Page 31 of The Final Cut

I unload and clear the weapon, then pass it to Nash. Ever goes downrange after giving us a sharp look to stay put, checking fragments, rail, berm, corners. He cannot stop being Ever. I hope he never does.

Reva watches me gather the ruined pieces into a bucket. After a few seconds, she kneels and helps, picking up a shard with pink roses along the edge.

“This was ugly,” she says.

“Deeply.”

“Your aunt had terrible taste,” she tells Nash.

His mouth moves like he might smile. Then his phone vibrates, and whatever almost lived there dies. He steps away to answer it, voice low.

The silence settles after that. Real silence this time. No gunshots. No breaking porcelain. No jokes trying to bridge it all. Only frogs, wind, distant insects, and the quiet breathing of the woman crouched beside me with grief drying on her face.

She drops the last shard into the bucket and sits back on her heels.

“What do we do now?” she asks.

Ever returns from the range, carrying the last unbroken sliver in one gloved hand. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what comes next.” She looks at him, then at me, then toward Nash’s shadow near the dock. “We need to get Delia out. Cal’s laid up in ICU. Isabel knows where he is. She knows he’s important to me. We need to do something.”

“We are doing something,” Ever says. His voice is rough. Too rough.

Reva hears it too. Her eyes sharpen.

“We’re hiding,” he says. “Which I hate. But you don’t go after the fucking cartel, Reva.”

The air tightens. I close my eyes for half a second.

Wrong words, brother.

Reva rises slowly. Ever knows it the instant he sees her face.

“If anything,” I say, trying to get between the spark and the match, “we find somewhere tighter until Nash has a better read on⁠—”

“No.”

DELIA

AGE 14

They say Reva died quickly.

I used to be grateful for that because little kids are stupid and will accept any mercy offered.

Now I wonder who said it first. I wonder who needed me to believe it.

Reva was loud. Emotional. Sticky-fingered and stubborn. She cried when she was mad, then got madder because she cried.

A girl like that doesn’t feel…quick…in my memory. That just doesn’t feel right for her, somehow.

She feels like a door slamming over and over in a house no one will let me leave.

CHAPTER SIX

REVA

For a moment, the word seems to vanish after it leaves my lips.