Page 10

I still want to know what remains.

On the next monitor, Liv is still at the table. One hand rests beside the books. Her eyes are on the door.

I sit at the desk and connect the tablet to her camera. She has moved to the bed. One volume rests in her lap, open beneath her hand.

For a while, she reads.

Then she looks at the door.

I switch to Ari’s feed. He is standing at the window now, one hand against the glass.

I could go upstairs. Let him ask his questions to my face. Let him call me a bastard, a traitor, whatever else he has been saving since our last conversation.

I want his attention badly enough that the insults seem a reasonable price.

I set the tablet down.

Taking them was simple compared with this. Doors can be reinforced. Guards can be paid. I know how to keep a person inside a house.

Neither of them belongs to me simply because I have locked them here.

I dislike the thought as soon as it comes.

I pick up the tablet again and bring both rooms onto the screen.

Liv turns a page. Ari stays at the window.

I have them both. That has stopped being enough. I pick up my phone and cancel the trip. Before the afternoon is over, I will put them in the same room and see what remains between them.

3

ARI

8 WEEKS PRIOR

The cabin is there.

For several seconds, I stay beneath the trees and stare through the branches at the roof. A structure where Grayson’s files said nothing existed. A maintenance road that barely looks wide enough for a vehicle.

Years ago, Jax mentioned a place near the Montana compound during a trip to Aspen. I barely listened. He had properties everywhere, and I had no reason to believe I’d ever need to remember where he hid.

Now I can hear his voice as clearly as if he were beside me.

I take out my phone and send Grayson the coordinates.

Then I call.

“Ari?”

“I found it.”

He goes quiet. I hear movement, someone speaking near him.

“The lodge?”

“A cabin. North of the compound. I’m looking at it.”

“Stay where you are. We’ll get people to you.”