68. Holden #2
I look to Eli to bring him in. He’s the one who usually balances Milo’s worst-case instincts against what’s actually in front of us.
But Eli isn’t in the conversation. He’s at the table, hands clasped, knuckles gone white, staring at a spot on the wall a thousand miles past it.
Not calm. The opposite of calm—the kind of quiet that’s a man holding something down with both hands.
Shit.
I know that look. I watched him wear it for weeks before he finally let himself near her.
And it’s back, settling over him brick by brick while she stands ten feet away with her arms wrapped around herself—because somewhere behind those eyes he’s already decided this rope is his fault.
That this is what it costs to let himself have something good.
That if he holds far enough away, hurts enough, the people he loves stay safe.
“Eli,” I say, pulling him out of his internal spiral. His eyes snap to mine. “What’s your take?”
“Regardless of who did it,” he says, his voice quiet and precise, “the message is clear. Someone’s targeting Sage. Someone who knows where she lives and has access to her home.” He looks at me. “She can’t stay here.”
“No,” I agree. “She can’t.”
Sage stops pacing. “I’m not running.”
“Nobody said run,” I tell her. “We said you can’t stay here. This location is compromised. Someone walked in, hung a noose from your ceiling, and walked out, all while you were at work five minutes away. If they wanted to do more than send a message, they could have. Next time, they might.”
She stares at me, and I can see the fight building—the stubborn, feral independence that makes her who she is and also makes her a nightmare to protect. But behind it, fear. The kind she’s too proud to name but not too smart to ignore.
“Where would I go?” she asks.
“My place.”
The room goes quiet. Five sets of eyes on me, and the size of what I’m offering hits me—the door I’m opening that I’ve kept shut for years.
“Your place?” Micah repeats.
“I’ve got a house. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a guest room I use for storage.
There’s space for all of us.” I keep my voice level, practical, like I’m presenting a tactical option rather than handing someone the key to the only private thing I have left.
“It’s in a residential neighborhood. Quiet street.
I know every neighbor by name and face. No one gets within a block without me knowing. ”
“You have a whole-ass house?” Milo asks, with the expression of a man who’s just learned his coworker has a secret double life, which—fair.
“I own a house, Milo. People do that.”
“Yeah, but you? A big ole house? With rooms and a yard and shit?”
“There’s a yard,” I confirm. “And shit.”
“Holden.” Sage’s voice cuts through the banter. She’s looking at me with an expression I can’t fully read—gratitude, surprise, something softer. “That’s a big ask. All of us? In your house?”
“It’s not an ask. It’s an offer.” I lean against the counter.
“Look, the house is bigger than I need. Always has been. I bought it twelve years ago when I was twenty-four and an idiot who thought he’d have a wife and kids by thirty.
Didn’t work out that way. So I’ve got a big-ass colonial with one occupied bedroom and a mortgage I should have refinanced three years ago.
” I shrug. “It’s sitting there. Might as well fill it. ”
“Four bedrooms,” Eli says.
“Don’t forget the guest room,” Milo adds. “That makes five.”
“Congratulations on your ability to count,” I say.
Eli lifts his hands. “I’m just saying . . . that’s . . . generous.”
“It’s practical. Knox can take the guest room—it’s got the biggest bed besides mine. The rest of you can fight over the other three rooms, I really don’t care.” I look at Sage. “You take the main. I’ll move my stuff to the den. It’s got a pull-out.”
“I’m not taking your bedroom.”
“You are. It’s got the en suite and a lock on the door. If you need space from five men in a house, that’s where you get it.”
She opens her mouth to argue, then closes it. I watch the fight leave her, not because she’s defeated but because she’s smart enough to know when stubbornness stops being strength and starts being stupidity.
“Okay,” she says. “But I don’t want you to move your stuff out. Not tonight, anyway.”
“Okay,” I echo.
The relief in the room is a physical thing—a collective exhale, shoulders dropping, jaws unclenching.
“I need to tell Amy,” Sage says. “She can’t come back here without knowing—”
“Don’t tell her about the noose,” Eli says, sharp. “Not yet. If Tyler did this, we don’t want him knowing we found it.”
