Chapter Thirteen
Tessa
Ten weeks later
It had been ten weeks since Denton and Rainman disappeared. I’d learned exactly where all my soft spots were by the third week and spent the other seven trying to ignore them.
Denton and Rainman had gone to ground the night of the raid and stayed there, as far as anyone could tell.
Knight chased every wire transfer, every burner number, every shell company registered to a name that led to another name that led nowhere at all, and every single trail died clean and quiet, like somebody with real money and real patience had scrubbed the world behind them.
éclipse sat dark. The place had closed up shop with no commotion.
It was like the whole of their clientele had gotten some group text telling them business was closed for a while.
Life at the mountain, in the meantime, had turned into something I hadn’t let myself believe I still got to have.
Mornings where Antonio slept past dawn, his arm heavy and warm across my waist, were some of the most treasured memories of my life thus far.
Coffee on the porch, Carrie teaching me how to braid a fishtail because she said I did it wrong and it drove her insane to watch, Darby swearing up a blue streak at a video game controller like the console had personally wronged her family, and all the smiles and laughs I’d collected from every person holed up in this luxury hide-away would forever live in my heart.
Small, stupid, perfect things made me happier than I could ever remember being.
Underneath all of it, though, ran the one thread I couldn’t cut loose no matter how hard I yanked.
Mercy Raines. She was still somewhere in the dark I’d only escaped by luck and with a small army.
I knew that fixating on her wasn’t really about Mercy.
It was about me. About surviving when other people hadn’t and needing somewhere to put that guilt so it didn’t sit on my own chest and crush me instead.
I also knew that the tired, sick feeling dogging me for weeks wasn’t really about her either, though I told myself it was.
Some mornings I couldn’t look at eggs without my stomach lurching.
Some afternoons I fell asleep sitting up, book still open in my lap, and woke an hour later disoriented and cotton-mouthed.
I chalked it up to a low simmering depression I hadn’t had time to examine yet, plus a body that hadn’t kept anything resembling a reliable calendar since the night they’d taken me.
éclipse had knocked my whole life sideways on multiple fronts.
Made sense my period would be part of the collateral damage.
It was Veda who finally said out loud what the rest of us had been circling for a week. We sat around the big kitchen table, the four of us, Carrie curled sideways in her chair with her knees drawn up, Darby flipping a butter knife end over end like she might play with a fidget spinner.
“We’re going back to the compound,” Veda said, and there wasn’t a question mark anywhere in her voice. “All of us. Together.”
Antonio looked up from his coffee slowly, like he already knew arguing wasn’t going to get him anywhere but wanted the record to show he’d considered it. “This a discussion?”
“Not at all,” Darby said cheerfully.
“We’ve been up here ten weeks,” Carrie said softly.
“Denton’s gone quiet. Knight’s got nothing.
We love you, Antonio, we do, but this isn’t a life.
It’s a very expensive, very luxurious holding pattern.
Not to mention the women we rescued need to find some kind of normal life.
They can do that better if we take them back to Haven. ”
I watched Antonio’s expression closely. He wanted to argue about safety and every reason he’d stacked up over the last two months for keeping us all exactly where we were.
Then I watched him let it go instead. He kind of deflated but did it with a stubborn tilt to his chin.
Kind of looked like he wanted to convince himself this was all his idea and Goddamn anyone who suggested otherwise.
“Fine,” he said, then gave me a pointed look. “But Pain checks you over the second we land. No arguments.”
I didn’t argue. Mostly because I was tired, and because some small, buried part of me was relieved somebody else wanted to make sure I was all right, even if I’d have sworn up and down there was nothing to find.
When we left the next morning, it was barely sunrise.
I packed one little bag, knowing I had stuff at the compound and, no matter how much money Antonio and his father had, a helicopter was only so big if you wanted it to be practical, which meant limited space.
Antonio said nothing, just kept his hand on the small of my back, steering me everywhere like I might run for it at any second.
He also seemed a touch overly attentive.
I chalked it up to the demand for a sudden change in environment.
Antonio might be a badass mob boss, but he was also overly protective. And I thought I might be OK with that.
