12. Nash #2
We leave the property on foot, moving through the side streets without speaking.
The Garden District shifts around us, all dark porches and old trees and houses pretending not to see what happens after midnight.
Deacon takes the lead twice, choosing alleys and narrow cuts I would’ve missed.
I let him. This is his territory in the way rot belongs to wood it has lived in too long.
Our meeting place sits five blocks away, behind a shuttered florist that supplies arrangements to half the old families who prefer their cruelty with lilies.
The front windows are dark, the security grate pulled down.
A narrow passage runs alongside the building to a small courtyard where buckets, broken stems, and floral wire have been rinsed into the drain for years.
The air smells of bruised roses and old water.
Sabine Martel waits under the awning.
She is anything but soft.
That’s my first impression, and it corrects some unhelpful part of me that wanted Deacon’s former lover to look like a mistake he could regret in obvious ways.
Sabine is tall, narrow, elegant in black trousers and a gray blouse, hair twisted at the nape of her neck.
Her face is beautiful in the way knives can be beautiful when the light hits them cleanly.
She wears no jewelry except small gold hoops in her ears and a thin chain at her throat.
Her eyes go to Deacon first. They stay there long enough to tell me several things. There’s history here, along with anger and affection, buried where sensible people bury weapons.
“You brought Blackwood,” she says.
“You said you wouldn’t speak twice,” Deacon answers.
“I said I wouldn’t wait twice.”
“I heard both.”
Her mouth tightens. “You always did enjoy deciding which part of a woman’s sentence mattered.”
Deacon’s expression doesn’t change. I have to cover my mouth, feigning rubbing an itch along my jawline. She is…formidable.
Sabine turns her gaze to me. “Mr. Blackwood.”
“Ms. Martel.”
“You are taller than your reputation.”
“You are less cautious than yours.”
That earns me a faint smile. “My caution is the reason we’re not meeting inside that house.”
Deacon steps under the awning, keeping enough distance that anyone watching from the street would not read any prior intimacy unless they knew what to look for.
I know what to look for. Reva would too, and I’m doubly glad she is not here.
The night has already asked more of her than any woman should have to pay.
“Delia,” Deacon says.
Sabine’s smile disappears, and she dons a cloak of professionalism like it’s a second skin.
“She is alive. Bruised wrist. No broken bones or anything like that I have seen. Isabel has kept her close since the gala, though not locked in her room every hour. She wants the staff watching her without appearing to watch her.”
“Discipline?” I ask.
“Verbal so far. Quasi-affectionate.” Sabine’s eyes flick back to Deacon. “You know her style.”
His jaw shifts.
I do. I have seen enough of Isabel to understand that a hand on the cheek is more horrific than a slap.
Sabine continues. “Delia overheard something last night. I do not know how much, but it was enough to leave her pale at dinner.”
“What was said?” Deacon asks.
“Something about orders for the hospital. Another attempt on Boudreaux. They want Reva’s location out of him, first, and then they want him dead.”
I go very still.
Ever speaks in my ear, voice cold enough to frost glass. “Shiloh needs to know.”
I touch the comm twice, acknowledgement without sound.
Sabine notices the movement but doesn’t comment.
“Go on,” I say.
“Isabel also wants you. Naturally.” Her gaze returns to Deacon. “Alive if convenient. Made an example of, if not. She says you betrayed her.”
“We know I did.”
The simplicity of that answer lands harder than any attempt at defense would have.
Sabine’s throat moves. “She’s angrier about you than about the girl.”
“Reva,” Deacon says. “Her name is Reva.”
Sabine glances at me, then back to him. “About Reva.”
“And Delia?” I ask.
Sabine’s hands fold in front of her, fingers threaded tight.
The first sign of nerves. “If Isabel decides Delia’s loyalty has shifted, I don’t see her hesitating.
She may dress it as instruction or grief or correction, but the result will be the same.
Delia has value because she is obedient and because people inside La Rosa recognize the bloodline.
If she becomes visibly disloyal, Isabel will make her survival cost too much to matter. ”
Deacon’s eyes flatten.
There it is again. That instinct. Cut through the house. Take the girl. Burn every bridge afterward.
I step into it before it can grow legs. “How do we extract her without turning Isabel’s full force toward Reva?”
