Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
brAN
A mile down the road, I pluck Tallulah’s phone from where it sits in the console and toss it to her.
“Call Brady and let him know what happened.”
She catches it on instinct, then just stares down at it in her lap like it’s a foreign object. Her fingers graze the edges of the device with a featherlight touch. I can’t help but notice the fine tremble in them.
“He was going to kill us,” she says, voice low.
I do a double take. “Tally…”
She shakes her head a little, eyes still on the dark screen.
“It’s not that I didn’t know he wanted to kill me.
His intent is obvious. It’s more…” She swallows.
“Miguel went out to check a noise in the barn. Normal night. Normal routine. And then it wasn’t.
One second he’s half asleep, probably cursing about the cold, and the next—” Her mouth tightens.
“The next, his life is over because Henry Thurston decided it was convenient.”
Her fingers tighten around the phone.
“He’s never been real in that way before,” she says. “He’s been chat logs and profiles and patterns and grave markers. But tonight—” Her voice wobbles, and she bites it off. “Tonight he was a man who walked onto my cousin’s land and took someone’s life because I exist.”
“Tallulah—”
“I keep thinking about how close it was,” she pushes on.
“Not just to them. To us. He was on the property while we were sleeping. While Saoirse was sleeping.” Her eyes flick up, find the dark smear of trees in the headlights.
“He could’ve chosen the house instead of the barn.
He could’ve come in through the kitchen door.
It’s all just…angles. Decisions. A different choice, and the last thing my brain would’ve known was Cotton’s alarm going off and me being grumpy about it. ”
She shrugs, shoulders rising and falling on a thin breath.
“Or I guess it could’ve lasted a little while.
Death, I mean. He could have drawn it out, made it hurt.
” She finally looks at me. “I’m not sure which I’d prefer.
Immediate and relatively painless, or long and painful, but having the chance to say goodbye. And I’m sorry.”
Tears brim at the bottom of her eyes, one spilling over to trace the curve of her cheek.
“I am sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry I brought this to your door—to Cotton and Brodie and Saoirse. That I didn’t consider the risk to them when I decided to poke the monster again.”
“Stop it.” My tone comes out rougher than I like. I curse under my breath and try again. “Just…stop. This is not your fault, Tallulah. He’s the one who made choices tonight. Not you. And we’re okay. We’re—”
“Tally.” She cuts me off with a shaky little smile, like the word itself is a life raft. “I like Tally better.”
Reaching over, I cover her left hand with my right, swallowing it up against her thigh. She twists it, turning it upward until our palms are aligned, and threads her fingers through mine.
Something settles, warm and full and aching, in my chest.
“Well, I like Tallulah,” I say. I clear my throat, eyes back on the road. “Now, call your friend Jack and give him an update. They need to get a team out there to work the area.”
She nods, thumbs the phone on, and dials one-handed, putting it on speaker. It rings once before a gruff male voice answers.
“Twiggy? Everything okay?”
She opens her mouth, then shakes her head, lips clamping together. I jump in.
“Jack. It’s Bran Kelly. We just left Brodie Gallagher’s place.”
There’s a beat of silence. “Is Twiggy okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says, finding her voice. “Just a little shaken up, which is…not entirely irrational, actually. Henry paid us a visit.”
“You’re shitting me,” Jack snaps. Background noise explodes—radio chatter, the thump of tires, someone shouting something I can’t make out. “Tell me you’re not still on the property.”
“No,” I say. “We’re gone. But you need to get your people out there. One of Brodie’s men is dead. Barn. North side.”
“Name?” Jack barks.
“Miguel,” Twiggy answers quietly. “He worked with the horses and other livestock. He—he went to check when the alarm tripped.”
Jack’s curse is low and lethal. “How bad?”
“Bad enough,” I say. “Throat. Clean work. Whoever did it knew where to cut and when to leave.”
Paper rustles on his end, the sound of someone flipping switches in their head as well as on the dash. “All right. I’ll get State on it and head that way. Where are you going?”
“Not back to her place, that’s for sure,” I answer.
Tally’s head swivels toward me, eyes flashing in the dashboard light. “What? You can’t just take me off somewhere! I need my computers, my network, my—”
“Where then?” Jack cuts in, steamrolling her protest. He knows her too well.
I suck my lower lip between my teeth, consider my options.
I could take her back to Philadelphia. That would be Kael’s preference, if I called and asked. Put her in his tower, under his eyes, surrounded by men who answer to him first and last.
