“Tallulah—”
“I keep thinking about how close it was,” she pushes on. “Not just to them. To us. He was on the property while we were sleeping. While Saoirse was sleeping.” Her eyes flick up, find the dark smear of trees in the headlights. “He could’ve chosen the house instead of the barn. He could’ve come in through the kitchen door. It’s all just…angles. Decisions. A different choice, and the last thing my brain would’ve known was Cotton’s alarm going off and me being grumpy about it.”
She shrugs, shoulders rising and falling on a thin breath. “Or I guess it could’ve lasted a little while. Death, I mean. He could have drawn it out, made it hurt.” She finally looks at me. “I’m not sure which I’d prefer. Immediate and relatively painless, or long and painful, but having the chance to say goodbye. And I’m sorry.”
Tears brim at the bottom of her eyes, one spilling over to trace the curve of her cheek.
“Iamsorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry I brought this to your door—to Cotton and Brodie and Saoirse. That I didn’t consider the risk tothemwhen I decided to poke the monster again.”
“Stop it.” My tone comes out rougher than I like. I curse under my breath and try again. “Just…stop. This is not your fault, Tallulah. He’s the one who made choices tonight. Not you. And we’re okay. We’re—”
“Tally.” She cuts me off with a shaky little smile, like the word itself is a life raft. “I like Tally better.”
Reaching over, I cover her left hand with my right, swallowing it up against her thigh. She twists it, turning it upward until our palms are aligned, and threads her fingers through mine.
Something settles, warm and full and aching, in my chest.
“Well, I like Tallulah,” I say. I clear my throat, eyes back on the road. “Now, call your friend Jack and give him an update. They need to get a team out there to work the area.”
She nods, thumbs the phone on, and dials one-handed, putting it on speaker. It rings once before a gruff male voice answers.
“Twiggy? Everything okay?”
She opens her mouth, then shakes her head, lips clamping together. I jump in.
“Jack. It’s Bran Kelly. We just left Brodie Gallagher’s place.”
There’s a beat of silence. “Is Twiggy okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says, finding her voice. “Just a little shaken up, which is…not entirely irrational, actually. Henry paid us a visit.”
“You’re shitting me,” Jack snaps. Background noise explodes—radio chatter, the thump of tires, someone shouting something I can’t make out. “Tell me you’re not still on the property.”
“No,” I say. “We’re gone. But you need to get your people out there. One of Brodie’s men is dead. Barn. North side.”
“Name?” Jack barks.
“Miguel,” Twiggy answers quietly. “He worked with the horses and other livestock. He—he went to check when the alarm tripped.”
Jack’s curse is low and lethal. “How bad?”
“Bad enough,” I say. “Throat. Clean work. Whoever did it knew where to cut and when to leave.”
Paper rustles on his end, the sound of someone flipping switches in their head as well as on the dash. “All right. I’ll get State on it and head that way. Where are you going?”
“Not back to her place, that’s for sure,” I answer.
Tally’s head swivels toward me, eyes flashing in the dashboard light. “What? You can’t just take me off somewhere! I need my computers, my network, my—”
“Where then?” Jack cuts in, steamrolling her protest. He knows her too well.
I suck my lower lip between my teeth, consider my options.
Icouldtake her back to Philadelphia. That would be Kael’s preference, if I called and asked. Put her in his tower, under his eyes, surrounded by men who answer to him first and last.
But the idea sits wrong in my gut.
This isn’t a chess piece I’m moving for Kael. This is…something else. Someone else. And there’s a part of me—selfish and stubborn—that doesn’t want my boss’s thumb pressed down on this particular scale.
