51. Sage
FIFTY-ONE
SAGE
“The birds are awake before we even get to bed,” I say, my voice croaky as we drag ourselves up Holden’s driveway.
A goldfinch, bright as a thrown match, flickers across Eli’s boots and lands on the low stone wall beside the mailbox.
We all stop.
I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the shock of color after a night that’s been red and black and silver masks. Maybe we’re too tired to understand something as ordinary as a bird existing at sunrise.
Or maybe it’s because the bird cocks its head and studies the six of us like it knows exactly where we’ve been.
“Is that thing judging me?” Milo asks.
Dean made him strip off the painter’s overalls before allowing him anywhere near Holden’s truck, but there’s still dried blood beneath his fingernails and a strip of silver ribbon tangled in his hair.
Knox reaches over and plucks it free.
Milo looks at it in his hand. “My art survives.”
Knox lets the ribbon fall and Milo quickly snatches it up.
“Philistine.”
The goldfinch hops along the wall, lifts its wings, and is gone.
Holden unlocks the front door. “Coffee.”
“Shower,” Milo counters.
“Coffee first.”
“Why?”
“Because we need to talk.”
Milo groans so loudly the bird probably hears him from three streets away.
It took us all about an hour to recover and get to the motel after the club.
By then, Dean had Stine secured, the cleaners had stripped most of room nine down to surfaces they could bleach, and Milo had been relegated to the walkway after trying to explain why the silver bow improved the corpse’s complexion.
Dean assured us he had control of the scene.
Then he told Holden to take Milo home before he put him in the van with Stine. “A retort can hold two,” he’d said.
Now all six of us file into the kitchen smelling like sex, blood, disinfectant, and the cool air of dawn.
Holden heads for the coffee machine.
“Nobody goes to bed yet,” he says, pointing to the table. “It’s time we all clear the air and get on the same page.”
I pull out a chair. Every muscle in my body objects as I lower myself down.
Knox disappears into the lounge room and returns with a cushion for me to sit on. Then he takes the chair beside me. Eli sits on my other side, close enough that his knee presses against mine. Micah disappears into the pantry and returns with crackers and painkillers and sets them in front of me.
“Thanks,” I say.
Milo drops into the chair opposite mine and folds his arms on the table. His head follows a second later.
“If this meeting lasts longer than my remaining blood-sugar reserves, I want it noted that I died in service to the cause.”
Holden puts six mugs on the counter.
“Milo.”
“I’m awake.”
“You’re face-down and drooling.”
“I can multitask.”
I touch the leather collar still circling my throat. The cameo choker is upstairs on the nightstand where I left it. The tracker inside it is sitting exactly where I wanted the men to believe I was while I drove south to kill Dale Stine.
That lie worked because they trusted me.
And because I knew exactly how their surveillance worked.
I asked to be included. I demanded full access to the next operation. I told Holden I’d pass Odin’s test.
I can’t do that while deciding for myself which threats the team deserves to know about.
“I’ve been lying to you all,” I say, lifting my eyes and looking at each of them. “About the messages.”
The kitchen goes still. Milo lifts his head and wipes the drool off his chin. Wide awake now.
“What messages?” Micah asks.
“The ones from Brock’s number.”
Eli’s knee leaves mine as every muscle in his body tightens at once.
The coffee machine releases a mechanical hiss.
“How many?” Holden asks.
“I don’t know. One every few days. Sometimes more. I kept blocking the number. It kept coming back.”
“Because it’s spoofed,” Milo says quietly.
I look at him. But his face is blank.
Holden notices and narrows an eye. “What did the last one say?” he asks me.
I force the words out.
“‘You killed me. You buried me. You blocked me. But I’m still breathing down your neck.’” My fingers curl against the table. “‘Feel that? It’s just the beginning.’”
Micah places his head in his hands and groans. “What the fuck?”
“When did that arrive?” Eli asks.
“Yesterday morning.”
“And you deleted it?”
“Yes.”
Eli rises.
The chair legs scrape across the floor, but he doesn’t go anywhere. He plants both palms on the table and lowers his head between his shoulders.
“Someone put a rope around your neck, Sage,” he says. “Someone has been continuously sending you threats from a dead man’s number, and you decided none of us needed to know?”
“I decided telling you wouldn’t change anything. We still don’t know who Stephen is.”
His head snaps up.
“It would have given us evidence,” Holden puts in before Eli can speak.
“For what?” I ask. “It’s not like the original text got us any closer. It just would have given you another reason to lock me inside this house.”
