I didn’t have an answer that wasn’t insulting, so I didn’t give one. “Just… don’t be alone if you can help it.”
Rosa’s eyes hardened. “Women are always alone.”
The words followed us out the door like a curse.
Outside, the sun hit me full in the face, bright and uncaring. The neighborhood looked exactly as it had when we arrived—quiet, lived-in, with small signs of pride tucked into worn structures. Hanging baskets, a painted mailbox, a child’s chalk drawing on the sidewalk.
Normal.
That normality felt obscene.
We walked for a block without speaking.
“We’re still getting breakfast,” Rios announced.
It took me a beat to understand what he meant.
“What?” I asked stupidly.
He glanced at me, expression unreadable. “I promised you breakfast.”
The words were simple. The intent wasn’t. He was giving us an action because otherwise we’d stand in the street and let the fear eat us alive.
“I’m not hungry.” How could I possibly think of food with all the implications swirling in my head?
“Yeah, you are.”
I huffed a breath that might’ve been a laugh if my throat wasn’t tight. “You’re insufferable.”
“Carrera trait.” As if to settle the matter, he cupped my elbow and angled us back toward the boardwalk, toward the tourist part of town that pretended nothing bad could happen under all that bright sunlight. As we walked, my mind kept snapping back to Rosa’s answer.
No one would report her missing. They’d say she left. And if she left, no one had to look.
Something cold and hard settled behind my ribs. This wasn’t only about Priya anymore.
It probably never had been.
Twenty-One
RIOS
Madden unlocked the cabin of the Second Wind and stepped inside without a word, setting the paper bags on the counter like the motion itself was automatic. No commentary. No deflection. No attempt to make it lighter.
That worried me more than if she’d snapped.
I’d only been inside her boat twice before. Once, briefly. Once longer—after Willie—when everything had gone sideways and we’d ended up here because there was nowhere else quiet enough to sit with the aftermath. I hadn’t paid much attention then. My focus had been on her breathing, the way she’d gone still when the adrenaline wore off, the careful distance she kept between herself and anything that might tip her into feeling too much.
This time, I absorbed the rest as I did a quick scan. Not because anything had changed. Because I had.
The boat was small and functional in the way borrowed things always were. Nothing extravagant. Nothing precious. But there were choices layered into it—quiet ones, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for them.
A plant near the window, angled deliberately toward the light. Not decorative. Alive. Maintained.
Books stacked beside the berth, not tossed there but arranged so the spines lined up clean. Not legal texts. Not work. I spied a thriller by Cope Shepherd, and some romance names my sisters loved. Things she’d read for herself.
A soft blanket was folded at the foot of the bed. The kind of blanket more about comforting textures than warmth. For some reason, that made me think she’d had little real softness in her life.
She hadn’t been here long enough to redecorate. She hadn’t had time to reinvent the space. And given she was borrowing the boat, she probably didn’t intend to. But still she’d attempted to cozy the place up. To create a buffer. A space where the world couldn’t reach her all at once.
