14. Reva #2
He sets the towel down, then cups the side of my face with one smoke-smelling hand. His thumb brushes my cheekbone once. I don’t know if he leaves soot there or wipes it away.
“She did this to pull focus,” he says. “We give Noir what it needs. Then we go back to Delia.”
I nod because he’s right, and because I don’t have room to fight everything at once.
Shiloh leans against the bar behind us, eyes on the room. “We’ll fix it.”
Nash looks at him. “Yes.”
“No cheap replacements.”
“No.”
“And if insurance suggests beige anything, I’m committing a felony.”
Nash’s mouth almost moves. “Documented.”
Sonny looks between them. “This is weirdly sweet.”
“It’s mostly smoke inhalation,” Shiloh says.
Her eyes narrow. “I’m watching you.”
“Many people do.”
That earns him a towel to the chest.
He catches it, and for one brief second the bar breathes around us again.
By the time we leave, dawn is starting to pale the edge of the sky. Noir stands wet, smoke-stained, wounded, but standing. The sign still flickers. The front doors still lock. The office survived. The main room will need cleaning, repainting, probably new upholstery.
It will live. That’s what’s important.
In the SUV back to the cabin, I sit between Shiloh and Ever with smoke in my hair and grit under my nails. Deacon drives. Nash speaks quietly on the phone, ordering contractors, guards, private cleanup, new protocols, and whatever other expensive violence can be disguised as restoration.
I rest my head against Shiloh’s shoulder. His hand finds mine. Ever’s palm settles warm over my knee.
Noir fades behind us.
Delia is still with Isabel.
Cal is still in the hospital.
And now Isabel has reached into one more place we thought belonged to us.
The next day does not feel like preparation. It feels like walking through a house with the lights off, waiting for the next match to strike.
We sleep in pieces. Clean weapons. Review maps. Watch hospital feeds. Watch Noir feeds too, because the bar has become another patient, injured and guarded and ours.
I snap rubber bands until the inside of my wrist stings.
I don’t ask whether this is what Isabel wanted. I already know.
Sabine confirms thirty-seven hours later.
Morning comes gray and wet, pressing fog against the cabin windows until the marsh disappears beyond the glass. I haven’t slept enough. None of us have. My body feels strung together with coffee, fear, and the sharp little snaps of rubber bands against my wrist.
Deacon’s phone vibrates on the table at 8:06. No one speaks as he reads the message once. Then again.
Nash is already standing.
“What?” I ask.
Deacon sets the phone on the table. The coded line sits at the top. Beneath it, the translation is short and ugly.
Sainte Aurelia confirmed. Delia arrives ahead of luncheon. Private correction before presentation. Service entrance. Window holds.
The room tightens and shrinks around me.
“Private correction,” I say.
Deacon’s face is stone.
I look at Nash. “What does that mean?”
His jaw works once. “Isabel is bringing her in before the public event.”
“For what?”
No one answers fast enough, which is answer enough.
My brain supplies ugly theories: canings, floggings, all kinds of medieval ‘correction.’ I have no idea what kind of hell Delia has suffered through in the past.
All I see is Delia’s mouth saying I should have stayed dead while her body still moved to save me. Isabel’s jeweled hand. Rosaries. Chapel stone. Punishment dressed up as devotion.
“No,” I whisper.
Nash turns to Ever. “Lock the cabin. Full perimeter. No one opens the doors unless I give the code or Shiloh confirms hospital transfer protocol.”
Ever is already moving. “Done.”
“Cal?”
“Still stable. Hospital team checked in twelve minutes ago.”
“Keep eyes on him.”
“Already have three.”
Nash looks at Deacon. “Gear.”
“Ready.”
Deacon takes the phone, sends one message, then heads for the weapons cabinet.
I follow Nash toward the door. “I’m coming.”
He turns so fast I nearly run into him.
“No.”
The same word I used at the range. He makes it sound like a wall.
“She’s my sister.”
“And you are the reason Isabel wants a message carved into her.”
The sentence punches the air out of me.
Nash catches my face in both hands before I can recoil. His thumbs press along my jaw, forcing me to stay with him.
“Listen to me. If you come, Isabel gets Delia and you in the same room.”
My eyes burn.
“I can’t sit here.”
“You can.”
“I can’t.” Tears streak down my cheeks.
“You can because Delia needs you to be here when we bring her home.”
That breaks through. He sees it and presses harder.
“She needs you here. Alive. Free. Ready to be the reason she has somewhere to go after we pull her out.”
Pull her out.
The words are a promise and a wound.
I nod once because if I speak, I might beg, and I refuse to be the sound that follows him out of this house.
Nash kisses me hard.
Fast. Possessive. Terrifyingly controlled. Then he lets me go and turns away before either of us can make it worse.
Deacon passes me with a gun at his back and another in his hand. He pauses beside me.
“I will get her,” he says.
The promise shakes because he does not let many things shake. That frightens me more than his calm ever has.
They leave through the back hall, boots clipped and purposeful against the concrete floor. Ever seals the door after them, then crosses to the console and begins turning the cabin into something with teeth.
I stand in the war room with my heart trying to claw out of my chest.
Homer winds between my ankles, offended by motion and gun oil and human drama. I pick him up because my hands need something living in them. He allows it with a grumble, warm body tucked against my ribs.
Ever watches the screens. I watch the empty doorway.
Every part of me wants to run after them. Every old wound opens its mouth at once. The closet. Chicago. The hospital doors. Delia on the other side of another woman’s discipline. Cal breathing through a tube while men take turns guarding him because I can’t be there.
I stand still, and it feels like tearing my own hands open one finger at a time.
Nash said staying behind was doing something. I try to believe him. For Delia, I try.
I do not chase them. I stay.
I stay, and I stay, and I stay.