Eli laughs. It’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard him make.
“Lock you inside.” He lifts his head, and his eyes are bright in a way that makes my chest hurt.
“You were pinned under a corpse five hours ago, Sage. A stranger climbed on top of you in a motel room and started pulling your clothes off, and the only reason you’re sitting in this kitchen is because Milo followed you. But sure. We were going to overreact.”
“Eli—”
“Someone put a rope around your neck.” His voice breaks on it. Both palms flat on the table like it’s the only thing holding him up. “Someone is out there fantasizing about finishing what Brock started, and you fed it to a trash folder because you didn’t want to be managed.”
This is the part I didn’t plan for. Not the killing. The hurting them.
“You’re not a prisoner,” Knox says.
The first words out of him since I sat down, and they land exactly like he means them to—stones dropped into still water.
There’s no anger in his face. That’s worse.
Anger I can fight. Knox just looks at me like he’s recalculating every protection plan he’s ever built and finding the flaw he missed: me.
“I don’t think I’m a prisoner,” I say quietly.
“It’s just . . . my life has changed so dramatically and so fast that sometimes I feel like I don’t have any control.
I love all of you. I love us. But I miss making decisions for myself.
I miss the freedom to just walk out the door without worrying some boogeyman is going to jump out and get me. ”
The words sit in the middle of the table with the crackers and the painkillers, and nobody touches them.
Eli sinks back into his chair like his strings have been cut. The anger drains out of his face and leaves something worse underneath—fear, naked and exhausted, the kind he can’t lesson-plan his way around.
“Thank you for being honest with us,” Micah says quietly. He reaches across and takes my hand, turns it over, presses his thumb into my palm, and runs it back and forth. “But baby girl, control and secrecy aren’t the same thing. You didn’t make a decision for yourself. You made one for all of us.”
“Deleting those messages didn’t keep you free,” Holden says. The coffee machine hisses behind him, forgotten. “It kept us blind. There’s a difference.”
“So what, I just hand over my phone every morning like a hall pass?”
“No.” Holden’s voice is flat, but not cold.
“Milo builds some sort of catch. Anything from Brock’s number—any spoof routed through it—hits all six phones simultaneously.
You don’t delete. We don’t confiscate. In exchange, no new restrictions on your movement without you in the room when they’re decided.
” He pauses. “That’s negotiation, wildcat. Not a leash.”
I look at Milo. He’s been quiet too long, which for Milo is a confession in itself.
“Okay,” he says, and scrubs a hand through his hair, dislodging nothing because the ribbon is already in his pocket.
“Full disclosure, since we’re doing honesty at dawn.
I knew about the texts—I’ve had access to your phone since the first one came through.
Also there’s a tracker in your boot. But that boot is destroyed now. Rest in peace, tiny spy.”
“You—” I stare at him. “You read my messages?”
“Sometimes. But always when they were from him or about me.”
The betrayal lasts about two seconds before my own hypocrisy lands on top of it, and a laugh crawls out of me, cracked and ugly and real.
“I fucked you senseless then snuck away while you were sleeping. And I also stole Knox’s file.
I get to be mad. I just don’t get to pretend my lie was cleaner than yours. ”
“We all lie to keep each other safe,” Knox rumbles. “I knew about the texts too. Milo told me last week.”
“I struggle keeping secrets all to myself,” Milo admits.
“Wait.” I look between them. “You two knew. For a week. Who else?”
“Nobody,” Milo says. “Just us. And before anyone murders me—I was giving you time to tell them yourself.”
“That was your call to make?” Eli’s voice goes low and dangerous.
“Yeah, actually.” Milo doesn’t flinch, which is a first. “Same call she made. Same call you would’ve made at her age with something to prove.
I watched her. I kept her safe. And I waited for her to trust us enough to say it out loud.
” He looks at me, and for once there’s no joke anywhere in his face.
“I’d have waited as long as it took, kitten.
But I’m really glad you said it before sunrise. That’s growth.”
Eli stares at him for a long moment. Then his shoulders give out, and he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“I can’t do this,” he says. Not angry anymore. Just wrecked. “I can’t keep finding out after the fact how close we came to losing you. From you, or from him, or from a note under a necklace. It’s going to kill me. I mean that literally. My heart is going to stop.”
I get up. My body screams about it, but I get up anyway and go to him, and I wrap my arms around his head and pull him against my chest. His hands find my hips immediately, gripping me tight.