“Could Morrow actually find people we know?” It’s not like he’s going to have Zoey’s ability to find every small detail about my life. “All he knows are our first names, and that we don’t really work in mold remediation.”
“Don’t forget, he died recently,” Nico says. “He’s been in prison for decades with little to do but listen. Stories circulate in every prison, no matter how high the security. About other inmates, mostly, but national cases, too.”
The silence is heavy. The scratching noise grows to fill it.
“Morrow doesn’t know who I am,” I say. With all the terrible things that happen in the world, there’s no chance he’d remember anything about me, even if he did hear about my family. He’d just think Stanley Daniels did it wrong.
“We have to consider every possibility,” Nico says.
My mind flicks to Bonnie all alone and vulnerable, with no iron walls or salt lines to keep ghosts out. I push the thought away. She wouldn’t be useful to Morrow.
I close my eyes for a second, giving my head a firm shake.
“Dylan doesn’t need a security detail,” I say. “He’d push me into a meat grinder with no hesitation. Probably wouldn’t eat me, but if he did, he’d complain I was too gamey.”
Nico presses his lips into a line.
“Dylan wasn’t a serious thing,” I say, because I want to make sure he really knows it. “Of course I like Griffin, but as a friend. Nobody cares about me that way. Unless you count Bob, but the Game Master would have toseriouslyswitch up his M.O. to convince Bob to pull out his own teeth.”
“I promise, I won’t let anything happen to you,” Nico says.
My stomach lurches like I crested a roller coaster. He seems to realize how that sounded, because he adds in a more controlled voice, “Or Griffin. If Morrow wants you, he’ll have to go through all of us, and that’s not going to happen.”
The air between us charges with something that makes every nerve ending in my body stand at attention. Our eyes lock.
Oh God.
I push out of my chair, needing distance, needing air, needing anything other than sitting across from him while my body screams at me to climb over this table and grind on him.
“Want a Pop-Tart?” I hold up the box so he can see it over my shoulder.
“No.”
“Let me guess,” I say, “you’re one of those ‘food is fuel’ people who eat nothing but grilled chicken and sad vegetables?” His body sure supports that idea.
His chair scrapes. In seconds, he’s opening the freezer, pulling out a pint of ice cream, and grabbing a spoon, and then he leans against the counter opposite me. He takes a bite right from the container.
“I just take my poison a little differently.” He lifts the spoon in a mock toast, eyes not leaving mine.
I gulp as his mouth closes around the spoon, his lips gliding across metal, and I have to stop myself from making a sound. He makes eating ice cream look borderline pornographic.
He holds the pint out toward me. “Want some?”
I need some, to cool me down and stop me from melting into a puddle on the floor. I grab a spoon and step close enough to reach the pint, then scoop out the biggest chunk of cookie dough I can find.
“So.” I settle against the counter across from him. “Do you ever sleep? You were awake when you saved me from Billy acouple days ago. You’re up now. I see you running at ungodly hours of the morning.”
“You had to be awake to see me,” he says. “Doyouever sleep?”
It’s like looking at myself in a mirror. Albeit a funhouse one, and one that makes me look very tall. All that pain he’s trying to stuff down behind sarcasm and avoidance? I know that playbook by heart. It’s mine.
“I’m just saying you look tired,” I say.
“You sure know how to give a guy a compliment,” he replies.
I take another bite of ice cream, watching him watch me. He tracks the movement of my spoon.
My entire body heats under his gaze. It’s too much to look at him, so I focus on spooning a stubborn piece of cookie dough out of the pint like I’m some kind of ice cream archaeologist.
