72. Eli
SEVENTY-TWO
ELI
Five days.
Five days since the noose, and we have nothing.
I’m driving to the club at six-forty in the morning with Sage in the passenger seat and a headache that hasn’t let up since Thursday.
She’s got a coffee in one hand and her phone in the other, scrolling through nothing.
She’s been doing it all week—filling the silences with motion, keeping busy so the stillness can’t catch her.
We haven’t left her alone since it happened. Not once. Someone’s always with her—at the diner, at the house, on the drive to and from work. A wall of us, shifts and sight lines, every gap accounted for.
The same thing we’ve been doing since the jetty, really. And it didn’t change a damn thing. Someone walked through all of it and hung a rope from her ceiling.
I keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel, because if I look at her too long I’ll say something I can’t take back.
“Same deal as last time,” I say, pulling into the lot behind the club. “You wait in the bar while we meet with Odin.”
“I’d rather be in the meeting.” She tips her head against the window. “But I get it. While some lunatic’s threatening me with a noose, it’s not the moment to ask if I can be the first hang-lady.”
It’s a good line. Before the rope, I’d have given her something back. Now I just put the car in park.
She notices my lack of response. The same way she notices everything—it’s half of what makes her impossible to keep safe.
Her smile slides sideways, a strip of sunshine over something brittle. “I’ll sit on my hands and try not to eavesdrop through the ductwork. Be a good little damsel while the men decide my fate.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“I know, Eli.” She looks at me, and there’s a question under the smile I don’t let myself answer. “I’m kidding. Mostly.”
We head inside and find Knox standing behind the main bar, working the fancy espresso machine. He cuts the steam and pours some milk into a ceramic mug, finishing the latte off with a flourish and sliding it toward Sage. “Fury.”
He pours the remaining milk into a second mug and slides toward me with a nod. I glance down at mine, then at Sage’s, and frown.
“Why doesn’t mine have a love heart in the foam too?”
Knox looks at me with a bored expression. “Because I love you like a brother, Eli. I’m not in love with you.”
Sage’s whole face lights up in a way I haven’t seen before. She tosses her hair, leans over the bar, and crooks a finger at him. “Get over here and say that to my face.”
Knox gives her that big, gentle-bear smile.
He comes around the bar, lifts her right off her stool, and kisses her so hard I feel like maybe I should look away.
She giggles into his mouth, and then he just holds her, tucks her head under his chin and rocks her side to side like he might die if he ever lets go again.
“I love you, Fury.”
“I love you too, Knox.”
Knox sets her back on the stool and goes behind the bar like nothing happened. Sage wraps both hands around her latte and glows.
I sip mine and watch the easiest thing in the world happen—a man telling a woman he loves her out loud, in daylight, like there’s nothing in it that could get her killed.
Maybe that’s why he only puts the heart in hers.
Knox has never once believed loving her was dangerous.
None of them do. They think the wall they create is what keeps her safe—the shifts, the sight lines, the five of us stacked between her and the dark.
Love on the inside, the threat on the outside, and as long as we hold the line, she’s fine.
And for twenty-seven days she was fine. But the moment that rope was hung from her ceiling, that wall we’ve held since the jetty proved to be only one thing—danger.
We are the danger.
And we can’t protect her.
We don’t even know who or what we’re protecting her from.
Tyler, maybe—Milo’s sure of it. Or the man named Stephen who’s been lighting up a dead man’s phone since the night we put Brock in the ground.
Or someone we’ve never once looked at. We don’t even know if Tyler and Stephen are one man wearing two names or two separate problems circling the same girl.
Five days of work and all we’ve got is a profile and a feeling and not one fact that would hold.
Here’s the only fact I trust anymore: she was safer before us.
Brock was ours. Assigned, watched, ours. And while we were lying in wait—dotting all our i’s and crossing our t’s—he got to her. If we’d moved a week sooner she’d never have been at that party. Never had his blood on her hands. Never met a single one of us.
We were supposed to keep our distance. She was a loose end—a witness, a liability, a thing to manage and walk away from. That was the job. Instead we made her ours, and now there’s a rope with her name on it and a man somewhere who knows exactly how to reach the thing all five of us love most.
The others will keep stacking the wall higher. More shifts. Tighter sight lines. They’ll love her in the open and call it protection.
It isn’t protection. It’s bait.
