I get up to get dressed and think about tonight.
I don't like it. I've not been liking it since Beckett told me about her little date night with him, and I've been filing the not-liking-it in the same place I file everything I can't act on immediately — organized, contained, accessible when needed.
I pick up my keys.
I reach the rink and pull into the same parking spot I do every time. I'm reaching for the volume knob to turn down the music before shutting off my car when Beckett drops in.
I sit back, staring at him.
His face is contained. Whatever this is, it's not an emergency. But it's not nothing.
I wait.
He stares forward. "Cody is asking Adela for the laptop."
"And?"
He looks at me. "And…what is he going to do to her when she doesn't have it?"
I consider that.
"You seriously think she's safe in all of this?" Beckett says.
“She was always collateral.”
He scoffs.
I shrug. "There's a reason he's kept her in the dark this long."
"She thinks I was in on it." He says it without looking at me. "The night of the break-in. She told me."
I glance at him.
"She figured it out."
I think about this for a moment. About a girl who arrives on campus knowing nothing and, three weeks later, is sitting across from Beckett in a coffee shop, telling him she knows he was in the room. Not asking. Telling.
I laugh.
Beckett looks at me.
"That's because she's not afraid of you anymore," I say. "Congratulations. You're not the monster."
He doesn't find it funny. "She's afraid of him." He says it more to himself than to me. "I think we need to stake out his house tonight."
"Why?"
"Because she's walking in there alone and Cody wants the fucking laptop. His dad knew she had it. I told her to lie—"
"Adela is his gem." I cut through it cleanly. "He won't sabotage what he has with her."
"How do you know?"
"Because I know how he thinks." I look at him. "He’s spending his healing time to build something. He's not going to blow it up the first night he has her alone. That's not how Cody operates."
"I think you're wrong."
I look at him for a long moment. At the certainty in his face.
