Page 78 of The Final Cut

Ever’s voice warms by the barest degree. “Copy.”

I fold Sabine’s paper again and hold it in my hand as the city slides past the windows. Delia in public within forty-eight hours. A route. A moment of hesitation. A possible extraction that could save one sister while painting a target on the other.

The car turns toward the water, toward the hidden road that leads back to the marsh and the woman waiting there with more courage than patience.

I do not know how to keep Reva safe without making her feel caged.

I do not know how to free Delia without starting a war I cannot fully control.

I do know Isabel has made the same mistake many people make with dangerous women. She believes love is the weakness because it makes people hesitate.

She has never understood the other side of it.

Love is also what makes men like us stop hesitating at all.

DELIA

AGE 16

Mother came to my room after midnight. She didn’t turn on the light. She sat on the edge of my bed and touched my cheek with two fingers.

“You are not her,” she whispered.

I don’t know if she meant Isabel. I don’t know if she meant the girl with the chipped tooth.

I don’t know if she meant Reva.

I pretended to be asleep because pretending is the only gift I give either of us.

When she left, I kept my eyes closed and tried to remember what it felt like to be held without correction or placement waiting outside the door.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

REVA

The war room smells like coffee, rain, and men who have not slept enough to trust their own tempers.

I sit at the metal table with Homer in my lap and my phone facedown beside my elbow, waiting for it to buzz with an update. The screen has stayed dark for six minutes, which means Cal has not crashed, Shiloh has not sent an update, Nash has not called from the road, and Delia has not magically appeared on the dock.

The silence should be a good thing. It means nothing has gone wrong, at least.

It leaves too much space for worry, though.

Ever stands at the console on the far side of the room, one hand braced on the desk, the other moving between feeds. He has the cabin perimeter on two screens, hospital cameras on another, and a map of the Garden District glowing beneath a net of colored routes, notes, timed camera sweeps, and red circles that all look like places someone I love could die. He has been quiet for almost an hour. Not cold-quiet, but working-quiet. The kind where every word has to fight its way past the part of him calculating angles.

I appreciate that, even while I want to rip every wire out of the wall and ask why none of his glowing maps can tell me whether my sister is afraid right now.

Homer kneads my thigh with one paw, claws catching through my leggings.

“Ow,” I mutter. He blinks up at me, deeply unrepentant, then curls tighter in my lap.

My phone buzzes, and I snatch it so fast Homer startles and digs in with both front paws.

“Son of a—” I hiss, lifting him with one hand while reading the screen.

Shiloh.

No change. Stable. Still sedated. Nash’s men outside the door. I’m here. Cal’s not alone.