Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
RIOS
Hunger drove us out of our room somewhere close to midnight. The upstairs bedroom door clicked softly behind us. The sound shouldn’t have mattered. It did anyway. Everything felt like that lately—small noises turning into meaning, ordinary things carrying weight.
We froze in the hall, listening for Sawyer and Willa, for the dogs.
Madden’s pulse gave an erratic jump beneath my thumb as I brushed it over her wrist. We were grown-ass adults who had every right to leave anytime we chose, but it still felt a little like we were sneaking out, and I’d have bet my last dollar that wasn’t something she’d ever done growing up.
The idea of her doing it now made me grin in the dark.
On bare feet, we made our way downstairs to the kitchen.
In the dim light over the stove, I took in Madden’s tumble of dark brown curls and the way she wore my shirt like it belonged to her.
The tight, braced tension she’d been holding onto since the video had eased, as if she’d finally found a place inside herself to set some of it down for a minute.
I told myself not to read into that.
I failed immediately.
“How hungry are you?” Hunger was a safe topic. It had rules and solutions.
Madden’s mouth twitched. “Starving.”
“We can raid the fridge. Guaranteed they’ve got something.”
She made a face. “I know. It just feels weird. Like rummaging through someone else’s drawers.”
“That’s because you’ve never let anyone give you anything without paying for it.”
Her eyes flicked to mine, sharp even in the dim light. For a second, I thought she might argue. Instead, she let out a breath that sounded like surrender. “Probably true. But I still feel weird about it. Home Port?”
Rather than point out that your friends were absolutely the people whose drawers and cabinets you raided—I got the sense she hadn’t ever had that sort of friends—I only nodded. “Yeah, we can do that.”
She’d learn. But not tonight.
On the drive, I kept my attention split: half on the dark road ahead, half on the woman beside me.
She said nothing, staring out the window at nothing in particular.
I didn’t get the sense that she wanted to put distance between us after what had happened.
Neither did I think she was circling back around what she now knew—or at least suspected—about Gwen.
Not yet, anyway. I wasn’t sure how long that might hold once we hit the bar.
For once, I wished we had a Waffle House on the island. It was damned hard to hold on to the dark in the face of loaded hash browns, eggs, and coffee had in bright yellow booths at any hour of the day or night.
Home Port’s parking lot looked like what it always looked like after eleven: too many trucks, too few spaces, and the faint, constant hum of people who didn’t want to go home yet.
Music pushed out through the door every time it opened.
A few guys leaned against a pickup tailgate, beers in hand, laughing too loud.
Someone stumbled and caught themselves. Someone else shouted a goodbye that sounded like a threat.
Madden sat still for a beat before opening her door.
“You good?” I murmured.
She turned her head. In the dark, her eyes looked almost black. “I’m fine.”
That was never the whole truth with her, but tonight I let it stand. I got out, walked around the front of the truck, and held my hand out.
After a moment’s hesitation, her fingers slid into mine like she was testing what it was like to let someone lead without losing herself.
Inside, the noise hit us like a wall. The crowd wasn’t a crush, but it was busy. Enough bodies that you had to angle your way through. Enough voices that any conversation could disappear into the hum.
That suited me. We’d stand out less in a crowd like this.
Madden’s gaze flicked around the room in that way that told me she was assessing every person around us as a potential witness.
I kept us moving, two steps ahead of her, not in a controlling way. In a protective way. A difference she seemed to understand now.
We snagged a booth near the pool table, close enough to hear the smack of balls and the muttered insults between shots.
The spot wasn’t private exactly, but it wasn’t in the center of the room either.
We could see the door. We could see the bar.
We could see the side hall to the bathrooms and the back exit that led to the alley.
Madden slid onto her bench and leaned back, stretching her legs beneath the table until her foot brushed my shin. Not an accident.
The electricity of the touch went all the way up my spine.
A server appeared, pen tucked behind her ear, eyes already tired. “Y’all know what you want, or you need a minute?”
“Burger,” Madden said immediately. “Fries. And… onion rings.”
The server’s eyebrows rose. “Hungry.”
“You have no idea,” Madden muttered.
I ordered a basket of wings and fries because I could eat my weight in salt right now and still want more.
The server walked off, and for a second Madden stared at the scarred wood of the table like it had answers.
