Zane leaves a few hours later. “Thanks for having me, Mrs. Black,” he says before turning to me next, opening his arms. “Come here, you.”
I fold into him, barely registering the hug as he whispers against my ear, “Not much longer.”
That’s all. But it clings to me like static.
Then, he’s gone.
The door shuts. The performance ends.
I excuse myself before my mother can start another monologue about behavior and image and whatever else she’s trying to mold me into. I don’t wait for the tea she promised to send up. I don’t even fake a smile.
I make it upstairs, slip into the bathroom, and twist the faucet on high, letting the water roar. Letting it cover me.
The mirror catches my reflection—blank-eyed, bone-tired, but lit from the inside with something vicious and awake.
I unclasp the locket and crack it open. No photo, just a tiny, folded square of paper.
I unfold the note.
“He put a ring on your finger. I’ll put a knife in his throat.”
SIX
TALON
Day thirty-seven without Mara, and I’m losing my fucking mind.
“You’re pacing again,” Beck says without looking up from his laptop. He’s sprawled across the couch in the safe house living room.
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re wearing a hole in the carpet.”
“Then Dredyn needs better carpet.”
Dredyn, who’s at the dining table methodically cleaning his gun collection for the third time this week, doesn’t even glance up. “Touch my carpet and I’ll shoot you.”
“You’d have to catch me first.”
“Children,”Jasper signs from his position by the window. He’s been stationed there since dawn, watching the street like Mara might magically appear if he stares hard enough.“Focus.”
I stop pacing long enough to drag my hands through my hair. It’s too long, falling into my eyes, making me look like some kind of unhinged Victorian ghost. Which, fair. I feel pretty fucking unhinged right now.
Thirty-seven days.
Eight hundred and eighty-eight hours.
Fifty-three thousand, two hundred and eighty minutes since I watched Mara walk into that ballroom with her father and come out engaged to a murderer.
“We have to do something,” I say, not for the first time, and probably not for the last.
Beck gestures at his laptop. “We are doing something. I’m tracking every dollar that flows through Harrington. Every account, every shell company, every offshore?—”
“That’s not enough.”
“It’s what we have.”
“It’s not enough!” The words come out louder than I intend, echoing off the walls. Three sets of eyes turn to me.
