25. Reva
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
REVA
REVA
Shiloh drives me back to the hotel.
Deacon stays at the hospital.
That’s the official version, anyway. Watch rotation.
Cal needs someone there. Nash’s men are good, but they are still Nash’s men, and Cal is still mine in the way that makes everyone careful when they explain the logistics around his hospital bed.
Deacon tells me he’s taking the next shift because Shiloh has been up too long and because the ICU floor has changed nurses and because he wants his own eyes on the stairwell for a while.
All very reasonable.
All very Deacon.
All very convenient.
He stands beside Cal’s door while I leave, black hoodie shadowing his face, gun hidden somewhere under the loose fabric, grief and secrets locked so far behind his eyes I want to claw them out with my fingernails.
He knew my mother was alive. He knew enough to step into that chapel like the room belonged to a past he had already survived, and now he’s staying behind with Cal while Shiloh takes me back to the hotel, which feels less like a rotation and more like a man with a bullet graze and survival instincts choosing distance before I turn my mouth loose on him.
Fine. He can have his distance—for now.
Shiloh doesn’t speak as we leave the ICU floor.
He keeps one hand light against my lower back through the service hallway, guiding without pushing, every bit of charm stripped from him until only the watchful part remains.
His hair is rumpled from too many hours spent awake.
His eyes are tired in a way he tries to hide with movement.
When we pass the nurse’s station, one of the nurses gives him a small nod, and he returns it without a smile.
That, more than anything else, tells me how bad the night has been. Shiloh without a smile looks like a house with its lights turned off.
The SUV waits beneath the hospital in the same dim service area where Deacon brought me in.
Rain has started again, soft but steady, streaking across concrete and dripping from the low ceiling near the exit.
I get into the passenger seat because the back feels too much like being transported, and if one more man silently relocates me tonight, I may become a felon.
Shiloh doesn’t argue. He only waits until my seat belt clicks before pulling out.
For the first several blocks, the city slides past in wet silence.
Hospital lights smear across the windshield, and the reflection of streetlamps ripple in puddles.
My own reflection ghosts against the side window: hood down now, braid coming apart, eyes hollow, mouth too tight.
I look like what I am: a girl who walked into a hospital to see her father and found a dead mother instead.
I turn away from the glass.
Shiloh’s hands rest easy on the wheel, but his knuckles are pale. He keeps checking mirrors with small movements, not enough to make a civilian nervous, but enough for me to notice because I now live with men who teach paranoia by osmosis.
I stare out the window again, trying to line up everything that happened in an order that makes sense.
Cal worsening. Deacon waiting in the elevator. The woman in Cal’s room. Her hand on his.
You promised me you would live long enough to bring her back to me.
The chapel. Her face.
Reva?
Because I gave it to you.
My chest tightens so hard I have to breathe through my teeth, and Shiloh reaches across the console and takes my hand. The touch sends a jolt through me, pulling me back to the vehicle, to the here and now, to the man sitting beside me.
He does not tug hard. Just enough to ask without words.
When I do not pull away, he draws my hand to his mouth, presses a kiss to my knuckles, then keeps it trapped in his as he drives.
A minute later, at a red light, he shifts closer and pulls me gently against him until my temple rests in the hollow between his shoulder and throat.
It’s awkward with the seat belt, but I stay there anyway.
His shirt smells like hospital soap, rain, and Shiloh beneath both, warm and familiar and alive. I close my eyes for three seconds because the dark is easier against him than it is alone.
“I guess you know everything,” I say.
His thumb moves once over my hand. “Some.”
“Deacon told you?”
“Enough to keep me from making a mess in the wrong hallway.” His voice is low, careful. “Then I went to the chapel.”
I jerk upright so fast the seat belt locks.
“You talked to her?”
His eyes stay on the road. “Yes.”
“Without me?”
“I wanted to know who she was and what she was doing here.”
“She’s my mother.”
“I know that now.”
Something in his voice makes me stop. No defense.
No excuse sharpened into a blade. Just truth, tired and plain.
He did not know before. He was not part of the circle of men who carried this secret around me like a loaded gun.
Shiloh found out tonight, same as me, and did what Shiloh does when the people he loves are bleeding: he walked straight toward the wound and demanded an answer.
The anger drains a little, leaving me cold.
“You really didn’t know.”
“No.”
I sink back against the seat, staring at his profile as another green light slides over his face. “What did she say?”
His jaw flexes.
“She said—”
He stops.
