malakai #2
“Maybe she’ll appreciate the effort enough to be generous afterward,” I continued while pulling around the side of the house.
“I’ve been thinking about that too. Maybe she’ll let Ronan and me take her apart when she’s finished with you.
Maybe Ronan will fuck me while she watches.
I’m not particularly attached to the order as long as everybody interesting is involved. ”
Nichlas looked toward the house instead of me, his face stricken enough that I could almost see him realizing Ronan was part of this too.
Whatever hope he had been holding that one of us would become reasonable once we were away from Hunter disappeared when he noticed the lights through the lower windows.
Ronan had the dining room set up by the time I brought Nichlas inside.
Two laptops sat open at one end of the long table with feeds cycling through different sections of the property.
Another screen showed the grounds divided into zones, the house near the center and the roads marked beyond the tree line.
Ronan had pushed most of the dining chairs aside except for three and left a black tracking band beside a glass of water where Nichlas could see it.
He looked up when we entered, took in the way Nichlas was leaning on me and the amount of weight he was keeping off the injured leg, then pointed toward a chair near the middle of the table.
“Sit him there. The medication should be mostly out of his system by the time she gets here, but he needs water now if you expect him to make it farther than the yard.”
Nichlas resisted when I guided him toward the chair, although there was not enough strength behind it to qualify as a real attempt. I got him seated and put the water within reach before joining Ronan at the screens.
Ronan walked me through what he had already done while Nichlas listened.
He had shifted one camera near the creek after finding a blind stretch behind the first position, covered both approaches to the service road, and placed additional feeds near the old shed and the southern tree line.
There were still pockets of property without direct camera coverage, which was exactly why he had brought the tracker.
“We’ll know which direction he moves even if we lose the visual,” Ronan said as he picked up the band and crossed back toward the table.
“The outer road is covered from both ends, and nobody has come onto the property since I got here. Echo can have the trees without us wondering whether he slipped through them.”
Nichlas drew his legs back when Ronan crouched in front of him, but Ronan simply caught the uninjured ankle and secured the tracking band above it. He checked the fit, stood, then looked toward the map until a new marker appeared inside the house.
“You have a little while before you need to move,” Ronan told him while nudging the glass closer. “Use it to drink, get the rest of those drugs out of your head, and catch your breath. You’re going to need all three.”
Nichlas finally picked up the water with both bandaged hands. The glass shook badly enough that some spilled across his fingers before he got it to his mouth, while Ronan returned to the screens and I took the chair directly across from him.
Echo would be here soon. Until then, we had time to enjoy the anticipation.
Nichlas finished the water slowly because the bandages around his hands made even that difficult.
Ronan had wrapped a dish towel around the glass so he could hold it without dropping it, but the tremor in his fingers still sent a little water over the rim.
He kept glancing toward the windows while he drank, as if the dark tree line might give him some better option than the two men sitting in the room with him.
The drugs were wearing off. I could see it in the way his eyes tracked things now, quicker and more focused than they had been in the car.
Fear was doing the rest. He had stopped looking like someone who might fall asleep at the table and started looking like someone who finally understood why Ronan had spent the day covering several hundred acres with cameras.
Ronan came back from the far end of the table after checking another feed and sat beside me.
He angled one of the laptops between us, showing the property divided into sections, camera markers scattered across the trees and the tracker sitting steady inside the house.
“North side is fixed. I moved the creek camera far enough back that we won’t lose him if he drops into the bed, and I put another one beyond the old shed.
The western service road is covered from both directions.
He can pick whatever path makes him feel optimistic. ”
Nichlas lowered the glass and looked at the screen. “And if I make it to the road?”
Ronan did not bother turning toward him immediately.
He checked the feed near the gate, adjusted one setting, then finally looked across the table.
“You can try. The road is farther than it looks from here, and the tracker will tell us which direction you take even when the trees block the cameras.”
The answer left Nichlas staring at the black band around his ankle.
