Chapter Fourteen
Hailey
I wake up alone in Knox’s bed, the sheets beside me already cold. For a moment I just lie there, breathing in the smell of
him on the pillows, letting myself pretend this is normal. That I’m a woman waking up in her boyfriend’s apartment after a
night of . . . whatever last night was. Not quite sex. Something more intimate, maybe. Something that felt like a promise.
Then reality crashes back in, and I remember everything.
Liam. The bar. The diamond. Someone hunting us.
I sit up too fast, head spinning. Pale winter light filters through the curtains, and the clock on his nightstand reads 7:42.
There’s a note on the pillow where his head should be, written in blocky handwriting that’s somehow exactly what I’d expect
from him.
Early meeting with Cole. Didn’t want to wake you. Coffee’s in the pot. Stay as long as you want.
We’ll figure this out together. I meant that.
—K
I read it three times. Trace my finger over the word together like I can absorb his certainty through the ink.
He doesn’t know what he’s promising. He thinks this is something manageable, some ex-boyfriend drama or minor legal trouble from my past. He doesn’t know about the Snowflake Diamond.
About Viktor Kedrov, the oligarch we stole it from, a man with enough money and enough grudges to hunt us for the rest of our lives.
About the fact that I’m not just a woman with secrets—I’m a federal crime waiting to be discovered.
If Knox knew the truth, would he still look at me the way he did last night? Would he still touch me like I was something
precious?
Or would he see me the way I sometimes see myself: a liar wearing a good woman’s life like a costume?
I get up and find my clothes scattered across his bedroom floor. Last night comes back in flashes as I dress. His mouth on
my breast. His hands pinning my hips to the mattress. The way he looked at me when he pulled back, all that hunger held in
check by sheer force of will.
When we do this for real, I want you present.
God. This man.
I pour a cup of the coffee he left me because it gives me something to do, and I stand at his kitchen window watching the
city wake up below. Snow fell overnight, covering everything in fresh white, making even the ugly parts look clean. A metaphor
I don’t want to think too hard about.
The burner phone buzzes in my coat pocket.
I freeze with the mug halfway to my lips. Set it down carefully, like sudden movements might trigger something. Cross to where
my coat hangs by the door and fish out the cheap Nokia Liam gave me at the bar.
One text.
Timeline moved up. They’re closer than I thought—I’ll explain when I see you. We need to get to it before they do. Don’t tell
anyone.
My stomach drops.
Now. He wants to do this now. Not tomorrow, not next week—now, while I’m standing in Knox’s kitchen wearing yesterday’s clothes
and still feeling the phantom press of his mouth between my thighs.
I don’t fully trust it. I don’t fully trust Liam. But if someone really is closing in on the diamond’s location, and I’m the only one who knows where it is, then sitting in Knox’s apartment waiting for trouble to find me isn’t an option either.
I should tell Knox. The thought rises up immediate and obvious, because that’s what you do when you’re trying to build something
real with someone. You tell them the truth, even when it’s ugly. Especially when it’s ugly.
But what would I even say?
Hey, so remember when I said I’d done bad things? Funny story. My ex-partner and I stole a twenty-million-dollar diamond from
a Russian tech billionaire five years ago, and I buried it in the Canadian wilderness, and now someone’s hunting us for it,
so I need to fly to the Arctic with Liam to dig it up. Cool? Cool.
He’d stop me. Or worse, he’d insist on coming, and then I’d be dragging a man who works in private security into the middle
of an international theft recovery. Knox is law enforcement adjacent. He has contacts, connections, a reputation to protect.
If this goes sideways—and things with Liam have a way of going sideways—I’d be destroying his career along with my own.
I can’t do that to him. Not after last night. Not after the way he held me like he never wanted to let go.
My fingers hover over the phone. I should call him. I should at least leave a note, something better than the lie I’m about
to tell.
Instead, I type back: Where do I meet you?
The response comes instantly, like he’s been waiting. JFK. Terminal for private charters. Two hours.
Two hours. That’s barely enough time to get home, pack a bag, and make it to JFK. No time for second thoughts. No time for
goodbyes.
Maybe that’s the point.
I switch to my real phone and pull up Sloane’s contact. My thumbs hover over the keyboard for too long before I type: Hey! Since we’re closing the studio for the holidays, I decided to take a last-minute trip. Getting out of the city for a bit. I’ll see you in the new year! Happy holidays xo
It’s vague enough to be true. Specific enough to not raise alarm bells. She’ll assume I’m visiting family I’ve never mentioned
or taking some spontaneous solo vacation. She won’t think to worry until it’s too late to do anything about it.