The change is small, but I feel it immediately. His fingers tighten around mine, and his gaze flicks to the rearview mirror once, then again. The softness leaves his mouth.
I turn in my seat before he can tell me not to.
A dark sedan sits two cars behind us.
At first, it’s only a car. Wet windshield. Headlights low. A shape in traffic where there are plenty of shapes, because New Orleans doesn’t empty itself just because my life has become inconvenient. Then Shiloh takes the next turn without signaling until the last second, and the sedan follows.
My pulse kicks.
“What is it?”
Shiloh does not answer. He releases my hand and taps the screen built into the dash, placing a call through the car’s system.
It rings once. Twice.
Ever answers on the third, voice rough with sleep but alert beneath it. “Status.”
“Possible tail,” Shiloh says. “Dark sedan pulled out after us near the hospital. I’m going to test it. I would not mind a bit of help before I accidentally lead company back to the hotel.”
Fabric rustles on Ever’s end, then a muffled curse. “Location.”
Shiloh gives cross streets. I sit very still, watching the side mirror. The sedan stays behind a delivery truck for half a block, then eases out when Shiloh moves right.
Ever’s voice sharpens. “Do not take Canal. Head south two blocks, then left. I’m waking Nash.”
Shiloh takes the next turn, and the sedan follows.
The road narrows, old buildings pressing closer, balconies hanging over the street like spectators.
Rain flickers through the headlights. Shiloh drives with both hands now, shoulders loose, eyes moving between the mirrors and the road.
He does not speed at first. He lets the city do part of the work: parked cars, slow intersections, a garbage truck lumbering halfway into a lane.
Left.
Straight.
Right.
Another right that takes us past a closed restaurant with chairs stacked upside down on tables behind fogged glass.
The sedan remains behind us, closer now. I grip the edge of the seat until my fingers ache. “Shiloh.”
“I see it.”
“Isabel?”
“Likely.”
The word is almost calm. I don’t like that he’s only almost calm. It means he is saving the rest for driving.
Ever comes back on the line. “Two Blackwood vehicles are moving from the hotel. One from Rampart, one from Tchoup. Nash is on.”
A click, then Nash’s voice fills the car, low and lethal. “Reva.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you hit?”
“Nobody’s done any shooting, Nash.”
“Well, they might. Stay low if Shiloh tells you.”
“I know this; I’m not an idiot.”
“Do it anyway.”
The sedan closes another car length.
Shiloh turns hard enough that my shoulder hits the door.
Tires hiss over wet pavement. The SUV straightens, then lunges forward down a darker street lined with shuttered businesses and dripping awnings.
Traffic thins. That feels worse. In traffic, there are witnesses.
Here, there are only rain, brick, and the car behind us no longer pretending it is anything but interested.
The sedan accelerates.
My breath shortens.
I watch it in the mirror because looking away feels like we’re just letting it get closer. A shape shifts on the passenger side. Window lowering. Arm emerging.
“Down,” Shiloh says.
I fold forward.
“Shit,” Nash says over the speaker. “Shit…fuck—”
The first shot hits the rear windshield with a flat, violent crack.
The glass holds.
I scream anyway, a short sound I despise before it even leaves my mouth.
Shiloh swerves, sending the SUV across the lane as another shot snaps off the rear glass and ricochets away.
The seat belt bites into my shoulder. My knees slam the dash.
Somewhere in the car, Ever is talking, Nash is giving clipped orders, and Shiloh is breathing through his nose like the whole world has narrowed to mirrors, traction, and not getting me killed.
“Stay down, Yank.”
“I am. I am!”
“Lower.”
I slide as far as the seat belt allows, one arm over my head as if my bones can contribute anything meaningful against bullets.
The car lurches left. Then right. Shiloh takes a corner too fast, and the back end fishtails for a second before he catches it with an ugly, controlled correction that makes my stomach drop.
Another shot. Metal screams somewhere behind us.
“Talk to me,” Shiloh says, voice hard now.
Ever answers, “Lead them two blocks west. Black SUV coming up behind them. Second unit ahead if you can make the turn onto St. Claude.”
“They’re pushing me away from it.”
“I see that.”
“You have cameras?”
“Enough.”
Shiloh laughs once without humor. “Love when you say comforting things.”
“Drive.”
He does.
The sedan rams us.
“Motherfuck—”
The impact throws me against the seat belt and snaps my head sideways. Pain flashes through my shoulder. Shiloh curses and keeps the wheel steady by force, foot dropping harder on the gas as the SUV surges forward.
