He closed his eyes and nodded.
I tipped his head up to look at me. “I love you.”
“I’m sorry I scared you, Daddy. I didn’t think, I just—”
“I know. We’ll talk about it later. For now, I’m going to need you to stay with Imogen. She needs someone right now, and that someone is you.”
He nodded. Already turning toward her. “I know.”
I watched him go to her and saw the way she looked up when he came close, the way her shoulders dropped until he reached for her and pulled her into a hug. Then I turned back to the work that still needed doing.
Chance was two hours out, but until then, we had a scene to secure.
Chapter twenty-eight
Noah
The bedroom Imogen had been waiting in was at the back of the house, overlooking the garden, and that was where we ended up. We were sitting on the edge of the bed in the quiet while the sounds of the men working filtered up from downstairs. Footsteps. Voices too low to make out. The occasional sound of a door.
She’d stopped crying. She was sitting very straight with her hands in her lap and the portfolio on the bed beside her. I just gave her time to sit with everything. With the knowledge of what she’d done and the real understanding of what that meant.
I knew that sometimes there weren’t any words, which was okay because words weren’t what you needed; what you needed wasjust for someone to stay. Julius and Mika had done that for me, and now I had an opportunity to do that for Imogen.
After a while, she said, “I couldn’t let him take you.”
I looked at her.
“When he grabbed you, I saw his face.” She shook her head slightly. “I knew what he was going to do. He’d use you to get the portfolio and then—” She stopped. “I knew what he was capable of. I’ve known for years.” Her hands tightened in her lap. “And I knew as long as he was alive, we would never be safe. Not me, not the baby, not you.” She looked at me. “Not any of the people he’d already decided to come after.”
I thought about what it meant to make a decision like that in a fraction of a second. To have the weapon and the knowledge of what it would mean not to take action, and then to do it. To pull the trigger.
I wouldn’t have wished anyone dead. I knew that about myself. But sitting there in that room, with the stillness of the house and the reality that Anton Corvane was no longer a threat, I felt something that I wasn’t proud of, but wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t feel.
Relief. Complete and total relief that was threaded with guilt for feeling it.
“It’s okay,” I said, because it was. It was complicated, and I was sure it would take her a lot of time to work through it, but it wasokay. I was there. She was there. The baby was there, and we were all going to be okay. “Whatever you’re feeling right now, it’s allowed.”
She looked at me for a moment. Then she made a sound that was a mix between a laugh and a sob.
“My therapist is going to have a very busy year,” I said with a laugh.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Mine, too.”
We heard the helicopter before we saw it.
I crossed to the window and looked out over the back garden, and there it was, coming in low over the tree line, lights blinking, descending onto the wide flat lawn below. The spinning of the rotor flattened the grass in a wide circle.
Two men got out.
Even from up there, I recognized Wolfe. He had a way of moving through a space like he owned it that was hard to miss. The man beside him was taller, dark-haired, and moved with easy authority. The two of them together would either be reassuring or terrifying, all depending on who was seeing them.
“That’s Chance Kelly,” I said.
Imogen came to stand beside me at the window. We watched them cross the lawn toward the back entrance where Hawk was waiting, and I thought about all the phone calls and planning and weeks of waiting that had led to this moment. To two men stepping off a helicopter onto a lawn in Ashford Grove at midnight, all because a woman in a blue gown had kept a business card.
Chance introduced himself to Imogen the same way he’d introduced himself to me all those months ago, in a calm, reassuring way to let her know he understood that the person in front of him had just been through something.
“Mrs. Corvane,” he said. “I’m Chance Kelly, FBI. I need to talk to you, but I want you to know before we start that you’re not alone with this. Everything you tell me tonight is going to help us figure out the best path forward for you.” He looked at her steadily. “But I’d like to speak with you privately if that’s all right.”
