“Okay.”
“Good night, Blackjack.”
“Good night, Beacon.”
The crutch tapped down the hallway until I couldn’t hear it anymore.
That’s when I came out of my stupor and went after her.
If she thought that was how the night was going to end, she was fucking wrong.
8
BEACON
Iducked into the empty room at the top of the stairs instead of going to mine.
The crutch was too loud on the hardwood, so I leaned against the wall, held it off the floor, and listened. The house was quiet for maybe thirty seconds before his footsteps hit the staircase. He took the steps fast—two at a time, from the sound of it—and turned left at the top, toward my room.
My door was at the end of the hall. I heard him stop in front of it.
He stood there long enough that I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep my breathing quiet. Then his footsteps went in the other direction, past the room where I was standing in the dark. Seconds later, his bedroom door closed with enough force to rattle the frame.
Putain.
I stayed where I was until I was sure he wouldn’t come out again, then made it to my bedroom without the crutch touching the floor once.
I sat on the cold bed in the colder room. My knee and arm ached, and neither of those was the ache keeping me awake.
Every minute I lay there, I was aware of the distance between his room and this one. Thirty feet of hallway. Two doors. That was it. I could go to him. Knock on his door. He’d open it. What happened after that would be the kind of mistake I couldn’t undo in the morning.
I’d kissed him because I wanted to. Going to his room would be because I wanted to. None of this was professional or strategic or defensible, and the woman who’d declared a war in a ballroom a week ago could not afford to spend the night in the bed of the man she was building that war with. Not yet. Not until I understood what it meant and what it would cost.
I reached for the bottle of pain medication the doctor had given me that I’d been refusing to take. I shook one into my hand, swallowed it dry, and rested my head onthe pillow. The pill took twenty minutes to take effect, and for every one of those minutes, I remained aware of the thirty-plus feet that separated his bed from mine.
The last thing I thought before the medication took me under was that I’d have to face him tomorrow, and I had no idea what I’d say or do.
The next morning,I returned to the site alone.
Kingston offered to drive me, but I needed the time on my own. The morning was cold and clear, November weather that turned the mountains above Lausanne sharp and close. I’d made this drive a thousand times, and I was making it for the last time.
My hands were steady on the wheel, and I was not going to think about last night. Not with the ruins ahead of me and an entire continent to leave behind before sixteen hundred.
The cantonal police tape was up, but the officers were gone. Fedpol had released the site. The building had finished collapsing on its own, and what had beenthe headquarters was a low mound of stone and timber and dust.
My knee had improved enough that I could walk short distances without the grinding that had made every step agony the first days. I got out and walked the perimeter.
I tried to find the place where I’d been pinned under the crossbeam. The east wall should have been to my left, the gallery entrance behind me, but the hall had no recognizable shape. There was no spot I could point to and say it happened here.
I’d driven out here for a farewell. There was nothing to say.
The west corridor was gone, buried under rubble that used to be a roof. Somewhere under there was the administrative office, the blown safe, and the desks where I’d spent years learning the work my family had died for. I’d gotten one thing out. Everything else had stayed.
A piece of carved molding lay near what had been the main entrance. I recognized the pattern from theceiling of the hall where the council met. Lyra, Eleanor, and Edgar had helped fund the restoration when Minerva first came into being. A craftsman in Bern had spent three months on the ceiling alone.
I closed my fist around it and held it there for a second before sticking it in my pocket. The entire ceiling of a hall where my family had worked for decades had come down, and this chunk was small enough to fit in my palm.
The turnofffor Morges came up twelve minutes south of the site. My parents were buried in the cemetery on the hill above the town.
