4. Reva
CHAPTER FOUR
REVA
The cabin appears out of the blue dawn like it would rather stay hidden.
At first glance, it looks rough, and I cast an uncertain glance back at Nash. “Is that it?”
His only response is a tiny smirk that dances over his lips. Frowning, I twist back to watch the cabin as we drift closer.
Weathered siding. Low roof. A narrow dock stretching into the green-black water of the bayou we came by. Two battered lanterns throwing soft gold over cypress knees and marsh grass. The kind of place men come to drink cheap beer, clean fish, and pretend silence is the same thing as peace.
Then the boat glides closer, and the lie starts peeling back.
The pilings are reinforced. The dock is too straight.
Steel braces cut beneath the wood in sharp, deliberate angles, dull and dark enough to hide from anyone skimming past without looking closely.
The cabin’s windows are black mirrors facing the marsh, floor to ceiling along the entire front wall.
The siding is real, maybe, but I’d lay odds the bones beneath it are concrete and steel.
Nash Blackwood’s idea of rustic comes with bullet-proof glass.
The boat bumps against the dock with a soft thud. I stand before anyone tells me not to, Homer tucked against my chest in one arm, his tiny leash looped twice around my wrist. He has stopped fighting the harness and chosen limp outrage instead. His ears are back. His tail flicks against my sleeve.
Same, buddy.
I put one foot on the edge of the boat, and Ever’s hand closes around my elbow.
“Hold.”
The word is quiet, halting me where I stand. I look at him.
He is already scanning the dock, the tree line, the cabin roof, the dark seam beneath the porch steps. His face has that fixed, internal look he gets when the world becomes angles and risk and distance.
“I need to disarm the exterior,” he says.
I stare at the dock. “Disarm the exterior.”
“Yes.”
“As in alarms?”
His eyes move once to mine. “Yes. Stay in the boat.”
I almost argue because the night has taken so much from me that even staying in a boat feels like another stolen choice. Then Homer shifts against me, claws pricking through the sweatshirt, and the image of Cal’s hand on top of a hospital blanket flashes bright enough to make my stomach fold.
I sit.
Ever steps onto the dock. He moves to a post near the first lantern and slides two fingers under the cap.
A panel clicks open. Blue light spills over his face as he enters a code.
Something under the dock gives a faint mechanical hum.
He waits, head tilted, listening. Then he moves to the cabin door and does it again with a keypad hidden behind a metal plate shaped like a rusted latch.
Shiloh stands in the boat beside the bags, watching Ever work with a tightness around his mouth he is trying to make look casual.
“That’s friendly,” I say.
He glances at me. “Ever’s love language is preventing all of us from being vaporized.”
“Vaporized.”
“Possibly maimed. I’m still learning the system.”
I look back at Ever. “Is he joking?”
Nash answers from the stern. “Mostly.”
The boat rocks under my feet as he lifts the first duffel.
He looks out of place in the marsh, still in the remnants of his ruined formal clothes, jacket gone, shirtsleeves rolled, blood dark at one cuff.
He should be in Blackwood House, commanding polished floors and heavy doors.
Out here, with wet air clinging to him and cypress shadows behind him, he looks older. Harder.
I hate that I came with him.
I hate that he was right.
Those two truths sit beside each other in my chest and refuse to cancel out.
Ever turns back from the door. “Clear.”
Only then does Nash step onto the dock.
Shiloh reaches for me. I give him Homer instead. He blinks down at the cat now draped against his arm like a furry orange accusation.
“I’m honored,” he murmurs.
Homer sneezes on him.
“Less honored, but God bless you.”
I climb out by myself before anyone can lift me, guide me, manage me, or do any of the thousand tiny careful things that will make me start screaming.
The dock shifts under my borrowed sneakers.
Shiloh found those too. Gray canvas, half a size too big, probably from a twenty-four-hour store that sells emergency sweatshirts, overpriced phone chargers, and shoes designed for tourists who made bad decisions in heels and sandals.
The marsh is quiet around us. That quiet is the worst part.
New Orleans is never quiet. Blackwood House creaks and breathes. Noir hums. Hospitals beep. Ambulances scream. Even the murder house had its own stale, waiting silence.
This place has a different kind of hush. Wide. Wet. Watching. Frogs click somewhere in the grass. Water laps softly against wood. A bird calls once, then decides against participating in the night.
The quiet gives thoughts room.