I didn’t rush her. I watched the room.
A couple of regulars I recognized from my previous trips in here.
One guy at the bar who kept checking his phone like he expected bad news.
Two women in tank tops sharing a basket of something fried, laughing quietly, leaning into each other.
A group of men near the pool table, louder than the rest, bodies loose with drink and arrogance.
Madden tapped her fingernail once against the table. A small sound. A tell.
“What?” I asked.
Her eyes lifted to mine, and something like reluctance passed across her face—like she didn’t want to open the door she was standing in front of.
“I keep thinking about what you said,” she murmured.
I kept my voice neutral. “Which part?”
She huffed a short laugh. “The part where you said it changes what we can say out loud, but it doesn’t give us a name.”
“Yeah.”
Madden’s gaze dropped again. “I don’t like not having a name.”
“No one does.”
She leaned in a fraction. “You don’t either.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an observation. The kind she’d always been good at and I’d always resented because she saw too much.
“You mentioned someone wanted a meet,” I said, because that was actionable. Because that was a door we could push on.
Her eyes widened, and she cursed under her breath. “Oh my God.”
My mouth twitched. “You forgot.”
“I forgot.” She pressed her palm to her forehead like she could physically push the thought back into place. “I have been—” She cut herself off. “Yes. I forgot.”
“You’ve had a busy day or two,” I pointed out.
Her glare was half offended, half grateful. “Shut up.”
“You going to check it?” I asked.
She pulled her phone out and unlocked it, thumb moving fast. The screen glow lit her face, and for a second she looked younger in the blue light. Not softer—Madden didn’t do soft easily—but less armored.
She frowned at the screen. “The poster pulled the thread.”
It was my turn to frown. “What? Like it’s gone entirely?”
“Yeah. No follow up, no DM. It’s just gone.”
I considered. “Did you have any sense of where they were?”
“No.”
“If they were on Hatterwick and they heard about the fire…” I trailed off, letting the implication sink in.
Her cheeks paled. “They might have gotten spooked and decided it was too dangerous to talk.”
I didn’t like the math around that or the fear the idea of it put in her eyes.
“Or it might be completely unrelated. You posted to a lot of boards, right? What would be the likelihood that the person who set the fire just happened to be on one and just happened to see the request for a meet and just happened to know it was you in time to set a fire on your boat two or three hours later? That’s a lot of stretches. ”
Carefully, she turned off the phone and set it facedown on the table. “Well, I guess that’s another potential lead cut off.”
Reaching across the table, I laid a hand over hers. “We’ll find another.”
She turned her palm up and curled it around mine.
The server interrupted us, sliding plates onto the table with a practiced smile before vanishing again like she didn’t want to interrupt whatever she sensed was happening at our table.
I nodded. “Eat.”
She took a bite like she was proving she could still do normal things. I followed suit, salt and heat grounding me in a way I hadn’t realized I needed.
We ate in silence for a few minutes, the noise of the room filling the spaces between us. We’d shared multiple meals over our time working together, and I marveled at how being quiet with her now was easy, even in the middle of chaos.
I didn’t turn my head when I heard Priya’s name. I didn’t react at all. I let my attention drift the way it always did when a keyword hit.
“—told you she was gonna hustle you,” one of the men near the pool table said, voice loud with alcohol and satisfaction.
“Bullshit,” another voice barked back. “She didn’t hustle me. She—she cheated.”
Laughter erupted.
A third voice chimed in. “She did not cheat. She just played like she had eyes. Girl had aim.”
“Yeah,” someone else said. “And she took your money like it was her job.”
More laughter.
Madden kept eating, unaware. She didn’t glance around. I didn’t think she clocked the conversation because her focus remained on her plate and the small patch of normal she was trying to keep. That was fine. Let her be lost in her thoughts for now.
I lifted a wing and bit in, shifting my gaze to the reflection in the framed black-and-white photo of the marina on the wall beside our table.
One man stood a little apart from the group. Still part of the circle—but off to the side. He held a cue loosely, not playing yet. He didn’t laugh as hard. He didn’t lean in. His shoulders stayed tight even while everyone else relaxed.
Someone nudged him. “You still sore about it, man? She cleaned you out twice.”
His jaw flexed. “Drop it.”