Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
EVER
I noticed her the moment she walked through the door and stepped up to the bar.
It wasn’t anything obvious. Not what she was wearing or anything like that. We get all types in Noir—tourists, locals, people looking to disappear for a few hours. It’s the way she carries herself.
She’s built light, deceptively so—fine-boned, narrow through the shoulders, the kind of frame most men would underestimate without thinking twice. That doesn’t hold up under a second look.
There’s tension in the way she stands, something held tight beneath the surface, and weight in her hips that keeps her grounded like she already knows how to hold her ground if she has to.
Her hair falls in a dark, unruly cloud around her face, like she doesn’t see the point in controlling it, and her eyes—brown shot through with gold—track everything like she’s already learned the cost of missing something.
She’s trouble. I don’t need trouble.
“Can I help you?” I ask, already bracing for whatever comes next.
She smiles and gestures behind her to the sign I’d forgotten was hanging on the window. “I saw you had a sign about a job. I’m here to apply.”
“No,” I say, turning away before she can argue. I don’t slow down, don’t give her an opening, because I can already tell she’ll take it if I do.
“Why not?” she presses. “You have a help wanted sign in your window…?”
I don’t answer. She shifts her weight and demands in a husky tone, “Answer me.”
I lift an eyebrow and begin walking away. “‘No’ is an answer.”
I make it halfway down the bar before I register that something feels off. I glance up.
Shiloh’s at the far end, for once not working the room. His gaze flickers to the girl standing speechless behind me, then flushes.
“What?” I ask him.
“Reva.” His voice drops. “As I live and breathe.”
“Shiloh,” the girl replies. “My disappearing dinner and dancing date.”
“Look at that alliteration,” Shiloh flashes back. “Spare me, Yank…you know I didn’t run out on you.”
My gaze bounces back and forth between them. The girl–Reva–crosses her arms over her chest and glances away.
“If I’d have known Noir was your destination,” Shiloh continues, “hell, I’d have saved you the ride and that little pit stop at Murray’s.”
Her lips twist but she doesn’t reply.
Shiloh jerks his chin toward me. “I see you’ve met Ever.”
“Apparently I’m not good enough for a position here. He won’t tell me why.”
What the fuck, Shiloh. I shrug. “Sign’s old.”
I cock my head slightly, jerking my thumb toward the back room, not breaking stride. He pockets the coin he was rolling between his fingers and follows without a word, which tells me everything I need to know before we even get through the door.
I shut it behind us and turn on him.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Shiloh lifts his hands, already halfway into damage control. “I don’t know—”
“Don’t,” I cut in, stepping closer. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
He exhales hard, scrubbing a hand over his face. “All right, so you remember Cal Boudreaux?”
I nod. I hadn’t heard that name in…maybe five, ten years. “Cal Boudreaux? What the hell does he have to do with the price of tea in China and that girl standing in my bar? Fucking focus, man—”
“I am, just bear with me! He called Nash a few days ago, asked for a favor. Said his girl was spinning out about her family and some other shit, and asked if we could please find his kid and keep an eye on her.”
The words settle, and a picture forms. I look behind me at the door to the bar, where fifteen feet away Cal Boudreaux’s kid waits at the end of the bar. The flash of recognition when her gaze met Shiloh’s lands, and awareness winds through me.
I roll my tongue over my front teeth, measuring.
“And I take it you found her, and you fucked her?”
It comes out sharper than I intend, but I don’t take it back.
Shiloh’s head snaps up. “It wasn’t like that.”
I hold his gaze. “Then tell me what it was like, because from where I was standing, that’s exactly what that look on your face said when she walked into the bar.”
He paces once, then turns back to me, jaw tight. “Like I said. Cal reached out a couple days ago. Said his former ward was headed this way, and if she didn’t have the right supervision, she was going to stir up trouble. He wanted Nash involved.”
I let that sit for a second. “That’s it? Does she know who you are?”
He shrugs, but there’s tension in it. “No, she does not know who we are. Nash gave me her GPS and AirTag coordinates and I managed to track her from there.”
A beat passes.
“And it was a good goddamn thing I found her when I did, because she was broke down on the side of the highway when I came up on her,” he adds.
I swear under my breath and drag a hand over my head. “Fucking lamb to the slaughter.”
“I know.”
I didn’t realize until Shiloh’s quietly uttered agreement that I said the words out loud. They’re the truth, though.
Because that’s what she is. Whether she knows it or not.
I didn’t know any of this when she walked in. All I saw was a too-pretty girl with hungry eyes and secrets written all over her, looking for a job in a place that doesn’t need more complications. I made a call based on that and moved on.
Now I have to—somehow—take it back. This isn’t just some random girl trying to push her way into Noir, a fairly frequent happenstance I’ve learned to shut down pretty quickly.
She’s a job, which means we don’t get to ignore her.
Everything just got more complicated.
Shiloh huffs out a breath. “Yeah. It did.”
I realize a second too late that I said that out loud, too. I don’t usually speak my thoughts out loud. I usually keep them buttoned up.
