Page 168 of Deacon

I stayed where I was. “Where is my daughter?” The terror behind the question made my voice sound thinner than I wanted, but I held his gaze. If he knew where she was, I needed to see it in his face.

His relief vanished. “What?” The confusion looked real, which frightened me more than guilt would have.

“My daughter.” I stepped closer. “You texted me on her phone. You said if I wanted her back, I had to come here. You got me here. Where is Jade?”

Mason glanced toward the street before lowering his voice. “Come inside,” he said again. “You can’t stand out there.” He was more concerned with getting me through the door than answering me.

“Mason, where is she?” I could hear my breathing getting rough, each inhale too shallow to satisfy my lungs. The porch light buzzed above us in the quiet.

“Lila.” He swallowed, his certainty beginning to fracture. “Please. Just come in.”

Every instinct told me to run, but Jade was missing and Mason knew something. I crossed the threshold. The door clicked shut behind me, and I turned on him. “Start talking.”

The house smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and roasted food. Ordinary. Domestic. Wrong. Mason kept one hand on the knob before finally easing it away. “Lila,” he said carefully, “why don’t you come sit down for a minute?”

“No.” I stayed close to the door, unwilling to let him decide where I stood or how this conversation happened. The cold leaking around the frame touched the back of my hand, reminding me the outside was still only a few feet away.

His brow pinched. “You’re upset.” He sounded like a doctor trying to manage a frightened family member, and hearing that familiar professional tone turned against me here made my skin crawl.

“My daughter is missing.” I held onto the flatness in my voice because the fear underneath it was too big.

“I can see that.” He lifted one hand in a placating gesture. “That’s why I’m saying we should sit and talk. Let me explain some things first.”

“No. You can explain them standing right there. Where is Jade?” I shifted enough to keep the door in the edge of my vision.

His mouth tightened. “You’re coming in hot.”

A sharp laugh tore out of me. “Coming in hot?” Anger was easier to stand inside than panic. “Someone texted my daughter’s phone and said if I wanted her alive, I had to come here alone. So yeah, Mason, I’m not exactly in the mood to ease into this.”

Confusion flickered across his face again. He looked toward the living room as if the room itself might explain why I had arrived like this. “Lila, please. Just come sit down. I’m trying to help you.”

“Then help me. Tell me where she is.” I didn’t move. His fixation on getting me to the couch had become one more thing I refused to give him.

His eyes went to the couch. “You’re not in a state to hear this standing up.” The line sounded rehearsed, like he had imagined this conversation enough times to know where he thought I should be sitting.

My nails bit into my palms. “I am in exactly the right state to hear where my daughter is.”

Mason dragged a hand through his hair and started pacing. “This isn’t how I expected this to go.” Two steps one way, two back. The calm doctor was slipping.

I tracked him with my eyes. “Expected what to go?” He stopped long enough to study me, searching for a version of me that apparently hadn’t shown up.

“I need you to lower your voice,” he said finally. The request came out controlled, but his shoulders had gone tight enough to betray him.

“You need to tell me where Jade is!” My control snapped with the words, loud enough to bounce off the walls and make the quiet house feel suddenly too small for either of us.

His expression hardened. “I need you to stop yelling at me.” My terror had become an inconvenience to him.

“I am going to do a hell of a lot more than yell at you if my daughter is hurt!” The threat tore out of me before I could soften it, and that stopped him cold.

That was when I understood what I was seeing. Mason wasn’t frightened because I was in his house. He was frightened because I wasn’t behaving the way he expected.

He approached more carefully, no longer trying to steer me toward the couch. “Lila... did somebody tell you Jade was here?” His voice had changed too, stripped of the practiced calm.

The question hollowed me out. “What?” My heartbeat stumbled. Mason looked as lost as I felt now, the certainty he’d greeted me with beginning to fracture.

“Did somebody say she was with me?” His confusion no longer looked rehearsed. He was watching me for an answer now instead of trying to control mine.

“You texted her phone.” The accusation weakened under the first crack in my certainty, and I hated how quickly that uncertainty got under my skin.