Chapter 10
Nash
The clubhouse yard fills for the weekly cookout.
Lawrence Leighton parks his black Lincoln in the lot, front bumper exactly parallel to the fence line, mirrors adjusted before he kills the engine. Raine sits in the passenger seat with a soft-sided cooler balanced on her lap.
He gets out first, walks to her side, then opens her door. His hand finds the small of her back as she steps out. Thirty years of the same hand in the same place.
I watch from the clubhouse doorway. He scans the lot before they walk. Left to right. Perimeter, then the gate, then the tree line. His eyes sweep the same direction mine take. Slower. Less trained.
Ruby doesn't know they're coming. I set it up with Raine earlier this week because Ruby has been asking about her mother.
They cross the lot. Lawrence has the cooler in one hand, Raine's arm looped through his other.
He's tall, broad-shouldered, silver at the temples, the kind of build that fills a doorway without trying.
Pressed Oxford button up shirt and khakis with creases sharp enough to confirm they've been dry cleaned with extra starch.
Raine is shorter, copper-haired, green-eyed, wearing a blue dress that catches the light.
Ruby is her mother's face twenty years younger.
"Mr. Leighton. Mrs. Leighton."
"Nash." Lawrence extends his hand with a firm, measured grip. "Appreciate the invitation."
"Ruby's inside."
His eyes sweep the clubhouse exterior. The reinforced doorframe. The security camera Knox installed. Fence bolted in concrete. He clocks each one the way I clock entry points. His mouth tightens at the camera, loosens at the fence.
"How is she?"
"She's safe."
"That's not what I asked."
"She's adjusting. The detail's holding."
Lawrence absorbs that. His jaw works once. "Good." He holds my gaze a beat past comfortable. "It bears repeating, but Raine and I are grateful."
Raine squeezes Lawrence's arm. "Come on. Ruby's waiting."
She's inside at the long table with Candace, deep in a conversation that involves hand gestures and the kind of laughter that means someone is telling a story they shouldn't be telling. When the door opens, she looks up mid-sentence.
Her eyes go wide. The grin hits full force before she's even off the bench.
"Mom?" She's off the bench and crossing the room. "Dad? What are you doing here?"
She wraps Raine in a hug that folds them together, Ruby's copper hair against Raine's blue dress. Ruby's eyes close. She holds on, and for Ruby the stillness says everything.
"How did you—" She pulls back from Raine and looks at Lawrence, then at me. Her eyes land on me and stay. "You did this."
I don't answer.
"You called my mom." Her voice catches on the last word. She blinks twice, fast, and her chin wobbles for half a second before the grin takes over. "You called my mom, Nash."
She releases Raine and turns to Lawrence. A shorter hug, tighter, her face pressing into his chest for one second before she pulls back and grins up at him.
"You're wearing the dad outfit."
"I'm wearing clothes."
"You're wearing the specific clothes you wear when you're trying to look casual, but you had them dry-cleaned with extra starch. Those khakis have a crease, Dad. A literal crease. You could slice bread with that thing."
"Presentation matters."
But his hand stays on her shoulder, and his eyes move over her face, reading for damage, for strain, scanning.
Ruby links her arm through Raine's and pulls her toward the yard. "Come on. I'll give you the full tour. We have a goat now."
"You have a what?"
"A goat. His name is Nasty Nash Jr. He has a sparkly collar. He's a menace to society and I love him more than most humans."
Raine looks at Lawrence. Lawrence looks at me.
"She's not joking," I say.
"She never is," Lawrence says. "That's the problem."
Ruby leads them through the yard, Raine on her arm, pointing out the grill, the picnic table, the string lights. Nasty Nash Jr. is tethered to the fence, chewing on something that might have been a paper plate. Raine stops in front of him.
"Ruby. That goat is wearing a rhinestone collar."
"I bedazzled it myself."
"Of course you did." Raine crouches down, and the goat noses her hand. She scratches behind his ears. "He's actually kind of sweet."
"Don't let Kyle hear you say that. Kyle thinks he's a war criminal."
"He head-butted Kyle at the baby shower," I say.
Raine looks up. "The baby shower."
"For the goat," Ruby says. "We threw him a baby shower. There was a balloon arch. There were games. It was beautiful."
Raine stands, brushing off her dress, and turns to Lawrence with an expression caught between laughter and genuine concern for her daughter's life choices. "Lawrence. They threw a baby shower for a goat."
"I heard." Lawrence is studying the fence line. "Nash, the camera on the east side. What's the range on that?"
Ruby rolls her eyes. "Dad. You're meeting the goat. Focus."
"I can meet the goat and assess the perimeter simultaneously."
"Wide angle," I say. "Covers the fence line to the tree line. Knox built the system. I monitor it remotely."
"Motion-activated?"
"Continuous feed."
Ruby looks at Raine. "This is what it's like. All the time. I live in a surveillance state run by men who think small talk is a security briefing."
Raine pats her arm. "Sweetheart, your father asked the waiter at Olive Garden about their emergency exit procedures last month. This is not new information."
"He did what?"
"To be fair," Lawrence says, still looking at the tree line, "that restaurant had one exit. One. For two hundred seats."
"It's an Olive Garden, Dad."
"Fire codes don't care about breadsticks, Ruby."
I answer Lawrence's next three questions about the detail rotation and the camera placement because the man is doing exactly what I would do in his position.
At the east fence line, Lawrence studies the tree line with squared shoulders, running a threat assessment I recognize because I use the same one.
His weight shifts to the balls of his feet.
His chin lifts, the posture of a man who has been watching for danger long enough that the watching has become structural.
Ruby catches it. "Dad. You're doing the thing."
