The sound of her shoes slapping against the floor echoed around them as she ran past Maria and right to him.
Darius was about to warn her to get behind him when the person who had freed him spoke up instead.
“Dang, Eve, let’s make sure our villainess doesn’t have a weapon first before you go all gooey on our hero.”
Darius tensed as he recognized the voice.
The woman known as Lana stepped slowly into view next to them. Her arm was still in a sling from where he had broken her wrist. She had a Band-Aid on her forehead.
The most surprising detail?
Eve rolled her eyes at the woman.
“Listen, I’m the one who is usually sneaking in through windows,” Eve said. “Being out in the open like this is new for me.”
In another surprising turn of events, Lana actually sighed.
“I don’t know if anyone has told you this yet, but there are these things called doors, Miss Myers. And I’m sure no one, not even Detective Williams here, would blame you if you started using them.”
Maybe it was the adrenaline wearing off, maybe it was shock at everything that had happened since he had woken up that morning or maybe it was because of the sheer amount of relief flooding his system at knowing that the woman he loved was okay that he did something out of character for the situation.
Despite himself, Darius laughed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Scott Keys went down in a blaze of glory.
A blaze of glory that was documented so well that the news stories went viral across the country.
He had tried to make his brother look like a victim of a greedy new wife and her lover, and instead he had ended up playing the main role of the greedy millionaire versus the underdogs.
At least Maria Sanderson had been quick to take her name out of the credits.
Once the feds had gotten involved and officially opened an investigation into the Keys Foundation and the man at its helm, she had made a deal. She had sold Scott out completely before ever seeing the inside of a jail cell.
She might have skipped prison altogether had another woman not stepped forward and made her own deal.
Lana had, as far as anyone could tell—and by her own insistence—never actually killed anyone. Not in Seven Roads and not during any of her previous contracts. Darius wasn’t sure he believed her, but when she provided audio recordings and physical evidence of being hired and instructed by Maria to kidnap and kill Eve, Darius and Mitchell, he couldn’t help but feel a bit grateful to her. Especially when Eve explained that Lana had been the one to get her out of the house when Jon had shown up.
“If she hadn’t shown up at the window, I would have walked into the living room with the two of you like it was nothing,” Eve had said, during their ride in the ambulance after the rest of thesheriff’s department had come to the warehouse. “Without her, all of us might have met a much different outcome. Even if she did do it for herself.”
Darius didn’t push his opinion on the matter, but he did decide to thank Lana before she was taken away in cuffs.
“You could have run,” Darius had told her. “Thank you for staying with Eve instead.”
Lana had surprised him with a laugh.
“To be honest, if she had been my boss, I think I would have done whatever she asked of me. Evelyn is pure loyalty. Even us bad guys can appreciate that.” Lana had paused before following the federal agent to their car. “I know my words don’t mean much, but just in case no one has told you yet, I think you might want to marry that woman.”
And Darius did.
Three months later, in between their childhood homes and the windows that had shaped their entire lives, Darius and Eve were married.
Darius wore a nice suit, Eve had a dress that poofed out at the bottom, and they even managed to find folding white chairs like Mrs. Dunphy used to have when they were kids. Which, according to Eve, had been an important detail. Her father walked her down the aisle while Theo and Winnie stood on either side of an arch her father had made by hand.
After Winnie and Price had been ambushed by Jon and the one last hired hand Maria had running around Seven Roads before being arrested, Theo and Price’s wife JJ had raised hell to find and rescue them. Unlike Jon, their attacker had survived their retribution and had gone to prison, where no deals were made and no promises of an early release were given.
Since then Darius’s Oil and Water duo had become somewhat inseparable.
