You ran us off the road. Leia's voice cracked. You could have killed us both. I corrected a mistake, Simon said, and the casual ease with which he said it turned Henry's stomach. Your mistake.
I gave you every chance to come home on your own. You wouldn't listen. So, I made the situation simpler. I'm good at simplifying situations. It's what I do.
He took another step. Now, you said you'd tell me everything I want to hear. Start with the part where you admit you were never going to be happy with a man who smells like sawdust. In the alcove down the hall, Alvarez had everything he needed. The confession was clean, recorded, unmistakable.
He gave the signal. And that was the moment the plan came apart. One of the officers in the stairwell shifted his weight, and a length of conduit the contractors had left leaning against the wall slid and clattered to the concrete floor with a sound like a struck bell in the silence. Simon's head snapped toward it. In an instant, the warmth drained from his face, and something cold and quick took its place, and he understood all at once the way an animal understands that he had walked into a room built for him.
He lunged for Leia. It happened faster than anyone could close the distance. Simon's hand closed around Leia's bandaged arm, and he wrenched her in front of him, putting her body between himself and the alcove where Alvarez was already moving, dragging her backward toward the one direction no one was covering, the dark mouth of the corridor that bent away toward the unfinished rooms. Leia cried out more in shock than pain and twisted against his grip and for one terrible second the whole careful machine of the plan stalled because the officers could not rush him without risking her and Alvarez was shouting for everyone to hold hold and the gap between Simon and the dark was closing fast. Henry did not decide to move.
He was simply moving. He came out of the supply room low and fast ignoring the white hot tearing in his ribs, ignoring the officers hiss to stay back and he reached Simon before Simon understood there had been anyone in that room at all. He did not throw a punch. He had spent his life using his hands to hold things together, not to break them apart and even now some part of him kept to that. Instead, he did the thing a man who lifts beams and carries lumber knows how to do better than anyone.
He closed his arms around Simon from behind, pinned the man's arms to his sides in a grip built by 20 years of physical work and hauled him backward and away from Lia with everything he had left. Simon was strong and he fought and the pain of it nearly put Henry on the floor. But Henry did not need to win. He only needed to hold. He only needed to keep this man wrapped up and stationary and away from the woman he loved for the handful of seconds it took for the rest of the room to arrive and that the holding on when everything in his body begged him to let go was the one thing he had finally learned how to do.