They know…me.
“This…this is different,” Elle says. “This isn’t a quote from one of your books, is it, Clover? This is…personal.”
“Chief,” Valen says, his voice deadly calm. “Call the police. Now.”
“Already dialing.”
Valen attempts to shift Madi out of his way with me, cradled against his side. “Madi?—”
“I’m not leaving her, Valen. I don’t care who you think you are. I’m the one who’s been here for her. I’m. Not. Leaving.” She places a hand on my shoulder and presses her forehead to the side of my face. “Not for anything.”
Valen stares down at us, and I see it—the moment his professional mask cracks. The moment the boy I knew peeks through.
“Clover,” he says softly. “Who knows you as Clover Styx?”
Guilt makes the acid in my gut crawl up into my throat when Madi stiffens beside me, but I can’t look at her. “No—no one. My foster family helped me change it legally to Danforth when they adopted me. They’re the ones who helped me get all mypaperwork too. And since ROS didn’t report official records to anyone, Clover Styx never existed.”
He’s nodding, and I get the impression his brain is working like a high-tech computer. “So only people who knew you…before, would know that name.”
“Right,” I whisper.
“How many people would you guess know that name?” he asks.
I’ve been so careful. So private. I don’t do signings or interviews or public appearances. I keep my author life separate from my real life whenever I can.
“Who could possibly?—”
“Miriam,” I whisper. “The Danforths were an older couple. He passed away when I was in high school, and she passed away a few years later. Miriam is the only other person who knew I even went into the foster system. She’d have been the only one who knew who to contact.”
Valen is eerily still. “Miriam is Terra’s twin sister?”
“Yes, but she’s not like Terra. She helped me escape. She—she was helping us, but I never heard from her again after she drove me to Virginia. She said it wouldn’t be safe.”
“Would she…” Madi looks from me to Valen. “Would she do this to you?”
All eyes are on me. I’m truly the key here. Valen doesn’t even know what happened that night, so it’s up to me to explain…it all.
“I—I don’t think so. She loved Valen.” I turn to him. “She did, you know. She loved you, and she wasn’t like Terra at all. In fact, they couldn’t have been more different. Where Terra was loud, Miriam was quiet. Terra was brutal with every word she said, but Miriam was thoughtful and kind.”
With each word I speak, his frown gets deeper, more defined. And suddenly, I see what he isn’t saying. This is someonefrom our collective pasts—someone who might be even more dangerous than Valen’s own mother—and we don’t even have enough information to make a list of suspects.
Terra passed away when I was nineteen, so the only connection we have is…Miriam.
I slip out of Valen’s hold and fall ungracefully into a chair. “If this were one of my thriller novels, I’d make a list of everyone from our past. Anyone who had any kind of power. Anyone who…wanted to punish us back then.” There’s a nick in my table, and I run my finger over it. “Anyone with something to gain by?—”
I can’t finish. I don’t want to. Because there’s only one explanation here—someone from Roots of Salvation is here.
They know where I live.
They’ve been to my home. On my porch. Close enough to leave packages.
They know who my friends are.
And they’re close enough to hurt me and those I care about.
“They won’t get close again,” Valen says, and there’s something in his voice—something fierce and protective and absolute. “Just because I don’t remember the pain inflicted doesn’t mean I don’t bear the scars too. I won’t allow it to happen again.”
“You can’t just?—”
