Chapter 13 #2
“I am,” I say. “Which is why I’m telling you: if we yank the only control she feels like she has, we’re going to spend the next week chasing her around the internet as well as town. I’d rather have her where I can see her.”
He glares. I stare back. I’ve been glared at by worse.
Finally, he sighs and throws up one hand, shifting his attention to Tallulah.
“Fine. Ground rules. You don’t answer him alone.
Ever. I want one of us with eyes on it. Me, Kelly, or Brodie.
You don’t give him anything about your life he can’t already see in the paper.
No schedules. No ‘it’s late, I’m tired, what a long day at the station.
’ You do not confirm or deny anything about the investigation, even by implication. You do not get cute.”
“Define ‘cute,’” Tallulah says.
“Anything you think is clever,” he says. “If you find yourself enjoying outsmarting him, log off.”
She jerks her head back, offended on principle.
“Okay,” she says. “Fine. I can live with that.”
“And if you break the rules,” he adds, “I go to a judge and get Nightjar subpoenaed into my evidence locker where nobody—including you—touches it until after trial.”
Her eyes flash. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me,” he says.
For a second, I think she’s going to launch herself across the table. I put a hand on her hip, steadying her.
Then she takes a tight breath.
“Okay,” she says, voice thin. “Those are the rules. So what do we do right now?”
Like the universe was simply waiting for its cue, the laptop pings. It’s the same handle. That same little chill.
SmartLittleBird.
you did so good last time. all those eyes on our mountain.
Cotton mutters, “I’m going to be sick,” and clamps her hand over her mouth.
Tallulah goes rigid beneath my hand.
“Our mountain,” she repeats under her breath. “I hate him.”
“Good,” I say, low. “Hold onto that.”
Brady’s pen scratches over paper. “No answer,” he says. “We sit.”
Tallulah’s fingers twitch. “He’s not going to disappear because we ghost him, Jack. If he feels snubbed, he’ll push harder.”
“And that pressure is on me, not you,” Brady says.
“Wrong,” she snaps. “He’s in my inbox. That makes it my pressure too.”
She turns her head, looks straight at me.
“You said we figure out how to keep me alive as part of this,” she says. “Well?”
She’s right there, eyes hot and asking for something I shouldn’t give her: permission.
I’ve never been good at telling stubborn, smart people to sit down and be quiet while I march off to the front line alone. That’s how you get dead partners and unsolved cases.
“Keep it brief,” I say before I can stop myself. “Keep it impersonal. Don’t let him get under your skin.”
Brady makes a noise like he’s swallowed a live fish but doesn’t bother to say no.
Twiggy’s mouth curves in something like grim satisfaction.
“Brief and impersonal,” she repeats. “I got this.”
She leans forward—which means she leans back against me—and my whole body snaps to attention even though this is literally the worst time for that.
“Don’t,” I murmur.
She glances up, misunderstanding entirely. “I’m not going to flirt with him, Kelly.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I mutter.
Thankfully, she’s already typing.
some people confuse attention with affection. that’s their mistake.
Nine words. Cool. Distant. Exactly what I meant.
She doesn’t hit enter until she looks up at me. Waits.
I give a short nod, and she presses Send.
We wait.
Brady’s jaw flexes. Cotton comes around behind me so she can see the screen and grips my shoulder without seeming to realize it, fingers digging in.
A new line appears.
Careful. You’re a special one but pride gets little birds knocked out of the sky.
The way Tallulah flinches is small. I feel it everywhere.
“Okay,” Brady says. “That’s enough for today.”
“I agree,” I say.
“I don’t,” Twig says. “That’s nothing.”
She says it automatically, because disagreeing is wired into her DNA, but her voice is too thin and she’s sitting too close for me not to notice the way her breathing’s gone shallow again.
“You do,” I say quietly.
She swallows. Her eyes shine, not with tears—she’s too stubborn for those right now—but with something rawer. Fury. Fear. That old, bone-deep exhaustion of someone who keeps having to fight the same battle in different outfits.
“Hey,” Cotton says softly. “Come up to the house for a bit. You can bring your laptop, we’ll set you up in a quiet space. You don’t have to stare at that screen alone.”
She looks like she wants to say no on principle.
Then she glances toward the window—toward the dark slice of glass where he’d been last night.
I see the moment she loses the argument with herself.
“Fine,” she mutters. “But if your children touch my hotspot, I’m teaching them how to wipe their browser history.”
Cotton beams. “Deal.”
Brady stands, tucking his notebook away. “Send me screenshots,” he says to me. “Everything. I’ll loop state in, see if they can pull anything from timestamps or routing. You get her out of here.”
“I can get myself out of here,” Tallulah says.
“I know,” Brady says. “I’d just like you to do it with six-four of Philly muscle between you and the street.”
He claps my shoulder on the way to the door. “Don’t let her charm you into anything stupider than we’ve already agreed to.”
“Bit late,” I say.
Tallulah huffs. “Rude.”
Ten minutes later, we’re at my truck. Tallulah eyes the passenger side like it personally offended her.
“This thing is ridiculous,” she says. “Why is it so tall?”
“So it can drive over things that want to kill you,” I say.
She tries to climb up on her own, boots slipping on the snow-dusted step. She gets one knee on the seat and wobbles.
