Page 21 of The Final Cut

The pilings are reinforced. The dock is too straight. Steel braces cut beneath the wood in sharp, deliberate angles, dull and dark enough to hide from anyone skimming past without looking closely. The cabin’s windows are black mirrors facing the marsh, floor to ceiling along the entire front wall. The siding is real, maybe, but I’d lay odds the bones beneath it are concrete and steel.

Nash Blackwood’s idea of rustic comes with bullet-proof glass.

The boat bumps against the dock with a soft thud. I stand before anyone tells me not to, Homer tucked against my chest in one arm, his tiny leash looped twice around my wrist. He has stopped fighting the harness and chosen limp outrage instead. His ears are back. His tail flicks against my sleeve.

Same, buddy.

I put one foot on the edge of the boat, and Ever’s hand closes around my elbow.

“Hold.”

The word is quiet, halting me where I stand. I look at him.

He is already scanning the dock, the tree line, the cabin roof, the dark seam beneath the porch steps. His face has that fixed, internal look he gets when the world becomes angles and risk and distance.

“I need to disarm the exterior,” he says.

I stare at the dock. “Disarm the exterior.”

“Yes.”

“As in alarms?”

His eyes move once to mine. “Yes. Stay in the boat.”

I almost argue because the night has taken so much from me that even staying in a boat feels like another stolen choice. Then Homer shifts against me, claws pricking through the sweatshirt, and the image of Cal’s hand on top of a hospital blanket flashes bright enough to make my stomach fold.

I sit.

Ever steps onto the dock. He moves to a post near the first lantern and slides two fingers under the cap. A panel clicks open. Blue light spills over his face as he enters a code. Something under the dock gives a faint mechanical hum. He waits, head tilted, listening. Then he moves to the cabin door and does it again with a keypad hidden behind a metal plate shaped like a rusted latch.

Shiloh stands in the boat beside the bags, watching Ever work with a tightness around his mouth he is trying to make look casual.

“That’s friendly,” I say.

He glances at me. “Ever’s love language is preventing all of us from being vaporized.”

“Vaporized.”

“Possibly maimed. I’m still learning the system.”

I look back at Ever. “Is he joking?”

Nash answers from the stern. “Mostly.”

The boat rocks under my feet as he lifts the first duffel. He looks out of place in the marsh, still in the remnants of his ruined formal clothes, jacket gone, shirtsleeves rolled, blood dark at one cuff. He should be in Blackwood House, commanding polished floors and heavy doors. Out here, with wet air clinging to him and cypress shadows behind him, he looks older. Harder.

I hate that I came with him.

I hate that he was right.

Those two truths sit beside each other in my chest and refuse to cancel out.

Ever turns back from the door. “Clear.”

Only then does Nash step onto the dock.

Shiloh reaches for me. I give him Homer instead. He blinks down at the cat now draped against his arm like a furry orange accusation.