He was running out of time. And so was she.
Whatever happened next, he needed to be ready to protect her. Even if it meant blowing his cover. Even if it meant compromising the mission.
Even if it meant admitting that somewhere along the way, keeping her safe had become more important than anything else.
Chapter Eight
The lamp in the living room was on.
Lila stood on her front porch with her keys in one hand and her bag in the other, staring through the window at the warm glow of the table lamp she never left burning. She turned it off every morning. Had been turning it off every morning for four years, ever since she moved back into her parents’ house after her father’s death. Lamp off, coffee maker off, deadbolt locked, door handle tested twice.
The lamp was on.
She looked at the front door. Closed. The deadbolt engaged—she could see the position of the lock from the porch. The doormat was straight. The potted fern on the railing sat where she’d left it.
She should call someone. Ronan. The police. That was the smart thing. The safe thing.
She put her key in the lock and opened the door.
The hallway was quiet. Same temperature. Her shoes from yesterday were by the door. The stack of centennial programs on the entryway table was undisturbed.
She walked through room by room. Kitchen first. Dishes in the drying rack, exactly as she’d left them. Coffee maker off. Back door locked. She checked the lock twice, running her thumb over the deadbolt, pressing the handle down to make sure it caught.
Living room. The lamp burned on the side table, casting its familiar yellow circle on the wall. The couch cushions were in the right places. The remote was on the arm of the chair. The bookshelf along the far wall—her father’s bookshelf, crammed with survey manuals and Florida history and the battered Tom Clancy novels he’d loved—was exactly as it should be.
Except for the third shelf.
The books were in order, but they’d been pushed forward. A quarter inch, maybe less. But Lila had spent four years living with her father’s ghost, and she knew the depth of every shelf the way she knew the lines on her own palms. Someone had pulled those books out and put them back. Someone had looked behind them.
Her father’s study was worse.
The door was ajar. She always kept it closed—not locked, not anymore, since she’d moved the important files out weeks ago. But closed, because the room still smelled like him when the door stayed shut, old paper and pencil graphite and the faintest trace of the aftershave he’d worn for thirty years.
She pushed the door open with her fingertips.
The desk drawers were closed, but the top one sat a fraction higher than usual, the way it did when you shut it fast instead of easing it into the track the way the old mechanism required. The filing cabinet in the corner was the same—closed, but the bottom drawer’s handle was turned slightly left instead of straight up and down.
They had been here. In her house. In her father’s study. They had stood where he used to stand and opened the drawers where he used to keep his work and looked for the evidence that would protect the men who killed him.
Lila’s hands began to shake.
Not with fear. With rage.
She walked back through the house, checking every window latch, every closet, every space large enough to hide a person. Nobody was there. They’d come and gone, probably during the day while she was at work, sliding in through one of the windows or picking the lock on the back door she kept meaning to replace.
She sat on the edge of her bed and pulled out her phone. Her fingers were trembling so badly she mistyped Ronan’s number twice before the call connected.
“Someone was in my house.”
Silence. Two seconds. Three.
“Are you there now?”
“Yes.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
