Ever shakes his head, sucking on the corner of his lip. “Nope.”
“Shit. Fine, whatever. That’s your little red wagon.” I put my hands on my hips. “She told me she’s looking for an assassin. I don’t think Cal knows anything about that, or he would’ve mentioned it.”
Neither of them flinches.
“You already knew she was asking.”
Ever’s jaw ticks. “We knew she was sniffing around. She’d said just enough to be dangerous.”
Shiloh shrugs one shoulder and drops into the chair across from my desk, sprawling on instinct even though his eyes stay sharp. “She tried it with me first. Then with a couple girls upstairs. Thought she was being smooth.”
“She was definitely not being smooth,” Ever says.
Shiloh turns his head and looks at him. “Says the man kissin’ her in a stockroom like he was trying to knock sense into the both of ’em.”
Ever’s stare cuts hard enough to split wood. “You wanna run that back, and this time don’t leave out whatever happened last night?”
The room compresses.
I don’t raise my voice. “You can fight over her in a minute. Listen first.”
They both go still, not because they like being checked, but because they know the tone and what it means.
I look at Shiloh. Then Ever. “She gave me a name.”
That gets them. Shiloh’s mouth loses what was left of the grin. Ever doesn’t move at all, and that’s louder on him than cursing.
“It’s Deacon she wants dead.”
I watch it hit. Recognition runs through both of them,ugly and immediate. Old history has a shape to it. You can see it when it walks into a room.
Shiloh shifts the kitten slightly and scrubs a hand over his scruff. “Well. Shit.”
Ever’s eyes drop once to the floor and come back up. “She said his name to you? We haven’t been able to get it out of her, and we’ve been trying.”
“Plain as day.”
“Did she have any idea who she was saying it to?” Shiloh asks. “Any at all?”
“If she does, she didn’t show it.”
Ever shifts his weight, uncrosses and recrosses his arms, and I catch the tension in his hands before he buries it again. “Shit. You think she’s gonna be a problem?”
“She’s already a problem,” I say. “Question is whose problem she’s going to end up being.”
I let the silence work for me a few seconds, then point at Ever. “Start talking. Everything you know. No trimming and no holding back. I know a little from Cal, but he doesn’t even know why she’s here. He just said she told him she had questions she wanted answers, which we all know probably isn’t a good thing.”
Ever doesn’t like the order. I can see that in the set of his shoulders. He gives it anyway.
“So, the paperwork in her bag doesn’t match the story she’s telling.”
“You searched her things.”
He looks at me without blinking. “Shiloh did. You want me to be sorry?”
I hold his stare another beat. “No, I want details.”
Shiloh tips his head back and looks at the ceiling like he’s already tired of this conversation, but he’s listening to every word. “She’s telling people she comes from Virginia originally. It’s not the truth, obviously. We know from Cal and the stuff in her bag that she’s from here. She didn’t have much in her bag, but there was some state paperwork. School records. Foster placement—with Cal—from years ago. And then there’s her name. Reva Leigh Hart.”