"What thing?"
"The thing where you pretend you're just looking at trees but you're actually calculating how fast you could get all of us into the Lincoln if something came out of them. You did it at my high school graduation. My prom. You made my prom date show you his driver's license."
Raine snorts.
"He had an out-of-state license," Lawrence says. "That's a red flag."
"It was a Florida license, Dad. He was from Florida."
"I rest my case."
Raine shakes her head. "I have the prom photos on my phone, Nash. She was stunning. This emerald green dress, her hair pinned up. She looked like a movie star."
Ruby groans. "Mom. No."
"I'm just saying." Raine is already scrolling.
Raine holds her phone out. Ruby in emerald green, her hair up, her shoulders bare, grinning at the camera. A tall kid in a rented tux standing next to her with his hand on her waist.
My jaw tightens.
"Cute," I say. I hand the phone back.
"Cute?" Ruby stares at me. "I looked incredible, and you know it."
She did.
"Situational awareness is a reasonable habit," Lawrence says, already walking toward the picnic table.
"Nash does it too."
She says it lightly, tossing it over her shoulder as she walks ahead. Lawrence looks at me. I hold his gaze for one second. His shoulders square a fraction.
They settle at the picnic table. Raine sets the cooler on the bench, then unpacks containers of her homemade banana pudding and a pasta salad with a handwritten label taped to the lid.
Ruby sits beside her mother, their shoulders touching.
Lawrence takes the opposite bench, the end closest to the fence, angled outward with a sightline to the gate and the tree line.
Rider takes the wall by the clubhouse door without being asked.
I sit at the other end of Lawrence's bench. Same angle. Same orientation. Two men flanking the table, both facing out.
Ruby clocks the mirrored posture. Her eyes narrow for a fraction of a second.
"Two human guard towers and a cookout. All we need is a watchtower, and we could charge admission."
The afternoon settles. Raine's laugh carries across the yard as she talks with Maggie and Candace.
She asks Ruby about Amaranth, about the design work.
She wants to see the compass rose sketch.
Ruby deflects with a joke about how it's "just flash concepts.
" Lawrence talks with Malachi and James, phrasing each question as casual interest while his eyes continue their periodic sweep.
Ruby is next to her mother, their heads tipped together, and across the table Candace is watching them with a soft, quiet smile on her face. Ruby sees it. Her smile tightens. Her hand finds Raine's arm and holds.
The conversation drifts to Malachi's fighting. Lawrence's eyebrows rise when Candace mentions the circuit.
"You go to these?" Lawrence asks Candace.
"Sometimes." Candace shrugs. "Ruby comes with me."
"It's fun," Ruby says. "Very violent. Very sweaty. Very much something Dad would hate."
"I do hate it," Lawrence says.
"There's a woman who fights there," Ruby says, leaning back in her seat, her eyes shifting to me. "Naya. She's incredible. Nash goes to check on her sometimes." Her gaze stays on my face. "Don't you, Nash?"
She's watching me. Studying my reaction, building a case with whatever my face gives her.
"She can handle herself," I say.
Ruby holds my gaze for a beat. Whatever she's looking for, she doesn't find it. She turns back to the table.
Lawrence's hand has stopped on his burger. The grip loosens, tightens, loosens again. He takes a bite. Sets it down. Picks up his water and drinks with the kind of precision that has nothing to do with thirst.
My jaw sets.
"Sounds intense," Raine says. "Is she safe? Fighting like that?"
"She's tough," Ruby says, but her eyes flick to me one more time before she answers her mother.
Lawrence's hand rests on the table. His fingers are too still. His posture too controlled. A man who heard a name that landed somewhere he didn't expect.
Later, when the table has scattered and Ruby is helping Maggie clear plates, I step beside her.
"You okay?"
She glances at me. "I'm always okay."
"Ruby."
She sets a stack of plates down. Her jaw works once.
"Candace didn't have this." Her voice is quiet.
"She didn't have parents who showed up with banana pudding and labeled containers.
Darla didn't either. Sloane's dad manipulated her until she wasn't useful anymore, and she had to run before it got worse.
" She looks at me. "And I'm sitting there with both of mine, complaining about khaki creases, while my best friend grew up with a father who tried to sell her to a trafficking ring. "
She picks the plates back up.
"I don't know what to do with that," she says. "I've never known what to do with that."
I hold her gaze. "You don't have to do anything with it. Having good parents isn't something you apologize for."
Her eyes go bright. She blinks. Hard.
"Since when do you talk this much?"
"Since you needed to hear it."
She stares at me. The plates sit between her hands. Then she nods once, turns, and carries them to the kitchen. Her shoulder brushes mine on the way past. My fingers graze her arm as she passes, light, brief.
The visit ends at two. Ruby walks her parents to the Lincoln. Lawrence hugs her longer this time, his chin resting on top of her head. When he releases her, he holds her at arm's length and studies her face.
"Call your mother."
"I call her every day."
"Call her twice." He looks at me over Ruby's shoulder. "Take care of her, Nash."
"Yes, sir."
They pull out. I watch the Lincoln until it disappears past the tree line.
Ruby walks back from the lot and steps up beside me in the doorway. "He likes you," she says.
"He's assessing me."
"That's how he likes people." She tilts her head. "You're a lot alike, actually. It's mildly terrifying."
She goes inside. I stay in the doorway.
Lawrence reacted to Naya's name. A federal judge with thirty years of composure, and the name of a woman from an underground fight circuit made his hand stop on his burger.
Maybe it connects to Webb. To the sealed records. To the headband on my wrist. Maybe it doesn't.
But a federal judge doesn't react to a name for no reason.