn't look like a man who was certain about anything.

I glanced at Jacob. He was already looking past him — not at Nathanial, not at the gym, not at what had just happened. Past all of it, toward whatever came next.

Then Nathanial moved.

Just his head, turning away from us. A small sound — barely above a breath.

"No," he said. "It cannot be."

A pause.

"Surreal."

Another pause.

"Help me."

No help came.

The word lay there in the silence, unanswered, in the room where he had arranged everything so that he would never need to say it.