“I think you should talk to him,” I said. “He’s never mentioned you. I really don’t think he’s harboring any resentment toward you. He knows, as well as I do, that no kid had any control over their lives at that estate.”
“Maybe,” he murmured. “It’s not just that though. I think seeing Rafe might…open old wounds. Ones I did a rather shitty job of patching over but theyarepatched. I need them to stay that way.”
“You can’t avoid him forever.”
“I won’t,” he said and gave me a slim grin. “I promise.”
The roof door banged open behind us.
“Dancing?” Mickey crowed loudly, causing Alexander and me to jerk apart. “To this shit?” He strode to the radio, twisting the dial until it caught on a heavier rock anthem, then grabbed my hands and whipped me around. I choked on a screech of laughter, and Alexander laughed too, the three of us bouncingand shouting, playing air guitar like idiots until Heath and Monty came up to the roof and joined in, all of us screaming along to lyrics that seemed to loop endlessly.
I tried to enjoy it. I really did. But when I look back on it now, all I see is Alexander stumbling toward my work station, catching himself against it while the others passed me around. None of them noticed him coughing up blood or the way his hand clutched at his stomach. They didn’t see my smile fall; they just kept spinning me, round and round, while Alexander stayed fixed in my vision, blurred and pale as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, cast all of us one tortured, longing look, and left the roof without saying goodbye.
“Stop,” I breathed, but it wasn’t the music I wanted to end. It was the world. I wanted to blow the whole thing to smithereens, exhaustion hooking into me and dragging me under, our small pocket of relief dissolving as surely as the smoke from my bombs.
?Arden?
Iwantedfor the first time in a very long time without guilt, and Alexander Creed was my reason. I think that’s where the anger rooted. Well, one root of many. Viktor. Halden. They were roots, too, my reasons why I kept going, but Alexander…Everyone in my life called me bright, but when I looked for the light, all I saw was his. We were a pair of flames—me for Creed and him for Ravens.
“Suitable,” he said, the two of us staring at our reflection in the mirror of his room. We were dressed to finally visit the compound. I wore a wig and heavy makeup, the straight blond hair in a low knot at the back of my neck. I had my sunglasses in my skirt pocket and my cane to fit the blind, dutiful wife ensemble was waiting in the car. “Now repeat it back to me,” he continued.
“Hello,” I said with the correct amount of disdain he taught me. “Yes, I’m Mrs. Harris.” Harris was the surname Alexander used with Halden, considering Halden was too familiar with Creed and Mayhew.
“Good.” He adjusted his tie. “Now the codes.”
“843,” I recited, “124590. If the plan goes awry, cut the orange wire and crush the detonator.”
“Perfect.” But he was nervous, trying to be brave, still fiddling with his tie.
I turned to face him, smoothing down the professional dress he had ordered and delivered for me. “We’ll get her,” I promised him. “I’ll sacrifice myself to the compound if it means you get your sister back. You deserve time with her before the end.”
Alexander scowled, his eyes pinning me. “Don’t talk like that. I’m going home with both of you, or I’m not going home at all. You both have lives to live, Arden. I don’t. So don’t say things like—”
“What do you mean ‘you don’t’?” Monty’s voice poured from the doorway.
Alexander and I jumped, and panic riddled him with tension, his back stiffening and fists clenching. Monty peered at us. She was in all black, ready for the mission, her tank and leggings skintight and her combat boots knotted several times. She had her hands stalled in the middle of pinning her short hair back, her eyes wide in a panic that matched Alexander’s. “Alex?” she said again, taking another step into the room.
“It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “We’ll talk about it when we have Florence.”
Monty looked to me with a scowl, sliding the last bobby pin in and folding her arms. “Fess up. Now.”
I couldn’t. It wasn’t my secret to tell, but guilt flared anyway. None of the Ravens had given me any reason to keep a secret like that from them. I understood Alexander wanting to tell them with his sister safe, but I hated lying. “He was just being sarcastic,” I tried.
I saw Alexander relax beside me, easily shifting into a mocking stance of annoyance. “Exactly.”
Monty didn’t completely buy it. Her eyes flicked between us, but she set her jaw. “We leave in ten,” she said and left us to head down to Mickey’s restaurant.
“Thank you,” Alexander said with a heavy breath. “I’ll tell them. I swear I will. I just need to get through this first.”
I didn’t answer and moved to leave, but he caught my wrist. I closed my eyes a moment, breathing out slowly before I turned back to him. “I don’t want to be put in that position again.”
Alexander ran his thumb over the inside of my wrist in a rare showing of affection. “We get Florence out, let her get her bearings, and then I’ll sit everyone down and tell them. I promise, Arden.” There was something else in his expression, though, something that had my stomach knotting. I tensed in his grip, and he held me a second longer before shutting his eyes and saying, “They’re downstairs.”
He didn’t have to tell me who. It was the way he said it—I knew. He wasn’t sparing any Raven for this mission. He wouldn’t risk being one person down and losing Florence because of it.
Creed was there.
Creed.