I don’t text Knox. I tell myself it’s because I don’t know what to say. The truth is I’m afraid that if I open that door,
even a crack, I won’t be able to walk out of his apartment.
I wash my coffee mug and leave it in the drying rack. Straighten the pillows on the couch. Small acts of domesticity that
feel like penance for what I’m about to do.
At the door, I pause. Look back at his apartment one more time. The morning light makes everything look golden, warm, like
a place I could belong if I were someone else.
Then I leave, and I don’t let myself look back again.
Liam is waiting at the private charter terminal, a duffel bag at his feet and two cups of coffee in his hands.
“You came.” He holds one out to me. “Wasn’t sure you would.”
“Neither was I.” I take the coffee but don’t drink it. “I’m still not sure. Convince me this isn’t you dragging me back into
something I can’t get out of.”
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he pulls a manila envelope from the duffel and hands it to me.
Inside: photographs. My building, taken from across the street. Sloane’s studio entrance. Me walking home last Tuesday in
the green coat I bought at that place on Atlantic. And the last one—my apartment door, shot from the hallway. Close enough
to read my unit number.
“The photos aren’t mine,” Liam says. “I pulled them off a guy who was surveilling your block. He had your schedule, Hailey. Your routes. He knew where you work, where you shop, what time you lock your door at night.”
My hands are shaking. Not from the cold.
So Liam didn’t lead them to me. They were already there.
“This is why I couldn’t explain over a phone,” he says quietly. “I needed you to see it.”
I want to argue. I want to demand names, specifics, some kind of assurance. But the pilot is already leading us across the
tarmac toward a small jet, and for the first time since Liam reappeared in my life, I’m not angry at him for showing up. I’m
scared of what would have happened if he hadn’t.
The jet is nicer than I expected. Leather seats, polished wood accents, a mini bar stocked with top-shelf liquor. I raise
an eyebrow at Liam as we settle in across from each other.
“Saved up,” he says before I can ask. “Figured if this is our last job together, might as well do it in style.”
Our last job. The words land somewhere complicated in my chest. There was a time when I couldn’t imagine doing anything without Liam. When
he was my partner in every sense of the word, the only person who knew all my secrets and wanted me anyway. We were going
to retire together. Buy a house somewhere warm, live off the diamond until we got bored, then find some new adventure to chase.
That was before I realized adventures with Liam always ended with my heart in pieces.
The plane takes off, and I watch New York shrink beneath us. Somewhere down there, Knox is in a meeting with Cole, probably
checking his phone, wondering if I’ve texted. I should text him. Should tell him something, even if it’s another lie.
I don’t.
“You’re thinking about him.” Liam’s voice cuts through my spiral. “The security guy. Military?”
“Marines.”
“Makes sense.” Liam stretches his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. “You always did have a thing for military men.”
“You would know.”
“I would.” His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Once a Marine, always a Marine, right? At least that’s what they told
me.”
We don’t talk about Knox after that. Don’t talk about the past, either, about what we were to each other or why it fell apart.
Just logistics. The diamond is hidden in an abandoned mining site about three hours by snowmobile from the nearest town. I
chose the location specifically because it was remote, inaccessible, a place no one would stumble across by accident. Getting
there in December won’t be easy, but it won’t be impossible either.
Getting back out might be another story.
“Weather looks rough,” Liam says, scrolling through something on his phone. “Big storm coming in tomorrow night. We need to
be in and out before it hits.”
“And if we’re not?”
“Then we hunker down and wait it out. Won’t be comfortable, but survivable.”
Survivable. That’s a word I haven’t had to think about in a long time. Five years of normal life, and I’d almost forgotten what it felt
like to make decisions based on whether I might die.
Almost.
We land in Yellowknife to refuel and switch to a smaller plane that appears to have been built during the Cold War and hasn’t
been updated since. The pilot is a weathered man in his sixties who doesn’t ask questions, just grunts at Liam’s instructions
and gets us in the air.
The landscape below is white. Endless, featureless white, broken only by dark patches of frozen lakes and the occasional cluster
of evergreens. It’s beautiful in a brutal way. It would kill you without hesitation if you made a wrong step.