Page 112 of The Final Cut

I know what it is to have a family name shaped like a bruise. I know less about sisters and old movies and fathers who whistle badly. I barely remember my own. These guys…they’re my only family.

Still, watching the two of them reach for each other through fifteen years of rot makes something in my chest go tight enough that I have to put my hand flat on the desk and breathe through it.

I stay in the office because they need space more than they need another man hovering with a gun and a plan. I stay because Reva will look at me if the silence gets too hard, and if she looks at me, I’ll go to her. That’s the kind of weakness that looks pretty from the outside and selfish from where I sit.

So I watch.

Perimeter. Hospital. Weather moving in from the south. Nash at Cal’s ICU with two guards in the hallway and Shiloh’s last text still on the side screen:

Shiloh

Leaving in ten. Tell my girls not to start a war without me.

I had not shown Reva the message because she would smile at my girls, then pretend she did no such thing.

The dock camera flickers.

I straighten.

At first, it looks like an insect crossing the lens, a blur of black against the gray marsh. Then the motion corrects, slows, and hovers at the edge of the frame. Small quadcopter. Matte black. No lights. Too steady in the wind to be hobby-grade, too close to be lost.

My hand moves to the keyboard.

The living room stays quiet except for Delia’s voice saying, “Mom hated that song.”

Reva’s answer comes after a pause. “I don’t remember it.”

The drone slides past the dock camera and disappears above the roofline.

Every muscle in my body goes still.

I switch to the exterior roof feed. There. North side, about twenty yards out, hovering above the cypress line. Its camera head turns toward the cabin windows.

A test.

Isabel is fast. I should’ve known she would be fast.

I key the internal comm and bring the house out of soft mode. Locks prime. Exterior shutters stay open for now because dropping them too early tells whoever’s watching what rattles us. The glass is rated for more than small arms and built to take a beating, but I don’t like anything with wings staring through windows at the women on my sofa.

Then a second drone appears over the east marsh, and my blood goes cold.

“Reva.”

She looks up immediately. So does Delia.

I step out of the office doorway, one hand raised before either of them can stand fully. “Stay down.”

Reva freezes halfway off the couch, then slowly lowers back, one arm closing around Homer, who remains boneless in her lap. Delia stays seated, but her eyes cut to the window.

She knows.

That is the thing about people raised around predators. They don’t need explanations for a shift in the air.

“What is it?” Reva asks.

“Drones. Two confirmed, maybe more. Call Deacon and Shiloh. Get into an interior room…stay low and away from the windows.”

“Shiloh is back?”