Page 98 of The Final Cut

“My brother leaves tonight because Blackwood gave his word. I have more to do before Isabel understands I’m gone, too.”

“She will kill you if she knows.”

“She kills everyone eventually.”

The words are calm. That is what makes them terrible.

Nash calls from inside the van, “Martel.”

She looks past me.

“You have twelve hours before my people move your brother. After that, you are either out or you are choosing to stay. I do not rescue people who refuse the door twice.”

Sabine’s mouth tightens. “Understood.”

She looks at me one last time. There is history in her eyes, and warning, and something like farewell without the sentiment.

Then she shuts the van door.

We pull away from Sainte Aurelia through the service lane, a catering van full of stolen granddaughter, blood, broken rosary beads, and the first real crack in Isabel del Rosario’s pretty little empire.

Delia sits on the bench across from me, coat pulled around her shoulders, wet hair clinging to her jaw. She has one hand pressed over her scraped palm. The other curls around something small.

A red rosary bead. She caught one. Kept it.

Nash notices but says nothing.

Delia’s gaze lifts to mine. “Reva is really waiting?”

“Of course she is.”

Her mouth trembles once before she crushes the expression flat.

Delia turns toward the blacked-out window. For a while, only the rain speaks.

Then she says, so quietly I nearly miss it, “I didn’t think she would send anyone.”

Something in my chest twists.

“She sent all of us,” Nash says.

Delia does not look back, but her fingers close around the bead until her knuckles pale.

I lean my head against the wall of the van and close my eyes for three seconds.

The wound at my side burns. Isabel is still alive. Sabine is still inside the lion’s mouth. Cal’s still in a hospital bed with Shiloh standing guard. Reva’s at the cabin, staying when every part of her wanted to run.

We haven’t won anything clean. We’ve only taken back one body from the room where Isabel meant to make an example.

Today, that’s enough.

Today, we bring Reva her sister.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

REVA

The boat comes in fast across the dark water.