Page 56 of The Final Cut

She looks over her shoulder at me. Some of the fire has returned. Not all of it, but enough.

“And Delia?”

My hand tightens on the tiller.

“We find her,” I say. “Then we pull her out.”

“No hiding forever.”

“No.”

“No letting Nash turn tomorrow into next week.”

A faint smile touches my mouth. “You tell him that.”

She faces forward again, rain dripping from the end of her braid.

The cabin is still hidden by cypress and distance, but I can feel it ahead. Nash’s walls. Ever’s cameras. Shiloh’s wounded heart. Homer’s furious little body probably pressed to a window, waiting to accuse us of abandonment.

For now, Reva is quiet.

I brought her into the swamp because silence has teeth out here, but it also has mercy. It let her rage pass through. It let her touch me with rain on her face and grief still alive in her hands. It let her remember, for one stretch of water and weather, that she is more than the blood Isabel spilled and still wants to spill.

I steer us home through the rain, and Reva does not look back again.

She doesn’t need to.

DELIA

AGE 14

Training today. Not with guns.

With posture.

Walk slower. Chin higher. Eyes forward. Hands still. Never reach for anything too quickly. Never let anyone see what you want before you know what it will cost.

Isabel says a woman who rules must make silence uncomfortable for everyone else.

I practiced in the mirror until my face looked like hers.

Then I cried because it worked.

CHAPTER TEN

SHILOH

I slam the refrigerator door hard enough to make the bottles inside rattle.

Super mature. Very well-adjusted. Exactly the behavior of a man who has everything under control.

From the island, Nash lifts one eyebrow.

He got back from the hospital twenty minutes ago with bloodshot eyes, a silent update that Cal is stable, and two of his best men planted outside the ICU until Deacon or Ever rotates in. Reva would not appreciate that, especially since he promised to always have someone there with him.

Nash would rather swallow glass than admit a single promise has already started splitting under the weight of this war.

“What?” I ask.