Bran turns to me.
The softness he had for Saoirse is gone. What’s left is all sharp edges and decision.
“Pack your bag,” he says.
My brain stutters. “What?”
“We’re leaving,” he says. “Tonight.”
“Where?” I ask, even as my body is already moving toward the door, heart hammering. “Brodie’s—”
“I’ve got a place,” Bran cuts in. “It’s safe, and no one outside Kael’s circle knows it’s mine. Jack and State will cover here; you’re done. You and I are getting off this property before the sun’s up.”
Cotton lifts her head. “She’s not the one who put the target on us,” she says fiercely.
“I know,” Bran says. His gaze flicks to her, then back to me. “But she’s the one he wants. And this—” he gestures toward the barn, the night, the house “—this is exactly what he does. He pushes. Sees who breaks. Sees who moves where.”
He steps closer, voice dropping. “He is not getting a second shot on Kael’s people under Kael’s roof. Or Brodie’s. Pack, Gentry.”
For once, I don’t argue.
I nod, throat too tight for words, and slip past him into the hall. My vision blurs as I move, the polished wood and framed photos smearing into streaks.
My presence did this, whether they want to say it out loud or not. If Henry hadn’t decided to come back for me, Miguel would still be asleep in his bunk with hay in his hair and a stupid country song as his alarm.
Silent tears spill over and track down my face, hot and useless.
As I reach the office door, I hear Brodie’s low voice behind me, meant for Cotton but echoing down the hall.
“Soon as Bran has her stashed safe, we take a break,” he murmurs. “Couple weeks away. Ireland, the coast, I don’t care. Somewhere Henry Thurston has never heard of. I’m not taking chances with you or our girl.”
Cotton makes a small, broken sound. “We can’t just run, Brodie.”
“We can,” he says. “We can and we will, if that’s what it takes. Let the Irish mob and the law tear strips off him. You and Saoirse don’t get to be in the middle of that. Not again.”
His words wrap around my guilt like barbed wire.
I close the office door gently behind me, lean my back against it for one long, shaking breath, then push off and go to pack the bag I should have kept ready.
TWENTY-ONE
BRAN
Amiledowntheroad, I pluck Tallulah’s phone from where it sits in the console and toss it to her.
“Call Brady and let him know what happened.”
She catches it on instinct, then just stares down at it in her lap like it’s a foreign object. Her fingers graze the edges of the device with a featherlight touch. I can’t help but notice the fine tremble in them.
“He was going to kill us,” she says, voice low.
I do a double take. “Tally…”
She shakes her head a little, eyes still on the dark screen. “It’s not that I didn’t know he wanted to kill me. His intent is obvious. It’s more…” She swallows. “Miguel went out to check a noise in the barn. Normal night. Normal routine. And then it wasn’t. Onesecond he’s half asleep, probably cursing about the cold, and the next—” Her mouth tightens. “The next, his life is over because Henry Thurston decided it was convenient.”
Her fingers tighten around the phone.
“He’s never been real in that way before,” she says. “He’s been chat logs and profiles and patterns and grave markers. But tonight—” Her voice wobbles, and she bites it off. “Tonight he was a man who walked onto my cousin’s land and took someone’s life because I exist.”
