Nine words. Cool. Distant. Exactly what I meant.
She doesn’t hit enter until she looks up at me. Waits.
I give a short nod, and she presses Send.
We wait.
Brady’s jaw flexes. Cotton comes around behind me so she can see the screen and grips my shoulder without seeming to realize it, fingers digging in.
A new line appears.
Careful. You’re a special one but pride gets little birds knocked out of the sky.
The way Tallulah flinches is small. I feel it everywhere.
“Okay,” Brady says. “That’s enough for today.”
“I agree,” I say.
“I don’t,” Twig says. “That’s nothing.”
She says it automatically, because disagreeing is wired into her DNA, but her voice is too thin and she’s sitting too close for me not to notice the way her breathing’s gone shallow again.
“You do,” I say quietly.
She swallows. Her eyes shine, not with tears—she’s too stubborn for those right now—but with something rawer. Fury. Fear. That old, bone-deep exhaustion of someone who keeps having to fight the same battle in different outfits.
“Hey,” Cotton says softly. “Come up to the house for a bit. You can bring your laptop, we’ll set you up in a quiet space. You don’t have to stare at that screen alone.”
She looks like she wants to say no on principle.
Then she glances toward the window—toward the dark slice of glass where he’d been last night.
I see the moment she loses the argument with herself.
“Fine,” she mutters. “But if your children touch my hotspot, I’m teaching them how to wipe their browser history.”
Cotton beams. “Deal.”
Brady stands, tucking his notebook away. “Send me screenshots,” he says to me. “Everything. I’ll loop state in, see if they can pull anything from timestamps or routing. You get her out of here.”
“I can get myself out of here,” Tallulah says.
“I know,” Brady says. “I’d just like you to do it with six-four of Philly muscle between you and the street.”
He claps my shoulder on the way to the door. “Don’t let her charm you into anything stupider than we’ve already agreed to.”
“Bit late,” I say.
Tallulah huffs. “Rude.”
Tenminuteslater,we’reat my truck. Tallulah eyes the passenger side like it personally offended her.
“This thing is ridiculous,” she says. “Why is it so tall?”
“So it can drive over things that want to kill you,” I say.
She tries to climb up on her own, boots slipping on the snow-dusted step. She gets one knee on the seat and wobbles.
