Dylan’s mouth curved.
There he was.
“Careful, Beautiful,” he said softly. “This face is undercover work.”
Nate groaned. “Brother, that face is going to get us questioned by every sorority girl in Cabo.”
Regan crossed her arms. “You two are supposed to blend in.”
“We are blending,” Nate insisted. “I have already said bro four times and ordered something blue with fruit in it.”
Dylan looked pained. “He has.”
I looked from Nate to Dylan, then back again.
The world was still dangerous.
The grave was still defaced.
The search warrants still existed.
The cops still wanted answers. My bruises were still hidden beneath fabric and shadow. My mother was still dead. My father was still furious. Men I didn’t know were still trying to decide what my story meant before I could write it myself.
But Nate was standing in my room looking like a frat boy who had lost a bet, and Dylan was watching me with soft eyes and no beard, and Regan was smiling like maybe laughter was allowed here too.
For the first time since dawn, I took a full breath.
Maybe Cabo was not freedom.
Maybe it was not even safety.
But it was distance.
It was salt air.
It was a balcony over blue water.
It was Regan’s hand over mine telling me I was not my mother’s sins.
It was Dylan clean-shaven in a doorway, trying not to look at me like he remembered exactly how it felt to kiss me under a sky full of ghosts.
CHAPTER 4
DYLAN
By day four in Cabo,I had developed three new problems.
One, I was getting too comfortable drinking cold Mexican beer in the sun like I was actually on vacation.
Two, I had a burner phone pressed to my ear and enough bad news coming through it to prove none of us were on vacation.
And three, Regan had apparently bought Destiny a swimsuit with the sole intention of ruining my life.
I sat beneath the shade of a wide white umbrella with my boots replaced by sandals, my cut replaced by an open linen shirt, and a bottle of Pacífico Clara sweating in my hand. It was cold, crisp, pale gold, and better than the watered-down tourist beer everyone back home thought of when they pictured Mexico.
Real enough to make me resent how good it tasted.
My sunglasses were dark polarized aviators, the kind that let me watch without making it obvious. That was the point. Security. Observation. Threat assessment.
