Chapter Twenty-Four
Hailey
Three days in captivity, and I’m losing my goddamn mind looking for something to do besides think about the two men I’ve been
sleeping with.
Well. One man I’ve been sleeping with. One man I’ve been very carefully not sleeping with, despite five years of distance
doing nothing to kill the want.
We have a plan. Not a great one. Not even a good one, if I’m being honest. But it’s a plan, and having it settled between
the three of us has taken some of the poison out of the air.
Or at least given us an excuse not to talk about Knox and Liam fucking each other this morning while they thought I was asleep.
Because I wasn’t asleep. I watched the whole thing from the bed with my eyes half open and my blood running so hot I had to
bite the inside of my cheek to keep quiet. And when it was done and all three of us were awake and nobody could pretend otherwise,
we sat in the blind spot by the fireplace and acted like it hadn’t happened. I pitched a plan. Gave us all somewhere safe
to put our eyes and our energy, and they grabbed on to it like drowning men reaching for a rope. Knox went into tactical mode.
Liam started running scenarios. And just like that, we were three people with a mission instead of three people who couldn’t
look at each other.
The idea is mine, because I’m the one with leverage and I’m the one who knows Marlena’s type.
Collectors are patient until they’re not, and when they’re not, they get sloppy.
So we wait. We let the deadline get closer.
We let her stew and monologue and watch us on her cameras looking defeated and scared.
And then, right when she’s convinced we’ve run out of fight, I break. I give her what she wants. Mostly.
The details of “mostly” I’m keeping to myself for now. The broad strokes are simple. I cooperate, I give Marlena enough to
believe she’s won, and I hold back just enough to keep us alive and breathing and necessary. A woman like Marlena doesn’t
destroy an asset she still needs.
The tricky part is timing. Cave too early and she won’t trust it. Hold out too long and she starts cutting off fingers to
make her point. We’re aiming for the sweet spot between broken and believable.
In the meantime, we wait. On the plan. On the distress signal Liam rigged from the camera’s Wi-Fi module last night, which
went out into the dark and came back with nothing. No ping, no response, no way to know if it reached a tower or just died
in the cold. Knox and Liam are talking about pulling a second module to try a longer broadcast, but even if they do, we won’t
know if anyone heard us until we know. Sitting with that uncertainty is its own kind of torture.
So. Day three. Waiting.
The afternoon light streams through the frost-edged windows, pale and winter-soft. Everything feels different since this morning.
Knox and Liam are in the living room, arguing over what to watch on the ancient DVD player—because apparently Marlena stocked
the cabin with technology from 2005. The collection she left us ranges from romantic comedies to action movies, all of them
at least a decade old. Liam called it “retro charm.” Knox called it “psychological torture.”
But they’re doing that thing where they look at each other now. Actually look. No more of that cagey tension from the first
two days. Something happened between them—I don’t know the details, but I’ve seen the way they move around each other now.
Easier. More fluid. Whatever wall they’d built between themselves has come down.
I cross to the pantry closet, mostly just to have something to do with my hands.
The first two shelves are stocked with gourmet pasta, artisanal olive oils, and enough canned goods to survive a nuclear winter.
I push past the truffle salt and imported tomatoes, reaching toward the back where I spotted something earlier.
My fingers close around cardboard. I pull the box forward, shoving aside a bag of organic quinoa, and nearly drop it when
I see what’s inside.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
String lights. A fake tree about two feet tall. Glass ornaments in red and silver and gold. Velvet garland in deep green.
Knox looks up from where he’s crouched by the DVD player. “What’d you find?”
I hold up a strand of tiny lights, letting them dangle between my fingers. “Christmas decorations.”
Liam abandons the stack of DVDs and crosses toward me. “No way.”
“Way.” I dig deeper, pulling out a velvet tree skirt embroidered with snowflakes. “She really went all out with the holiday
hostage aesthetic.”
Knox joins us, peering into the box with the same tactical assessment he’d give a supply cache. “Fake tree. Ornaments. Even
hooks.” He pulls out a smaller box. “Gourmet hot cocoa mix.”
“Naturally it’s gourmet,” I mutter. “Why hold people prisoner without Swiss chocolate?”
Liam reaches past both of us and grabs the tree. It’s already fluffed, the branches that perfect manufactured pine shape that
real trees never achieve. “You know what? We should set this up.”
I stare at him. “We’re being held captive by a lunatic who wants to kill us in a week. And you want to decorate?”