My eyes burn. My teeth are clenched so tightly my jaw aches.
I think of Cal’s hand under mine.
I think of my mother in the chapel.
I think of Nash letting me leave.
If I die after all that, I am going to be furious.
The sedan comes up on our left, trying to edge us toward a row of parked cars. I can see the passenger now through rain and shadow, face half covered, gun angled toward our tires.
“Shiloh,” I whisper.
“I know.”
He brakes hard.
The sedan shoots half a length ahead.
Shiloh jerks the wheel right, taking an alley I do not see until we are already in it. The SUV clips something metal with a shriek. Trash bins scatter. Rainwater sprays high against brick. The alley is too narrow, too dark, too much like a throat closing around us.
Then we burst out the other end.
A black SUV swings into the street behind the sedan. Not ours.
No—ours. I know because the vehicle does not hesitate. It hits the sedan’s rear quarter panel with brutal precision, spinning it sideways. The sedan’s brake lights flare red through the rain.
Another vehicle comes from the cross street ahead, cutting off its escape.
Gunfire cracks. Not at us this time.
The sedan swerves, tires screaming, and slams into the curb hard enough to jump. Its front end clips a parked truck, metal folding with a wet, horrible crunch. One door opens before the Blackwood SUV pins it in place.
Shiloh does not slow.
He takes the next turn, then another, putting blocks between us and the crash while my pulse tries to beat through my throat. The voices on the car system blur together: Ever confirming pursuit stopped, Nash demanding injury status, someone else giving location markers and clean routes.
Shiloh keeps driving. One block. Two. Three.
Then he pulls beneath the covered entrance of a closed loading bay and stops. For a second, neither of us moves. The wipers drag rain across the windshield. My ears ring. My hands are locked around the seat belt. I cannot feel my fingertips.
Shiloh turns toward me. “Reva.”
“I’m okay.”
“Look at me.”
I do, because the edge in his voice is too sharp to ignore. His face is pale beneath the streetlight spill, all the easy gold stripped out of him. He reaches for me and stops halfway, waiting. Something inside me cracks wide open.
I nod, bottom lip trembling.
His hands are on me immediately. Face, shoulders, arms, ribs, knees. Not sexual. Not gentle in the soft way. Efficient, shaking only a little as he checks for blood, for glass, for places my body might be lying to both of us.
“I’m okay,” I say again. “We’re okay.”
His hand cups the side of my face. For one second, he closes his eyes. Then the car speaker crackles.
“Shiloh,” Nash says. “Answer me.”
Shiloh opens his eyes. “We’re clear. Reva’s not hit. Their vehicle was disabled. Your men have them?”
“Two alive,” Nash says. “One dead. Police scanner is waking up, so my team is leaving them for uniforms after removing anything useful.”
Ever cuts in. “Take the east route. I’m sending a new path. No hotel approach until I confirm there was no second tail.”
Shiloh stares at me while he answers. “Copy.”
I swallow. “They followed us from the hospital.”
“Yes.”
“So Isabel knows I went.”
“Maybe. Maybe she had someone on the hospital already.”
“Because of Cal.”
“And because of your mother.”
The word mother still feels wrong in his mouth. It feels wrong everywhere. A thing from another language I used to know and forgot after the house filled with blood.
I turn toward the window. The rain makes everything beyond the glass look smeared and surreal.
“What did she tell you?” I ask.
Shiloh’s thumb brushes once beneath my eye, catching wetness I did not know had fallen.
“Not in the car after someone tried to shoot us.”
A laugh breaks out of me. It’s thin and frayed, more a protest than anything mirthful.
He leans across the console and presses his mouth to my forehead. His lips stay there for a few seconds too long, and I let them because my body is tired of being brave in public.
“You scared me,” he says.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” His voice roughens. “Still did.”
“I had to see him.”
“I know that too.”
He kisses my forehead once more, then sits back and puts the SUV in gear.
We pull out from under the loading bay and rejoin the wet streets, following whatever path Ever has built through the city. This time, I don’t look in the side mirror. I keep my eyes forward, one hand wrapped around the seat belt and the other resting palm-up on the console.
After a moment, Shiloh takes it.
Neither of us speaks again until the hotel lights appear ahead, bright and polished and temporary.
Another gilded cage. Another place Isabel will try to find. This time, though, something is different.
This time, when she reaches for me, we’ll be reaching back.
We’ve hit our limit.