But the idea sits wrong in my gut.
This isn’t a chess piece I’m moving for Kael. This is…something else. Someone else. And there’s a part of me—selfish and stubborn—that doesn’t want my boss’s thumb pressed down on this particular scale.
There’s a part of me, reckless now that we’re dancing close to death, that wants to say to hell with these fucking rules.
The sign for the interstate looms ahead. I take the turn.
“I’ve got a place,” I say. “I’ll keep you looped in.”
Lifting my hand from Tallulah’s, I cut the call before Jack can argue.
Her eyes burn into the side of my face. “What are you doing, Bran?”
“Do you trust me?” I ask.
She hesitates. One, two, three heartbeats. Then she nods, a short, jerky movement of her head.
“Good,” I say, finding her hand again and giving it a squeeze. “I’ll keep you safe.”
It’s a promise I have no business making—not with Henry in the wind, not with Kael’s warning ringing in my ears—but I make it anyway.
Because the alternative is unthinkable.
Sometimes things are better in theory than in reality.
As I pull the truck into a narrow driveway designed for Matchbox cars instead of big trucks, I eye the tiny cabin and admit this might be one of those things.
The place is fucking small. It can’t be much bigger than Tallulah’s shoebox apartment in Lucy Falls, and I’d already been crawling the walls there.
Now, after a four-plus-hour drive where every passing mile held me hostage to Tallulah’s voice, Tallulah’s eyes, Tallulah’s scent…
yeah. I’m not sure I have it in me to keep tiptoeing around her.
“What is this place?” she asks, voice rough with sleep.
She’s been in and out for the last hour, nodding off against the seatbelt, jerking awake every time a semi passed us with too much noise. Easy to see where her brain goes when she closes her eyes.
“Safe house,” I mutter, killing the engine. “Come on, let’s get you inside and settled.”
She pushes the door open and climbs out, standing for a moment in the cold mountain air, taking in the dark bulk of the little house and the mass of trees standing sentinel behind and around it.
The moon throws faint light over distant peaks and the rooflines of other cabins scattered across the hillside.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “Where is this place?”
I punch in the security code on the keypad by the door and push it open, alarm system chirping once before going quiet. “Vacation community in Tennessee. I bought the house as an investment a few years ago and rent it through the tourist season. It doesn’t get a lot of traffic in winter.”
“Tennessee?” She follows me into the dim entryway. “Don’t you think that’s a little excessive?”
I spear her with a look as I close and lock the door behind us. “My job is to keep you safe. I’ll do whatever it takes to do that.”
“Mm.” She drifts past me into the open space, hugging her arms around herself as she looks around.
It’s simple but decent—a single big room with a small kitchen on one side, a table and four chairs, and a great room dominated by a river rock fireplace whose chimney climbs to the vaulted ceiling.
Leather couch, two chairs, throw blankets in muted colors.
Cabin porn, basically. Kael called it “Instagram-bait” when I showed him the listing.
“It’s pretty,” she says softly.
I grunt, move through flipping on lights. “Bathroom.” I jerk my chin toward the door on the right and open the other, the only bedroom. “Bed. Couch is a pull-out; I’ll take that.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she says immediately. “I’ll take the couch—”
“Tallulah.” I step closer, crowding into her space just enough that she has to tip her head back to meet my eyes. “If someone manages to find us and get through that door, I want the first thing they come in contact with to be me. You take the bed.”
“I—” Her lashes flutter against her cheeks as she drops her gaze. I don’t know why I’ve never really noticed them before. Or the way her skin looks thinned and pale over the sharp lines of her cheekbones when she’s exhausted. “I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” she finishes.
I huff a grim laugh and turn away, discreetly adjusting myself once I’m out of her line of sight. “I’ll be fine,” I mutter, heading for the storage chest where I keep spare linens. “It’s late. Let’s get some sleep.”
She hovers in the doorway between kitchen and living room, one hand cupping the elbow of her opposite arm. Her shoulders are tight. The tremor in her fingers is back.
“What is it?” I ask.
She lifts one shoulder, a threadbare shrug. “I slept in the truck. I’m wired now.” Her mouth pulls to the side. “Can we…I don’t know. Talk or watch TV or something? Just…not be alone with our brains for a minute?”
I drop the bedding on the end of the couch and scrub a hand over my face. Every part of me feels stretched thin—muscles, patience, control.
“I’m kind of played out here, Tallulah,” I admit.