He bolts.
Ethan’s team blocks the exit line, and two plainclothes officers move in fast, controlled, and practiced. Gavin shoves once, then he’s pinned, and the sound that comes out of him is pure fury with nowhere to put it.
I stay where I am, palms pressed to the table, heart running too fast. An officer touches my shoulder and tells me I’m clear to leave, and they move me out through the staff entrance while Gavin shouts in the alley and gets loaded into a vehicle.
I don’t look back.
When I get back to the apartment, Ethan is already waiting, and the moment I walk in he shuts the door, pulls me in, and cups my face.
I let him.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Better than okay.” My voice shakes anyway because my body is catching up.
He nods once.
“He knew,” I tell him.
He frowns. “About the baby?”
“About the trap,” I say. “He felt something was off, and he ran.”
“Good,” Ethan replies. “That means he walked straight into it anyway.”
“He didn’t get away,” I say.
“No,” Ethan answers. “He didn’t.”
We stand in the quiet for a beat.
Then I smile, and it feels real. “One down.”
He smiles back. “Two to go.”
23
LILA
I thought Gavin would be the hard part, and I thought the part after would feel like relief, but it doesn’t.
It’s been two days, and New York keeps moving like nothing happened, which means my phone should be screaming and my inbox should be burning, but it’s quiet instead, and quiet is what makes my skin crawl. No unknown numbers, no new threats, no ugly little messages dressed up like concern, and no headlines about a man getting pulled out of a lounge and handed to detectives with a neat stack of evidence. Ethan says that’s what it looks like when the first step is solid, because the people doing the intake don’t leak details and Victoria doesn’t put her name on anything she can’t rinse.
I know he’s right, and I still don’t like it.
“They haven’t moved,” I tell him that morning while I stand in the rental kitchen and stare at a mug I’m not drinking from.
Ethan looks up from the laptop. “That’s good.”
“It’s controlled,” I correct, because “good” feels like tempting fate.
His mouth tightens, then eases, and he doesn’t argue with the difference. He’s learned I hear tone before I hear intention, and he’s learned that when I say something scares me, I’m not asking to be talked out of it, I’m asking for a plan.
“They’re watching for the next opening,” I add.
“Yes,” he says. “And we’re watching back.”
The rental is in Manhattan, and it isn’t under either of our names. It’s the kind of building you don’t notice twice because it’s clean and quiet and forgettable, and it has fewer strangers watching the lobby than the places with polished doormen and loud opinions. Ethan calls it smart, and I call it necessary, and neither of us pretends that “necessary” doesn’t come with a cost.