Once we arrived back at Kiss of Death, deep inside the place under all the camo netting and stuff to hide us, Sully waved from a garage bay.
He’d come ahead with Finch to make sure there were no surprises.
And yeah, Tonio had to be a show-off and have the pilot land us on top of one of the warehouses they’d had repurposed for this very thing.
Might have been more practical than having an escort from the private airport, but I know he enjoyed helping me from the expensive ride like the mafia prince he was. Money and power went a long way.
Hawk’s arm had healed fine, the bandana long retired. And there, in the middle of the yard, propped on a cane with a physical therapist half his age trying to talk him through some range-of-motion exercise, stood Gunnar, cussing a blue streak that probably made Darby proud.
“I don’t give a good Goddamn what the fuckin’ chart says, I’m walkin’ to that fuckin’ grill without your Goddamned help,” he snarled, swatting away the therapist’s steadying hand. “Or a fucking walker! I survived a Goddamned building falling on me. I can survive a fuckin’ hamburger.”
Hannah and Pippa stood on the sideline, each with a beer in hand, and clinked bottle necks before taking healthy pulls.
“You tell the bastard, honey.” Pippa gave Gunnar a salute with her beer bottle before Hannah clinked bottle necks with her again.
“You got this, big brother!”
Gunnar turned and pointed at Hannah. “I have to take that from Pippa. She’s my woman. You on the other hand --”
“Am your little sister, and you will take anything I dish out because you love me.”
“You’re ten minutes younger than me!” The man really was a horrible patient.
“Which you used to your advantage every single time you wanted to pull rank on me our entire childhood.” She grinned at the big VP. “Suck it up, buttercup.”
Veda laughed and quit trying to pretend watching Gunnar grumble through physical therapy after he’d nearly died didn’t give her as big a relief as it did the rest of us. This was our family. All of us. Then Pippa jogged over to smack a kiss on his cheek before he could start another tirade.
I stood there in the yard a minute longer, soaking in all of it -- the noise, the family, the ordinary chaos of people who loved each other being loud about it -- and felt I belonged. I never wanted that feeling to leave.
Veda fell into step beside me as we headed for the main house, looping her arm through mine. “She’s exhausted,” she said to Nadine, who’d come out onto the porch to greet us. “Sleeping half the day some days.”
Nadine’s gaze slid to me, gave me a quick once over, then smiled warmly.
“Come on, sweetheart,” she said, hooking her hand through my other elbow before I could protest. Tonio gave me a gentle shove in her direction, urging me onward as Nadine continued to speak.
“Let’s get Pain to check you over. Just to be safe. ”
The clinic had a light bleach smell underneath the scent of the lavender hand soap sitting by the sink Nadine used to wash her hands.
I supposed, if I had to get bad news, I’d rather it come wrapped in lavender.
All my problems weren’t over, but oh my God, I loved that scent.
Not that I expected bad news. I was just exhausted.
With everything that had happened, not to mention all the sex I’d been enjoying with Tonio, it was no wonder I felt tired.
Pain worked quietly, letting Nadine do most of the talking.
They took two vials of blood, then handed me a plastic cup and Nadine led me to the little bathroom off the exam room.
Nadine kept up a steady stream of light conversation while we waited on results, gossip about somebody’s cousin twice removed who’d married a man nobody liked, whether Gunnar was going to actually behead his physical therapist before the month was out, and whether Ellie’s cats had finally stopped giving Chains, Ellie’s man, the creeps from hell.
Yeah. The man was terrified of black cats.
All three cats were black. Jet black. And they all looked at Chains like they’d love to steal his soul.
I couldn’t help but giggle at the mental image.
It was easy, comfortable noise, the kind that let me breathe instead of spiral.
Then Nadine gave me a gentle smile as she continued asking me questions. “When was your last cycle, hon?”
I opened my mouth to answer and nothing came out, because I genuinely didn’t know.
I sat there running back through weeks, then months, and came up with nothing solid to grab onto.
“I don’t…” I frowned, actually working the math like it might change the answer.
“Not since before éclipse. Not since before they took me.”