We sit her down next to Chance in the kitchen and give them the lowdown at the same time. Roxie is in one of my hoodies, her hair still sleep-mussed, her eyes wide but not panicked as we lay out everything we know.
“They’re coming tomorrow night,” I say evenly. “Locals have been hired for the hit, but someone from Caruso’s organization seems to be inbound, too.”
She doesn’t cry or break. She doesn’t even look away. All she does is swallow once, swipe her tongue across her lips, and nod. “What do you need from me?”
I lean on the counter, my eyes focused entirely on hers. “When we tell you to go to the safe room, you go. No hesitation. No arguing. Even if you think you shouldn’t.”
Boone adds, “Especially if you think you shouldn’t.”
Chance rests a hand on the back of her chair. “Once you’re inside, you stay put. No matter what you hear.”
A shadow flickers across her face at that before she nods again. “Okay. Show me where I’m going.”
Chance takes her hand and leads her to the safe room, showing her around before we take her back to her bedroom and make her run the route. Then again. And again, in the dark with the hallway lights off.
Boone times her, not letting her stop until she knows the way there well enough to reach it in under thirty seconds. Roxie curses him by the end, but her time is twenty-eight seconds, and I’ve never been prouder.
The rest of the day goes to preparation of silent, intense, and methodical work. Chance reinforces the blinds on the ground floor. Boone runs perimeter checks. I reconfigure our camera feeds into a single, rolling split-screen and back everything up on a separate hard drive in case they try to jam the signal.
Between tasks, we take turns sticking to Roxie like glue, but as dusk slides in, Boone makes a call none of us expect. “Family dinner. We’ll act like everything is normal, eat good food, and fucking live our lives for an hour.”
Chance gives him a look like he’s grown two heads. I’m leaning toward agreeing with him until Roxie smiles. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel like madness. It feels necessary.
A little while later, we sit down to chicken parmesan, garlic bread, and salad. The smell alone loosens the knots in my shoulders, and none of us brings up anything that makes my muscles tense again for the rest of dinner.
Instead, we talk about nursery colors, whether the twins will have her eyes, and how much I hate that stupid singing Christmas moose decoration in town. Boone insists he’d have had the nursery done by now if we’d just left him to it. Chance teases him for sounding cocky. Roxie laughs for the first time all day.
I find myself saying, “When this is over, I’m making chocolate cake. That one with the expensive cocoa.”
We clean up together in the shower, but disappointingly, that’s all it is. Then we all crawl into Boone’s massive bed, the four of us tangled up with her tucked safely among us.
For just those few hours, we pretend the world isn’t waiting outside with blood on its agenda, but the peace doesn’t last much longer. Around midnight, my laptop chimes, a small, sharp electronic sound that slices straight through my sleep.
My eyes snap open, my heart instantly hammering. I lunge out of bed and cross the room in three strides. One look at the screen tells me everything I need to know.
Encrypted message update: Schedule change. Moving tonight. ETA: 00:56.
I glance at the watch on my wrist. Holy fuck, that’s less than an hour.
My stomach bottoms out, but adrenaline surges through me. “Guys. Guys, you need to wake up. Now.”
Chance is already on his feet. Boone jerks upright, reaching instinctively for the weapon under the mattress. Roxie startles awake, her eyes huge. “What’s wrong?”
I meet her gaze. “They’re coming. Tonight instead of tomorrow. They’ve moved up the attack. We’ve got forty-five minutes before they’ll be here.”
30
ROXIE
As we leave the room, I don’t remember walking, only moving fast with Chance’s hand firm around mine as he hustles me down the hallway. It feels like any sound will make something awful happen faster, so I try to control my breathing and fail miserably.
My heart hammers, my palms are slick, but Chance moves like he’s carved from ice showing that he’s focused, controlled, and terrifyingly calm.
The downstairs office door slams behind us. Dillon locks it, crosses the room in two long strides, and shoves the bookcase against the far wall. The hidden panel clicks, and the narrow metal door behind it slides open with a faint, hydraulic hiss.
When I saw it the first time, I joked about how it’s very Doomsday Prepper Chic, but now it feels like jaws swallowing me whole. Chance turns to me, his hands coming to my shoulders and gripping them tight.
“Remember what you promised us, Rox,” he says, his voice serious but unafraid. “Do exactly what we said. You get inside and you stay there. No heroics. No leaving. No exceptions.”