Sabine looks at me as if that is the first intelligent question she has heard tonight. “You don’t do it. You don’t take Delia from the house. Not yet, anyway.”
Deacon’s head turns.
She holds up a hand. “Listen before you decide I am a coward.”
“I didn’t say coward.”
“You thought something close.”
“I thought you had two seconds to explain.”
She gives him a humorless look. “Shut the hell up and listen, then.”
I almost like her.
Sabine reaches into her blouse and pulls out a folded sheet of paper, then hands it to Deacon. He opens it between us. A schedule. House rotations, delivery times, a charity board luncheon, two foundation visits, a chapel appointment and a private meeting marked only with initials.
“Isabel will bring Delia out in public within forty-eight hours,” Sabine says.
“She has to. Rumors started after the gala, and Isabel cannot let people think a granddaughter has been caged because she embarrassed the family. There will be a Sainte Aurelia Foundation luncheon at the old convent…here.” She points at the date.
“Donors, press, board members, enough witnesses to keep violence polite.”
“Polite violence is still violence,” I say.
“Yes. But it gives you movement, vehicles, staff, and a schedule Isabel will not want disrupted.”
Deacon studies the paper. “Route?”
“Usually from the rear drive to Magazine, then across. I can confirm the morning of. Delia will be dressed, accompanied, and miserable. If you try to take her from inside the house, you lose. If you take her in public, Isabel loses face before she loses the girl. That gives her half a second of hesitation.”
“Half a second can be enough,” Deacon says.
Sabine looks at him. “It can also be a grave.”
He folds the paper and passes it to me. I take it because I am the one who needs to argue against hope when hope starts moving too fast.
“What do you want for this?” I ask.
Sabine’s chin lifts. “A life to live.”
“Specific.”
“I want my younger brother moved out of the city before Isabel notices I’m useful to the wrong people. He works docks on the West Bank. He has no part in this.”
Deacon says, “Done.”
I look at him. He doesn’t look back at me.
Sabine sees the half-exchange and smiles faintly. “You two are going to be exhausting.”
“We already are,” I say.
Her smile fades again. She studies Deacon, and when she speaks, the question has lost its sharp edges. “What happens after you get Delia out?”
Deacon says nothing.
Sabine’s discomfort grows visible by degrees. The shift of her weight. The way her fingers smooth over the chain at her throat. “I am asking because people are starting to ask. Quietly, but they are asking. You crossed Isabel. Delia protected Reva. Boudreaux survived. Blackwood moved…hid.”
Ever mutters in my ear, “Tell her I’m offended she left me out.”
I ignore him.
Sabine’s eyes stay on Deacon. “Is your plan to go to war with La Rosa?”
Deacon and I look at each other. There is no clean answer. War has already started. The question is whether we admit it before Isabel forces the city to do it for us.
“Whatever it takes to keep the girls safe,” I say.
Sabine’s eyes flick to me.
Deacon’s voice comes lower, rougher, and he says the thing no one really wants to say. “They are La Rosa.”
The courtyard seems to quiet around the words. Sabine’s face changes—with recognition, maybe. A bit of fear mixed in, perhaps, because fear is the first sane response to a truth with that much weight behind it.
Deacon steps closer, not enough to touch her, but enough that she can’t pretend he is speaking anything but God’s truth.
“Don’t forget that,” he says.
Sabine swallows. The motion is small. Human. Then she nods.
“People remember the mother’s line,” she says. “Even if Isabel spent fifteen years teaching them to remember it her way.”
That line lodges in my mind. Mother’s line.
Reva does not know enough about that yet. None of us do, perhaps not even Deacon. The gaps around her mother remain too clean, too deliberate. I don’t like those kinds of holes. They usually have bodies in them.
I fold the paper once and tuck it inside my jacket. “Your brother leaves tonight.”
Sabine exhales through her nose. “Then I will confirm the luncheon route by noon tomorrow.”
“Use the old signal?” Deacon asks.
Her mouth softens for a fraction of a second. “If I use the old signal, you will come alone and do something stupid.”
He does not deny it, but we know that’s not true anymore.
She looks at me. “I will send through Blackwood. He looks less likely to confuse martyrdom with romance.”
“I’ll be waiting,” I say.
Deacon’s eyes cut to me.
Sabine almost smiles again. “Good.”
A sound comes from the alley mouth. Tiny. Metal against brick. All three of us move.