I swear under my breath and put my hands on her waist.
She goes still.
It takes exactly three seconds to boost her the rest of the way in. Three seconds where my fingers feel the heat of her through the thin fabric of her hoodie, where her breath hitches and her hand catches my forearm like she’s not sure whether she’s steady or not.
“I got you,” I say before my brain can remind me that’s a bad idea to admit.
She drops into the seat, cheeks pink in a way that has nothing to do with the cold. “I was fine.”
“Sure,” I say. “You and gravity looked like you were having a productive disagreement.”
She buckles in with more force than necessary and mutters something about how my truck is probably compensating for something.
I decide not to ask.
By the time I slide behind the wheel, my palms remember the shape of her more clearly than they remember the steering column. I flex them once on the leather, hard, and pull away from the curb.
Lucy Falls rolls by in familiar winter colors—gray sky, brick storefronts, the hardware store’s Christmas display half-finished in the front window.
People with coffee cups. Kids in puffy coats.
Life going on like there isn’t a man out there who buried girls in mountains and is now playing word games with one small woman’s nervous system.
I catch Twig watching all of it in the side window, expression distant.
“You’re quiet,” I say.
“You told me to be,” she says.
“I told you not to poke the bear,” I say. “I didn’t tell you to shut down.”
She’s silent for a moment. Then, quietly: “He called me special.”
I grip the wheel harder than I need to. “He’s fucking with you.”
She fiddles with the zipper of her hoodie, the metal teeth scratching softly.
“Last year it was…scary,” she says slowly. “Jason. The cabin. The mountain. But I was still…outside of it, I guess. Like I was watching something terrible through glass. I got to choose how close I stood.”
“And now?” I ask.
“Now the glass talks back,” she says. “Now Henry’s saying, ‘Hey, remember how much you helped last time? Do it again. Be useful for me.’ And my brain’s like—” She makes a quiet, frustrated noise. “My brain likes being useful. It doesn’t care who I’m being useful for if I’m not careful.”
I understand that more than I want to.
“You’re not useful for him,” I say. “You’re a threat to him. That’s why he’s trying to get in your head first.”
She snorts. “Flattering.”
“I’m not trying to flatter you,” I say. “It’s just facts.”
She looks over at me then, really looks, like she’s weighing the words.
“You know,” she says, “you keep saying I’m not a job. Earlier. Inside.”
I did say that. I wasn’t planning to repeat it.
“That was a poor choice of phrasing,” I say.
“Why?” she asks. “You’re Kael’s favorite blunt instrument. People are jobs. Problems. Lists to clear. That’s not an insult; that’s…how you do what you do.”
“You’re not an item on a list,” I say. I don’t know how to fucking explain what she is. “You’re a…situation.”
She laughs, quick and bright and the first real one I’ve heard from her today. “Wow. Upgraded to situation. Be still my heart.”
“You know what I mean,” I say.
“I really don’t,” she says. “But keep digging. This is fun.”
I stare straight ahead, jaw tight.
“Most of the problems that come up…I either have to protect them or…uh…”
“Kill them?”
There’s no judgment in her voice. I nod.
“If it calls for it, yeah. Get rid of it, at a minimum. Obviously you fall in the first category. Most of the people I protect,” I say slowly, “just want to hide. You don’t. You lean forward. You grab the knife by the blade on purpose. And I—”
“You what?” she pushes.
I exhale. “I like it.”
The truck fills with that confession.
I shouldn’t have said it. But it’s out there now, hanging in the space between us like fog.
She goes quiet.
When I risk a glance, she’s looking at me with an expression I can’t categorize yet. Not mocking. Not angry.
Soft, almost.
“You know that’s going to make things worse, right?” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
The road curves. Up ahead, Cotton’s place sits at the end of the lane, lights warm in a battalion of windows, wreaths on every one and the door. The kind of safe, domestic scene that shouldn’t exist in the same world as mountain graves and anonymous handles.
I realize, distantly, that some part of me is relieved she’s going to be inside that house, surrounded by people who love her, where Henry can’t reach through glass without someone seeing.
“You are not allowed to die,” I say, voice low. “Just so we’re clear.”
She snorts. “You’re very bossy for someone I technically met yesterday.”
“Yesterday or not,” I say, pulling into the drive, “I’m still the one catching you when you slip.”
“On ice,” she says. “Once.”
“Once is enough,” I say.
She unbuckles, half turned toward me now in the seat, knees drawn up. Her hair’s fallen out of whatever knot she tried to tame it with, a curl brushing her cheek.
“Is this the part where you tell me to stay in the car while you check the perimeter?” she asks lightly.
“Yes,” I say.
She smiles, slow and sharp. “Good. Because I was going to ignore that too.”
Of course you are.
I should be annoyed. Kael sent me here to keep a lid on a live wire.
He didn’t warn me it would start to feel like the only thing keeping the wire from burning down the whole damn town is me keeping my hands on it.
And if I’m honest with myself, for the first time all day, there’s another truth braided into that.
I don’t just want to keep her alive because it’s my job.
I want to keep her alive because somewhere between finding Henry at her window and boosting Tallulah into my passenger seat, she stopped being a job I was assigned—
—and started being the one person I can’t lose.