“Yeah, I wanted to honor the vibe but make it less likely I’d get my ass kicked when I went to college.”
Robbie grinned. “Honestly? It suits you.”
“Thank you.”
“Where are your parents now?” Robbie asked.
I hesitated. “Gone. Cedar passed when I was fourteen—pancreatic cancer. Rainbow hung around a few years longer, but she died in a biking accident on a commune in Oregon the winter before I started college. No drama. Just… gone.
Robbie didn’t say he was sorry. Didn’t offer any hollow condolences. He just bumped my elbow with his, then went right back to rolling dough as if he hadn’t missed a beat.
Then—noise.
A door slammed somewhere below us. The mechanicalthunkof shutters crashing over the windows made the air thicken in an instant.
I’d never seen Robbie move so fast.
“Move,” Enzo shouted, and Robbie was already shoving me ahead of him toward the hallway.
“What the?—?”
“Now.”
He pushed me into his and Enzo’s side room, which I’d never stepped inside, and slammed the door behind us. A mechanical bolt shot across with a metallicclackunder a box with a code entry.
“Intruder alarm,” he snapped. “We’ve drilled this. We lock down.”
“What the fuck, Robbie?” I pulled my knife out and flicked it open. “Let me out.”
He blocked the door with one arm, steady and firm, eyes never leaving mine. “Not yet.”
Then he reached above the desk, flipped a panel I hadn’t noticed, and revealed a screen embedded behind a pinboard. A live feed flickered into view—the same surveillance setup I’d seen Jamie and me running on my laptop.
Yard camera. North wall.
A subtle movement, almost nothing—just a shift in shadow, a ripple of motion where there shouldn’t be any.
“There,” Robbie murmured, pointing. “Top left corner. Someone’s here.”
I tensed, hand tightening around the knife. “Let me out. I can take whoever it is.”
Robbie shook his head and stepped between me and the door. “We’re safe in here. That’s the whole point.”
Safe.
I didn’t want to besafe. I didn’t want to hide behind locked doors and security feeds. I wanted todosomething. To fight. To move. To matter.
“I don’t want to be locked up as if I’m a fragile piece of glass,” I yelled into his face, chest heaving. “I’m not helpless.”
“You’re not,” Robbie said quietly. “But this is how we do this. And you’re not alone.”
That made it worse somehow. I hated how much sense it made. I turned away from the monitor, heart hammering, trying to breathe through fury and fear and something close to shame. “I keep myself alive.”
Robbie gripped my arm. “They’re here,” he said, and gestured to the screen. I saw Enzo. I saw Rio. One man from inside, the other circling the back. Our intruder was trapped between them.
A flurry of motion burst across the grainy screen—blurry, chaotic. I could just make out Enzo lunging, grabbing hold. Rio swung, a brutal punch landing square. The attacker staggered, then fought back, arms jerking, struggling for something—something in his waistband, maybe a weapon. It was too fast, too muddled to make out.
“No,” I breathed, fingers white-knuckled around the knife. Fuck! Rio! “I need to help him.”
