Footsteps hammer across the deck, fast and urgent. They skid to a stop beside me.
“Who was that?” Rafe rasps, breath cutting sharp. “What the hell happened out here?”
I don’t answer. I stare at the frothy wake the tender carved through the black water, my eyes burning from the effort alone. If I listen hard enough, I can still hear the engine whining—one last thin thread of sound before the waves swallow it whole.
Rafe nudges my arm, harder this time. The way he does when he’s pretending he’s not worried. “Yo. You okay? You hit?”
A sound leaves my throat, but it’s not really a word. More like a breath that forgot what it was supposed to be. Rafe’s gaze sweeps over me, scanning for blood, breaks, anything that makes sense of why I’m frozen to the deck like I forgot how to move.
“What’d you see?” he asks, his voice dropping into that low, dangerous register he uses when something’s wrong.
My throat locks up.
Because Ididsee someone.
A silhouette cut clean against the pier lights. A shape I know the way I know my own heartbeat. The tilt of her head. The sure-footed way she ran, quick and quiet, like she always knew exactly where she was going.
Bellamy fucking Hale.
The name detonates behind my teeth.
She vanished six years ago. The girl I spent a year seeing everywhere—every street corner, every crowd, every goddamn wave when the sunlight hit it wrong. A ghost I could never stop chasing. But she was a ghost. She had to be.
Fuck, maybe she still is.
And saying her name out loud would make me sound insane. So I swallow the truth until it burns, until it settles like something corrosive on my tongue.
“It was too dark,” I say finally. My voice sounds wrong in my own ears. “I saw someone, but it could’ve been anybody.”
Rafe’s eyes narrow.
I force myself to meet his stare and hold it. Dare him to call me out. Dare him to hear everything I’m not saying. My pulse hammers hard against my neck, like it’s trying to escape my skin.
After a few seconds, Rafe nods once. “All right. We’ll figure it out soon enough.” His jaw ticks. “Coco’s not gonna let this shit fly. She’s gonna think someone stole from her.Us.”
Cruz pops his head out of the cabin doorway. “Gage. Rafe. Move. Bishop’s about to put a hole in the wall.”
Rafe hops down first. I blink—finally—and the afterimage of the fleeing tender smears across my vision like smoke. The ache in my chest flares sharp and stupid.
I push it down and follow my brother inside.
The saloon is wrecked. Cabinets hang open, drawers dumped, the place torn apart like whoever got here first didn’t bother being gentle. Dust motes float through the light, suspended like the chaos hasn’t figured out where to land yet.
Bishop stands over the empty safe like it personally insulted him. Cruz leans against the galley counter, arms folded, expression smooth, eyes unreadable as ever.
“This yacht was definitely hit before we got here,” Cruz says. “Which means somebody fucked up.”
Rafe scoffs. “Yeah? Whose intel was this again?”
“No one said it,” Bishop snaps. “So don’t.”
Rafe clamps his mouth shut and flashes our brother a feral sort of grin.
I move past them, yank open a drawer. It’s empty except for a couple of stray papers and a small ziplock bag tucked in the corner. I pinch it between my fingers and hold it up. “Guess it’s not completely empty.”
Bishop shoots me a look. “What are we supposed to do with that? Fence this weed for fifty bucks?”
Cruz lifts his brows and waggles them. “Or we could just smoke it.”
