Page 13

He's here.

"Come now, angel. It's time for dessert."

His voice comes from everywhere and nowhere—low, unhurried, intimate—like he's been standing in my dark bedroom this entire time, just breathing, just watching me read that text with my back to the room like a fucking idiot.

My body moves before my brain gives permission. I spin. The bed. The shotgun is on the bed. I left it on the bed. I set it down—ten seconds, maybe fifteen—to look at the phone, to look at the photo of Mercy, and I set it down right there on the comforter, the stock pointing toward the headboard, the barrel angled toward the window, I can see exactly where I put it because the memory is still warm, still mine.

I lunge.

My knees hit the mattress and my hands sweep across the duvet in the dark—palms flat, fingers spread, frantic—and there's nothing. Just fabric. Just the cool expensive Egyptian cotton that Eleanor picked out fourteen years ago because thread count was a love language she actually spoke, and my hands keep moving, wider, faster, shoving pillows aside, and it's not there.

It's not there.

It's not⁠—

A light clicks on behind me. Soft. Warm. Coming from the closet.

I turn slowly this time. Not because I'm brave. Because my legs have stopped working the way legs are supposed to work and the best I can manage is a rotation that feels like drowning in air.

Marcus stands in the doorway of my closet. Backlit by the gorgeous scattered array of soft light from the chandelier so his face is mostly shadow and the suggestion of a man rather than the thing itself.

He's wearing a navy suit. No tie. Top button undone. Like he came from dinner. Like this is a social call.

To the right of him—propped against the door frame—is the shotgun. The barrel gleams a dull yellow in the light.

I can see it right there. Ten feet away. It might as well be in Wyoming.

How.

I set it down for ten seconds. I heard nothing. No footstep, no door, no creak of a floorboard in a house where I know every single sound. I heard nothing.

My eyes drop to his hands.

He's holding the pie.

White Ashby Ranch bakery box. Lattice crust visible through the cellophane window. Cherry filling dark as old blood under the closet light.

"I brought your favorite," Marcus says. And smiles.

I straighten my spine. Force my shoulders back. Force my chin up. Force every single piece of myself into the shape of a woman who is not about to come apart at the seams because I will not give him that. Not again. Not ever again.

"Legion is on his way back." My voice comes out steadier than I deserve. "Right now. He's with Cash. They're both coming and if they find you in this house, Marcus—if they find you anywhere near this house⁠—"

Marcus laughs.

It's not a sound I've heard before. Not from him, not from anyone. It starts low, almost conversational, like I've said something mildly amusing at a fundraiser, and then it drops—down into something wet, and black, and basement-deep, something that has no light in it at all, and it keeps going.

It rolls through the room like it's coming from the walls themselves. Like the house is laughing at me. Like every photograph Eleanor ever took of me is laughing at me from behind glass.

I stop talking.

I stop breathing.

I stand there with my mouth still half-open around the shape of a threat I'll never finish, and the sound fills every corner of my childhood bedroom, and I understand—in the way you understand simple things like the sum of two plus two—that I have never once in my life been in real danger until right now.

The laugh stops. Abrupt. Like a faucet.

Marcus sets the pie on the floor. Slowly. Carefully. Both hands. The way you set down something precious. Then he straightens back up and looks at me.