Cal’s mouth around the tube. The nurse’s kind eyes. Blood under my nails, hiding where water and wipes couldn’t reach. Delia dragged through the ballroom doors with a man’s arm at her throat.
I shove each image down as it rises. One by one. Harder each time.
The cabin door opens, and warm light spills onto the porch, revealing a space that has no right to be called a mere cabin.
The main room is all clean lines and shadow.
Polished concrete floors with plush throw rugs anchoring the living spaces.
A massive stone fireplace rising up one wall.
A low black sectional big enough for all of us, maybe more.
Beyond it, those floor-to-ceiling windows show the marsh in dark layers of glass and a sleepy sun, just barely rising at the edges of the water.
The kitchen gleams at the far end. Stainless steel.
Black cabinets. A long island with a stone surface smooth enough to reflect the recessed lights.
No clutter. No old dishes in the sink. No stack of mail, no half-empty mug, no sign that anyone lives here unless they live like a catalog for men with too much money and too many enemies.
A hallway cuts off from the main room, doors spaced with precision. Bedrooms, likely. Bathrooms. Storage. Whatever else Nash keeps in a house designed to look harmless from the water.
Under different circumstances, I would love this place.
The thought irritates me enough that I step inside with my jaw locked and decide I will love nothing.
Shiloh follows with Homer, who perks up the moment his paws hit the floor. He sniffs once, crouches low, then starts a sideways slink toward the sectional as if the couch has insulted his bloodline. His leash trails behind him. Shiloh lets it drag.
Nash brings in the bags. Ever closes the door, locks it, then locks something else I can’t see. A soft tone pulses through the house. Screens wake near the kitchen wall, each showing a different view of the property. Dock. Water. Rear approach. Roofline. A narrow road I did not see from the boat.
“How many cameras?” I ask.
Ever taps a screen. “Enough.”
“That means too many.”
“It means fewer than I want.”
His answer annoys me a little in its gruffness, but it also makes me feel safer, and that annoys me more.
Nash sets a duffel near the hall. “Shiloh, take Reva’s things to the first bedroom. Ever, run the perimeter from inside before you go back out. I’ll make calls.”
They all begin to move.
Something in me snaps tight.
“No.”
Three sets of eyes turn toward me.
Homer freezes halfway to the fireplace, one paw raised.
I stand in the middle of this beautiful, locked-down marsh palace with Cal’s blood still buried under my nails and rubber bands biting my wrist beneath the sweatshirt cuff. My heart is beating too fast. My skin feels too small. The whole room presses in, glass and stone and expensive silence.
“No,” I say again. “Nobody gets to wander off and do useful man-things until I get answers.”
Nash goes very still. Shiloh lowers the bag in his hand. Ever’s gaze flicks to the screens, then back to me. He does not like standing still while a perimeter exists unchecked. Good. I don’t like standing still inside another person’s decisions.
“Sit,” I say.
Shiloh looks at the couch, then at Nash. “Are we obeying?”
“We are listening,” Nash says.
“Great. Sounds obeying-adjacent.”
I point toward the sectional, the lines of my arm and hand and finger long and imperious. “All of you. Couch. Now.”
Ever’s brows draw together. “Reva—”
“I swear to God, Ever, if you tell me this can wait, I will throw that very expensive-looking bowl through those very expensive-looking windows, and we can all learn together how shatterproof they are.”
Shiloh’s mouth twitches, then smooths because he remembers the shape of the night.
Nash walks to the sectional and sits.
That, more than anything else, makes Ever obey.
Shiloh follows, dropping onto the cushion with a tired grace that belongs on stage instead of in a safehouse after midnight.
Ever stays on the edge, body angled toward the screens.
I let him have that much because I need him listening, and if his eyes can still touch the cameras, maybe his brain will stay in the room.
Homer trots back to me, unimpressed by my authority. I pick him up and tuck him against my side. He allows it with the grim mercy of a tiny king.
I pace in front of the couch.
Once.
Twice.
The rubber band snaps against my wrist before I decide to do it. Pain sparks bright and quick. My lungs open a fraction.
“I know why I’m here,” I say. “I’m angry. I’m scared. I understand the hospital is compromised. I understand Isabel will use Cal, and me, and Delia, and probably every person I have ever loved if it gets her what she wants.”
Nash watches me without interrupting. Wise of him.
“I am tired of understanding everyone else’s reasons after the damage is already done, though.”
Shiloh’s face shifts. Hurt, yes. Guilt too. Anger, maybe, but that anger is turned outward, toward the woman who put all of us here.
Good. He can keep that.