“Christmas Eve is in seven days.” Liam shrugs, but the shrug doesn’t sell it. His voice is too tight. “If we’re going to die,
might as well do it festively.”
Knox snorts. “That’s dark.”
“I’m a dark guy.”
I look at the tree in Liam’s hands, then at the box of ornaments, then at the two men watching me with expressions that are trying very hard not to look hopeful.
Fuck it.
“Give me the lights,” I say.
What follows is the most surreal two hours of my life.
Knox takes charge of the lighting situation because that’s who he is. He examines the windows like he’s planning a tactical
operation, measuring distances with his eyes and muttering about even distribution and optimal coverage. Liam holds the ladder—which
materialized from a hallway closet—and offers a running commentary.
“Little to the left. No, other left.”
“I know where left is.”
“Do you? Because that’s distinctly right.”
“That’s your left, asshole.”
“Left is left. It doesn’t change based on perspective.”
“It literally does. That’s how directions work.”
I tune them out and focus on the tree, which I’ve set up on the small table by the fireplace. The ornaments are beautiful—hand-painted
glass balls, delicate wooden snowflakes, little silver birds with real feather details. Nothing mass-produced. Marlena must
have spent a fortune on this box, which tracks. Evil billionaires don’t do anything halfway.
I hang a red ball, then a silver one. Step back. Adjust the red one three millimeters to the right. This is stupid. We’re
going to die, and I’m worrying about ornament placement.
But my hands keep moving anyway.
“Higher,” Liam says behind me.
I turn. Knox is stretching up to secure lights around the top of the window frame, his sweater riding up to expose a strip
of stomach and the sharp cut of his hip bone. I watch Liam watch him, and my stomach flips.
“That’s what she said,” I offer.
Knox nearly falls off the ladder. Liam catches it, steadying the base with both hands while Knox glares down at me.
“Very mature.”
“Thank you. I try.”
By the time we’re done, the cabin looks like a Christmas catalog exploded in the best possible way. Lights frame every window,
casting the room in warm gold. The little tree glows on its table, ornaments catching the firelight. We even draped garland
along the mantel, because apparently we’re those people now.
“It’s ridiculous,” Knox says, standing back to survey our work.
“Completely absurd,” I agree.
“I love it,” Liam says quietly.
We both look at him. He’s staring at the tree with a look I haven’t seen on his face in years. Open. Unguarded.
“I haven’t celebrated Christmas in five years.” He doesn’t look away from the tree. “Not really. After we went our separate
ways, I just . . . stopped. Didn’t see the point.”
My throat tightens. I know exactly what he means. Those years apart, I’d treated December like any other month. Takeout on
Christmas Eve. Netflix on Christmas Day. Pretending the loneliness was solitude instead of naming it.
“Same,” I admit. “My Christmases in New York were basically me and Thai food and too much wine.”
“Sounds depressing as hell,” Knox says, but his voice is gentle.
“It was fine.”
“Hailey.” He gives me a look. “You can’t be fine about Christmas.”
“Watch me.”
But I’m smiling when I say it, and so is he.
Liam moves toward the kitchen, opening cabinets with purpose now. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right. I’m making dinner.
A real one.”
“You cook?” Knox sounds skeptical.
“I cook well.” Liam pulls out a roasting pan. “Unlike some people who think protein powder counts as a meal.”
“That was one time.”
“It was three times. This week.”
Knox doesn’t deny it.
I drift toward the kitchen island, watching Liam assess the ingredients Marlena has stocked. He moves with confidence, pulling
out a chicken, root vegetables, herbs I couldn’t name if my life depended on it. His hands are sure and steady, and there’s
a focus in his eyes I recognize from our old jobs. The same precision he brought to bypassing security systems, now applied
to seasoning meat.
“You learned this where, exactly?” I ask. “Our old life wasn’t exactly conducive to home cooking.”
“After.” He’s rubbing the chicken with butter and herbs, his movements practiced. “I had a lot of free time and a lot of YouTube
tutorials. Cooking felt like the opposite of everything we did before. Creating instead of taking.”
The words land somewhere I wasn’t expecting. I’ve never thought about it that way, but he’s right. Five years ago, we took.
Stole. Acquired. Now I make jewelry—tiny beautiful things that didn’t exist until I created them.
Maybe we both found our way to building instead of breaking.
“Can I help?” I ask.
Liam hands me a bag of potatoes. “Wash. Peel. Cut into chunks. Try not to take off a finger.”
“I have excellent fine motor skills.”
“You once accidentally superglued your hand to a wall safe.”
“That was intentional.”
“The superglue?”