21. Athena #2
I let the silence stretch just enough to insult him. “You attacked your own father,” I say quietly. “That’s a new low even for you.”
Nate’s laugh is harsh and short. “He’s not my father.”
There it is. I keep my face calm. “Interesting thing to say right out of the gate.”
He realizes it half a beat too late. His jaw jumps, then he covers it with anger. “You don’t get to stand there and judge me after what you did.”
I almost laugh. “Remind me. Was the unforgivable act dating someone who could read a room?”
“You slept with him,” Nate snaps, and his control slips hard enough to show the panic underneath. “You humiliated me.”
I fold my arms loosely. “You cheated on me in my bed.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It never is with you,” I say.
He takes another step. “You should’ve let it go.”
“And Nathan should’ve stayed scared and alone and useful to your mother. That’s the version you prefer.”
Nate’s nostrils flare. “You don’t know anything about my mother.”
I watch him carefully. “I know enough. I know Cindy built Meredith. I know Meredith kept tabs for her. I know your mother wanted Nathan frightened enough to stop making plans around me.”
He looks at me, truly looks, and I can see the exact second he understands the walls have moved. “Who told you that?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
He swears under his breath and turns away for half a second, dragging both hands through his hair. “She told me to scare him,” he says, then whips back toward me, furious already at having said it. “That’s all. Scare him. Make him back off. He was supposed to stop. He was supposed to understand.”
My pulse kicks hard. On the edge of my hearing, something shifts in an earpiece somewhere. Police listening. Breathing. Waiting.
I keep my face steady. “And when he didn’t?”
Nate gives a strangled laugh. “He never stopped, did he? God, he looked at you like…” He cuts himself off, then shakes his head violently. “It should’ve been simple.”
“Simple,” I repeat. “Is that what you call jumping a man from behind?”
“He deserved it for what he did,” Nate spits out. “With him gone, I’d get all his money. It’d finally be over.”
Ha. I suck in a breath. He’s given me almost everything I need.
I hear a vehicle roll somewhere outside and keep him talking. “Did Cindy watch too?”
That startles him. He glances toward the far loading bay doors before he can stop himself.
Bingo.
“You’re insane,” he says.
“Am I?” My voice stays calm, almost bored. “Then why is she here?”
For the first time, real fear crosses his face. Then a van engine revs outside.
Everything happens at once after that.
Nate spins toward the sound. A side door bangs open somewhere behind stacked pallets. Men move, but they’re not police. They’re too fast and too quiet for that. Hired muscle. Cindy’s answer to panic.
I step back exactly the way Morales told me to.
“Down!” a voice shouts.
The warehouse explodes into movement. Plainclothes officers come out of nowhere, hard and fast, weapons drawn, voices sharp enough to cut metal. Nate freezes, stunned stupid for one catastrophic second, and then bolts left.
He makes it three strides.
Morales takes him down shoulder first into a stack of wrapped cartons, and the whole thing crashes sideways with a thunder of wood and fabric and swearing. One of Cindy’s men reaches inside his jacket and gets flattened to the concrete before he can finish the motion.
Outside, brakes scream.
Then Sweeney’s voice cuts through the noise like a blade. “Driver out of the vehicle! Hands where I can see them!”
I move farther back until my spine hits corrugated steel, my pulse crashing in my ears, and an officer’s arm bars lightly in front of me to hold my position.
Nate is on the ground, cursing, one cheek pressed to dirty concrete while Morales pins his wrists. “Get off me!” he shouts. “This was her! This whole thing was her idea! My mother said scare him, not kill him!”
The warehouse seems to inhale.
Sweeney appears at the side entrance with Cindy in front of him, wrists cuffed, face pale under perfect makeup. She’s still trying to look composed, which would be more impressive if her lips weren’t shaking.
“Nathan Clarke was ruining everything,” Nate is shouting now, wild and desperate, words tumbling faster than he can manage them. “She said if he kept seeing Athena, he’d blow up all the work, he’d dig into Meredith, he’d drag the whole thing out. I did what she told me to do!”
“Shut up,” Cindy snaps, turning on him with naked fury. “For once in your life, shut up.”
It is almost funny, if I remove the attempted murder and the years of damage.
Morales hauls Nate to his feet. He’s sweating, frantic, all that polished arrogance burned off him in under a minute. He looks smaller than I remember.
He looks exactly right.
Sweeney reads Cindy her rights while she stares straight at me with eyes flat as broken glass. “You think you’ve won,” she says, voice high and vicious.
I look back at her without blinking. “I think you made a habit of building women into weapons,” I say. “Looks like one finally turned around.”
Something flickers in her face then. Rage. Recognition. Fear. Hard to tell which wins.
A second set of officers move through the warehouse, checking doors, collecting phones, bagging evidence.
One of them approaches Sweeney and murmurs something about Meredith being picked up at her apartment twenty minutes ago with the flash drive copies still in her desk and enough falsified paperwork to keep financial crimes entertained for months.
Good.
That closes one door.
Nate sags the second he hears Meredith’s name, as if that somehow makes this more real than handcuffs already should have. He looks at me with naked hate and something weaker beneath it. “You ruined everything.”
I tip my head. “No. You were doing a great job on your own.”
He lunges verbally now that his body can’t manage it. “He’ll never choose you over himself.”
Maybe a month ago his words would have that sentence would have stung. Tonight it just sounds tired. I step closer, enough that he has to see my face properly. “You still think this was about being chosen,” I say quietly. “That’s your problem.”
His mouth works, yet nothing useful comes out.
Cindy is the one who finally breaks the moment open. She laughs, sharp and ugly, then looks at her son with pure contempt. “You couldn’t even handle one simple task.”
Nate goes white with rage. “You told me to do it!”
“And you nearly killed him,” she snaps back. “Do you have any idea what that costs?”
Sweeney doesn’t even bother hiding his satisfaction as he nods to the nearest officer. “Get that on record.”
One of the officers already has.
The adrenaline starts draining out of me then, leaving behind something stranger. Not victory. Not relief. More like the first full breath after being underwater too long.
Morales walks over once Nate is loaded into a cruiser and Cindy is in another. Morales’s hair is coming loose at the temples, and there’s dust on her jacket. She looks excellent.
“You did good,” she says.
I let out a breath through my nose. “I followed instructions. No one died. Gold star for me.”
Her mouth twitches. “Something like that.”
Sweeney joins us with a file already building in his head. “We’ve got attempted murder, conspiracy, fraud support, witness tampering, coercion, and enough financial dirt to keep three departments happy.”
I nod slowly. “And Nathan?”
“He’ll need to give a statement when the doctors clear it,” Sweeney says. “But tonight doesn’t depend on him.”
I look toward the dark yard outside the warehouse, where the flashing lights paint the pavement blue and red. Somewhere far behind all of this is Beacon Harbor, Nathan in a hospital bed, Ivy asleep with Maya, and the strange little family we almost didn’t get.
“Can I go now?” I ask.
Sweeney studies me for a beat then nods. “Yeah, go.”
So I do. And for the first time in years, I leave a fight knowing the ghosts didn’t follow me out.