He tested it once with the heel of his other foot, probably deciding whether there was any chance of getting it off without using his damaged hands.
Ronan noticed and did not stop him. That was almost generous.
Letting Nichlas discover his options for himself would keep him occupied until Echo arrived.
I stretched one leg beneath the table and looked through the nearest window.
The last light was disappearing behind the trees, leaving the open yard pale compared to the woods beyond it.
Echo would like that. Enough visibility to watch him leave.
Enough darkness under the canopy to make him believe hiding mattered.
“You know,” I said to Ronan, still watching outside, “you and Hunter haven’t let me kill anybody in almost a year.”
Nichlas stopped worrying at the tracker.
Ronan leaned back in his chair and looked at me with the expression he reserved for complaints he had heard before. “Because the last three people you wanted dead were more useful alive.”
“That doesn’t make it less rude.” I turned toward him, resting my arm across the back of the chair. “I’ve been very patient.”
“You broke Mercer’s jaw in February.”
“He survived.”
“You put Garrett through a windshield.”
“He also survived.”
Ronan’s mouth started to curve, and I felt the familiar pull low in my stomach before he even moved closer. “You’re describing restraint like it’s a medical condition.”
“It feels like one.” I let my gaze drift toward Nichlas for a moment before coming back to Ronan. “Echo might finally fix it.”
That got more of his attention.
I had been thinking about it since Hunter changed the deal.
Nichlas was the priority because he was the name Echo had carried longest, but he was not necessarily the only one.
Hunter had already said there could be others behind what happened to her, people tied to the searches, the Quorum expansion, whatever had happened after the ledger changed hands.
Echo herself had a head full of old favors, old debts, names connected to names the rest of us still could not read without her.
“There are more people,” I said, keeping my voice conversational while Nichlas listened from across the table.
“Hunter already thinks there are. People tied to whoever kept looking for her, maybe people attached to the old operation, and who knows what she remembers once she starts pulling at those threads. That could keep us busy for a while.”
Ronan glanced toward Nichlas, then back at me. “You’re already planning murders for people we haven’t identified.”
“I’m planning possibilities.” I shifted closer until my knee touched his beneath the table. “There is a difference.”
Nichlas stared between us with growing disbelief. “You’re talking about this like she’s bringing you presents.”
I looked at him then, because apparently he still thought he belonged inside the conversation. “No. I’m bringing her one.”
His face tightened. The fear had been steadily building since the clinic, but something about hearing Ronan and me discuss Echo like she had opened a door instead of created a problem seemed to disturb him more than the cameras did.
“You have no idea what she’s capable of,” he said. “You think you do because she hurt me and you liked watching the aftermath. That isn’t the same as knowing her.”
Ronan’s hand settled against my thigh beneath the table, warm and familiar. He did not need to look at me for me to know he had heard the same mistake Nichlas kept making. “You’re assuming what she’s capable of is the part that concerns us.”
Nichlas frowned. “It should.”
“It doesn’t.” Ronan’s thumb moved slowly along the inside of my leg while his attention stayed on Nichlas.
“You keep trying to explain Echo as a threat because that’s the only version of her that matters to you.
Malakai knows she’s dangerous. Hunter knows.
I know. None of us required you to explain that. ”
That shut Nichlas up long enough for me to enjoy Ronan’s hand.
I caught his wrist beneath the table and held it there, more because I wanted the contact than because I intended to stop him.
Ronan’s gaze came to mine immediately. We had been together too long for either of us to miss what was happening, and the anticipation of Echo arriving had been riding under my skin since morning.
“She might be good for us,” I said quietly.
Ronan studied me for a few seconds before answering. “For you, definitely. Hunter has spent years giving you approved outlets so you don’t create expensive ones.”
“You participate in those approved outlets.”
“I’m supportive.”
“You’re controlling.”
His thumb pressed harder into my thigh. “You like that.”
I did. Enough that my attention drifted to his mouth before I could be bothered pretending otherwise.