I don’t acknowledge it. No point. Instead, I run the situation through again, adjusting where I need to.
We can’t shut her out. Not without losing track of her. Not without raising questions we don’t want asked.
So we’re going to have to bring her in. Control the environment. Control the variables.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and turn to head back into the bar proper. “You do what I fucking tell you,” I tell Shiloh, pointing a finger at him. He falls into step behind me and then returns to his customary spot, giving the girl a cheeky grin and a chin tip as he goes.
She narrows her eyes, then rolls them.
“Excuse me.”
Cal’s girl snaps her fingers. I twist my head to look at her and blink.
“Did you just snap your fingers at me?”
She swallows but lifts her chin. “I asked you for a Guinness before you just…ran away.”
“Don’t ever fucking snap your fingers at me.”
I grab a glass and pour a Guinness. If she wants to sit at my bar and push, I can meet her halfway.
When I set it in front of her, she takes it like it’s going to bite her, then lifts the glass and takes a sip. There’s a split-second hesitation before she swallows. It’s subtle, but it’s there. Guinness isn’t forgiving if you’re not used to it.
She tries to hide it. Doesn’t quite manage.
I lean my palms on the bar and watch her take another drink, something between irritation and amusement settling in my chest.
She’s stubborn. That’s going to be a problem.
I move down the bar again, stopping near Shiloh. “We’re gonna have to rotate,” I say under my breath. “Keep eyes on her until I can make it look like I changed my mind.”
He nods. “Pretty sure she’s not going anywhere.”
“No,” I agree, glancing back at her. “She’s not.”
Not quietly, anyway.
“She’s going to push,” I add.
Shiloh gives a short laugh. “You have no idea. She’s…strong.”
I turn back to him. “What does that mean?”
Shiloh’s expression shifts, the easy edge gone from it. “We went out. Dinner, dancing. Everything was going really well. Then there was this…interlude, I guess you can call it.” he says. A look crosses his face that I don’t like. Guilt. Shame. Anger. “She thought it was me.”
I go still. “What?”
“She was dancing with me. She went to the bathroom, and I stepped away to grab us drinks. When I came back, she was…off.” His jaw tightens.
“It was like she couldn’t reconcile that I was standing there in front of her and not…
there. She thought it was me in the bathroom, and she was devastated that it wasn’t—” He cuts himself off, but he doesn’t need to finish it.
Cold settles in my chest, sharp and immediate. “You’re not making sense.”
Shiloh rakes a hand through his hair, several shades lighter than mine and kissed to gold by the sun, and lowers his voice to a hiss. “Some guy fucked her in the bathroom.”
“You mean she didn’t know who it was fucking her?”
Shiloh shakes his head once. “Not at first. I figure he turned the lights out or something…led her to believe he was me. She figured out otherwise when she came out and I was standing there with a couple of beers.”
My grip tightens on the bar before I realize it, fingers digging into the wood. That’s not someone making a drunk mistake. That’s not bad timing. That’s intent.
Whoever it was, he didn’t just pick her. He knew enough to make her think she was safe. Which means he was watching.
Nothing about this feels random. Not her showing up. Not Cal calling.
Not any of it.
We move back toward her just in time to hear her tell one of the servers her name. “Reva McEntire.”
I laugh before I can stop myself. Out loud. It catches both of us off guard.
Shiloh looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “What?”
I shake my head, still watching her. “You don’t get it?”
He doesn’t.
I push off the bar and head for the jukebox. A couple of button presses later, “The Night That the Lights Went Out in Georgia” spills through the speakers.
I lean back against the wall and wait. Her reaction is immediate. Her face tightens, shoulders going rigid.
There it is.
She stands abruptly and says something to Sonny, too low for me to catch, but I don’t need every word.
“Fucking assholes.”
Then she’s gone. The door swings shut behind her, and the bar noise fills the space she leaves behind.
I glance at Shiloh. He already knows. He pushes off with a sigh. “Yeah, yeah. I’m on it.”
Later, I sit by the pool back at the house with a piece of wood in one hand and a knife in the other. The blade moves in steady strokes, shaving thin curls from the surface without much thought. I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. Keeps my hands busy when my head won’t settle.
Right now, the wood isn’t becoming anything. It’s just something to work through.
Footsteps approach behind me.
Shiloh drops onto one of the loungers with a tired exhale. “She’s down,” he says. “Motel room. Not great, but it’ll do. I could hear her snoring through the door when I left.”
“Good,” I say, not looking up. “We’re going to need a rotation,” I add after a second. “We won’t be able to keep picking her up like this. Not if we’re supposed to be watching her.”
He shifts, stretching out. “Yeah. Which means we’re going to have to get her in the bar.”
I nod, the blade continuing its slow path along the grain.
“And then here,” he adds. “Only way we cover all hours.”
I pause for a second, then continue carving. He’s right.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s where this is headed.”
Silence settles between us, broken only by the song of insects and the soft scrape of steel against wood.
I study the piece in my hand. Still formless. Still rough. That’ll change.
“We start with the bar,” I say.