“But what if that puts her in danger?” Sage asks.
“I’ll get Dean to keep an eye on her. Maybe talk to Odin about round-the-clock surveillance. She’ll be safe.”
Sage looks at the rope and sighs. “What do you want me to tell her?”
“Just that you’re staying with friends for a while. Keep it vague.”
Sage nods slowly. “She’ll believe that. She already thinks I’m running a harem.”
“You are running a harem,” Milo points out.
“Milo, I swear to God—”
“What? I’m being supportive of our lifestyle.”
“Can we focus?” I cut in, but there’s no real heat in it.
The bickering is good. It means they’re settling.
It means the shock is metabolizing into action, which is where we function best. “Sage, pack a bag. Essentials. We’ll come back for the rest later.
Milo, before we leave, I want you to take down the noose and bag it. ”
“I’ll dust for prints first,” Milo says, already reaching for his laptop bag. “I’ve got a kit in the car.”
“Since when do you have a fingerprint kit?”
“Since always. Don’t worry about it.”
I decide I don’t want to worry about it.
Knox pushes off the wall. “I’ll do another sweep of the building. Fire escapes, entry points, anything I missed the first time.”
“Micah, you’re with Sage while she packs,” Eli says. Then he looks at me. “I’ll call Odin. He needs to know.”
“Agreed. And Eli—tell him it’s possible someone knows about us. About what we do. The noose might not be random.”
His face tightens. “I know.”
The apartment fills with purpose. Milo works the scene. Knox disappears into the building. Micah walks with Sage to her bedroom, his hand on the small of her back, and I hear the low murmur of his voice through the wall, steady, reassuring.
Eli steps onto the fire escape to make his call. I stand in the living room and study the noose.
Seven coils. Clean wrap. Patient knot. This wasn’t anger—anger tears things apart, breaks windows, smashes locks. This was deliberate. Staged. A performance.
If Tyler were angry, he would have messed shit up, broken Sage’s things, left a threatening voicemail and probably his own fingerprints on the doorknob. Tyler is a bull in a china shop, and this scene is a scalpel.
I take out my phone and photograph the noose one more time—close-up, the knot work, the coil pattern—because something about it is bothering me in a way I can’t name yet, and I’ve learned to trust the itch.
Forty minutes later, we leave.
I’m not so sure Amy should come back either, but there’s no easy way to tell her about the threat without revealing more than we want to.
I make a mental note to have some of the rookies do drive-bys for the next few nights, just to be extra safe.
Sage has one bag and the look of someone walking away from a life that no longer fits. Milo’s got the evidence in a black trash bag.
We each drive our cars to my house. Sage rides with me. She’s quiet for most of the drive, staring out the window, her hands in her lap. I let the silence sit because sometimes silence is what people need, and sometimes filling it is the most selfish thing you can do.
Three blocks from my street, she speaks.
“Holden?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you ever get married and have kids?”
I keep my eyes on the road. “Never found the right person. And then the work changed me. Couldn’t imagine bringing kids into a world where the only real justice happens in shadows.” I glance at her. “Why?”
“I think you’d have been a good dad.” She says it without turning, still looking out at the street, the houses blinking by. “You’re good at taking care of people. Even if you hate admitting it.”
I keep my eyes on the road. Her declaration sits between us, sharp and silent.
Eventually, I pull into the driveway. The house sits back from the street—white siding, black shutters, a porch I built myself one summer when I needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t violence.
There’s a lawn that I mow every week, a garage I keep clean, and a mailbox that has my surname on the side.
It’s the most normal thing about me. The one piece of evidence that I once wanted a life that looked like everyone else’s.
I turn off the engine. Sage looks at the house through the windshield.
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
“It’s home.”
She turns to me, her expression is stripped of everything except the thing underneath—the raw, unguarded truth of a woman who just had her safe place violated and had to run. I’ve seen her file. So I’m all too aware that this isn’t a first for her.
“Thank you, Holden.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Milo’s going to explode my kitchen trying to overfeed you the moment we get inside. He’s like an Italian nonna.”
She laughs and it loosens the worried coil in my chest.
“Come on, wildcat,” I say, killing the engine. “Let’s get you settled into your new home.”