And if not one of them is willing to do the thing that actually keeps her breathing, then I will. Whatever it costs.
I drink the rest of my latte and say nothing. Because what is there to say? My mind is made up.
The front door opens and Milo breezes in with Micah behind him, a box of donuts under one arm.
“Good morning, my beautiful family of misfits and murderers.” He drops the box on the bar, pops the lid, and slides it toward Sage. “Eat. You skipped breakfast.”
“I’m on my second coffee. I’m good.”
“Coffee is not breakfast. Knox, back me up.”
Knox doesn’t even look at him. “She can ingest what she wants.”
“Unbelievable. Living together for less than a week, and he’s already whipped.” Milo grabs a cruller and takes an enormous bite. “Micah, you’re my only ally. Tell kitten she needs food.”
“I’m also whipped.” Micah slides onto the stool beside Sage and steals a donut hole from the box. “But she should eat.”
Sage rolls her eyes and picks up a glazed. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic,” Milo says through a mouthful of pastry.
Holden comes through the door last, fresh off the night shift, his car keys in one hand, leather jacket over the other arm.
He scans the room and his eyes land on Sage.
Something in his expression settles. He crosses to the bar, drops a kiss on the top of her head, and takes the coffee Knox has prepared for him.
“Odin?” Holden asks me, holding his mug up to his mouth.
“Should be here any minute.”
As if summoned, the side entrance opens and Odin walks in. He doesn’t announce himself—never does. Just materializes in the room with the quiet authority of a man who owns every surface he touches. He nods at Sage—brief, appraising—and then looks at me.
“Let’s do this, gentlemen,” he says, nodding toward the backroom.
We go.
Odin takes a seat on the couch, holding his hand out for the small espresso cup Knox hands him.
The rest of us sit around haphazardly. I sit across from Odin, Holden sits beside me.
Milo drops onto the opposite end and rests his tablet on the arm of the couch.
Micah settles next to him. Knox moves to stand by the door, arms folded.
“Tell me what we know about this threat,” Odin says the moment we’re in place.
I give it to him straight. No prints on the noose. No prints on the note. No DNA. No footage. Nothing. We looked into the building’s maintenance contractor on the chance someone borrowed his master key, but he was alibied, clean. Another dead end.
I explain we’ve been surveilling Sage around the clock, looked into everyone she’s had contact with. But we’ve seen nothing unusual. No repeat approaches. No secondary threats. Dean reported nothing unusual with Amy as well.
Whoever did this made their statement and vanished.
“Suspects?” Odin asks.
“One,” Milo says, leaning forward. “Tyler Kavanagh. The roommate’s boyfriend.
I know we looked into him before Brock went in the ground and he was considered clear.
But the guy is aggressive, and he had access to the apartment through Amy’s key.
He fits the neighbor’s description. And he has motive—Brock was his best friend. ”
“Counterpoint,” Holden says, on cue. “Tyler’s a hothead, not a strategist. I ran him—two priors, both impulsive.
A bar fight, and a disorderly conduct. The scene at Sage’s apartment was staged.
Controlled. The noose was tied clean, matching our style perfectly.
The note was block letters on plain paper, no fingerprints, attached with a paperclip.
That’s not a man throwing a tantrum. That’s someone with patience. ”
“Tyler doesn’t have patience,” Micah adds quietly. “He has volume.”
Milo’s jaw tightens. “So we just cross him off? He’s got motive, access, and opportunity, and we wave him through because he’s too dumb to be scary?”
“No one’s crossing him off,” I say. “We’re saying he doesn’t fit the profile of the scene. That matters. We’ve always operated on evidence, not gut feelings. That’s why we’re still free.”
“My gut feeling has a pretty solid track record.”
“Your gut feeling is telling you to kill someone because you’re scared and angry, and those are the two worst reasons to make a decision,” Holden says.
“I’m not scared. I just hate the guy.” Milo crosses his arms and pouts.
“Regardless,” I say. “We don’t move without proof. Period.”
Milo stares at me, and I see the moment the fight goes out of him.
“Fine,” he says. “But I want it on the record that when this turns out to be Tyler, I get to say I told you so while we’re tightening his noose.”
“Noted.” I turn back to Odin. “We need to go wider. Which means going back to the beginning—Brock.”
Odin’s expression doesn’t change. He’s listening carefully, absorbing everything, reflecting nothing.