“Second best,” Leo corrects, pointing his fork at her.
She rolls her eyes, but her cheeks flush, and something loosens in her face that’s been wound tight for weeks.
Leo asks about the drive, and Genevieve gives him the version that doesn’t include me killing a man forty-eight hours ago. He asks how long we can stay, and I tell him as long as he thinks we’re safe, because Paxton’s cover will hold and the car can’t be traced and for right now, nobody knows where we are.
But I’m not naive enough to think they won’t come looking here.
When the plates are cleared and the wine bottle is nearly empty and Genevieve is leaning against my shoulder with her eyes half-closed, Leo starts talking about the case again. Specifics. Timelines. The footage and what it could mean if they can get it to the right people. I answer what I can. Genevieve fills in gaps I don’t have. Between the three of us, a plan forms, loose and fragile, but real.
For the first time in years, a little bit of hope seeps through the cracks.
This could work. I could get out.
It’s almost ten when the knock comes.
Three raps. Measured. Unhurried.
Leo goes still.
I’m on my feet before the second knock ends, my body moving the way it always does when danger shifts the air, and Genevieve straightens beside me, the drowsiness gone from her face like someone flipped a switch.
“Are you expecting someone?” I ask.
Leo doesn’t answer. He’s staring at the door with a look I can’t read, and that bothers me more than the knock itself, because Leo DeGrance is a man whose face I’ve been reading all night.
“Papa?”
“Stay here.” He stands, and there’s something heavy in the way he moves toward the hallway.
I follow him anyway.
“I said stay.”
“With respect, sir, that’s not happening.”
He looks at me over his shoulder, and whatever he sees makes him stop arguing.
The hallway is dim. Leo looks through the peephole, and almost in slow motion, his shoulders droop, his forehead rests against the door, and then it slams open like someone kicked it in.
There are four men on the stoop. Suits, no ties, with the kind of build that says private security or ex-military. Two of them have hands inside their jackets in a way that doesn’t leave much to the imagination. They’re flanking a woman the way you’d flank someone worth protecting, and I register all of this in the space of a heartbeat.
Then I see her face.
And the floor drops out from under me.
Beverly.
She looks older. The lines around her eyes are deeper, and her hair is shorter than it used to be, threaded with more silver at the temples. She’s dressed well, expensive but understated, the kind of clothes that say money without sayinglook at me. Her posture is the same. Straight-backed, chin level, hands folded in front of her like she’s waiting for a concert to begin.
Her gaze hasn’t changed either. Dark and calm and seeing everything. The same eyes that watched me throw my first punch and told me I dropped my shoulder too early. The same eyes that tracked me across rooms and read my moods before I even knew I was having them. The same eyes that crinkled when she smiled and went cold when she was mad.
“Beverly,” I rasp.
The name surfaces before I can stop it, dragging up a lifetime of memories that slam into me like a fist to the sternum. Birthday cake at midnight because my parents forgot. Chess on the back porch while Tyler did homework and she’d tell me I was smarter than I gave myself credit for. Her hands wrapping mine around a pair of boxing gloves and her voice sayingfighting is like chess, child. Think three moves ahead.
“Hello, Lance.”
Her voice is exactly the same. Low and warm. The kind of warmth that used to make me feel safe and now makes my skin crawl, because I know it’s rehearsed. It’salwaysbeen rehearsed. Every bedtime story, every packed lunch, every scraped knee she bandaged with careful hands was a performance, and I bought every second of it because I was a kid who wanted a mother and she was the closest thing I had.
