78. Sage
SEVENTY-EIGHT
SAGE
Milo sits on the counter next to the stove, legs swinging, phone in his hand. He eavesdropped on the entire conversation, which is kind of expected from him at this stage.
“She doesn’t know about us, right?” he says. “The . . . part?” He mimes being hanged.
“No. And she’s never going to find out either.”
“Agreed.” He sets his phone down. “But we need to talk about that Tyler fuckwad.”
I fill the kettle and put it on, digging through the takeout menus on autopilot while my brain runs the other track.
“He’s planning to corner me,” I say. “That’s what Amy heard.”
“Corner you. Intimidate you. ‘Make you understand the consequences of lying.’” Milo’s voice is light, but his eyes are hard. “That’s a threat against my kitten. I can’t let him keep breathing.”
“It’s bluster. Tyler’s all—”
“Volume, I know. Everyone keeps saying that. Tyler’s all volume, Tyler’s not a planner, Tyler doesn’t have the patience.
But you know what Tyler does have? Motive, opportunity, and a group of friends willing to help him scare a woman into talking.
” He hops off the counter. “I’m calling the others. They need to hear this.”
“Okay. But Milo, we can’t leave her here alone. Not with Tyler on some crusade. It’s not safe.”
“You’re right. We’ll rally around her.” He’s already got his phone to his ear. “I don’t trust that bastard one bit.”
I nod as he crosses to the living area and paces, one hand braced on his hip. By the time the kettle rumbles, I’ve found the Thai menu and Amy’s favorite mug. I set the tea to steep then put an order in—a bunch of everything because these men eat a lot.
“Tea’s ready and food’s ordered,” I call through the bathroom door when I’m done. “They say it’ll be an hour.”
“Thank you!” Her voice is muffled by steam and water, but she sounds almost like herself again.
I go back to the kitchen, where Milo now has the guys on speaker, telling them to get their asses over here.
Knox and Micah arrive twenty minutes later and we all huddle into my bedroom. Holden joins us via phone since he’s still at the station but he’s okay to talk. Amy drank her tea then went back in her room, door closed, watching something on her laptop while we wait on the food.
“What happened?” Micah asks as we all sit together on my bed, keeping our voices low.
“Tyler did,” I start, and tell them what Amy told me.
Knox growls deep in his throat when I finish.
“You can’t deny me now,” Milo says to the others. “Whether he left the noose or not, he’s a threat. We need to deal with him.”
“Deal with him how?” Micah asks carefully.
“How do you think?”
“We’re not taking out Amy’s boyfriend because he’s a loud-mouthed idiot who misses his friend,” Holden says through the speaker. “But I’ll run him and his boys through the system. If any of them have records, I can put enough pressure on Tyler to back off.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Milo asks.
“Then you have my blessing to make it hurt.”
“Fuck, yes.” Milo pumps his fist, satisfied for now.
“What about the other lead?” Knox puts in. “Stephen. Does Amy know him?”
I glance toward the closed door. “I’ll go ask.”
Extricating myself from the huddle, I hop off the bed and go back to her room. She’s cross-legged on the bed, laptop open, looking more human after the shower. She’s even changed into real clothes.
“Hey,” I say, sitting beside her. “Random question. Does the name Stephen mean anything to you? In connection to Brock?”
She frowns. “Stephen? No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“It came up somewhere. Someone mentioned Brock might have had a friend named Stephen.”
“Brock had a lot of friends I never met. Tyler would know more about that side of things, but—” She laughs bitterly. “Doubt he wants to take my calls right now.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s probably nothing.”
“Is someone called Stephen bothering you?”
“No. Like I said, just something I heard. Food shouldn’t be much longer.”
I go back to the bedroom and wait until I’ve closed my door before I speak.
“She doesn’t know anyone named Stephen,” I say, taking my position back on the bed.
The same frustration that’s been building all week presses down on the room.
“Odin’s team should have something by now,” Micah says quietly.
“I’ll follow up tonight,” Knox says.
Holden signs off, saying he’ll be here by seven and to save him some Pad Thai and egg rolls.
Milo starts packing the rest of my clothes into bags with the focused intensity of a man redirecting his homicidal energy into folding.
We leave him to it and head into the living room.
Knox settles onto the couch and Micah drops into the armchair.
Amy appears in the hallway. She peeks out, then steps out fully when she knows nobody’s naked or armed.
“My show finished,” she says. “Hope you guys don’t mind if I hang?”
“Of course,” Micah says, gesturing for her to come sit.
Amy settles onto the other end of the couch from Knox, tucking her legs underneath her, and I watch her take the measure of him the way everyone does.
She glances at me with a wide-eyed expression that I already know means she’s wondering how the two of us fit together, and I just give her a tiny smile and a shrug.
“So,” Amy says, turning to Knox with tentative friendliness. “You’re Knox.”
Knox looks at her. “I am.”
“And how did you meet Sage?”
“The beach.”
He doesn’t elaborate. Just lets it sit there, like a dead fish on the coffee table.
Micah fills the space, because bless him, he can’t not. “We all met on the beach. It’s a very . . . boring origin story. We were there. She was there. We saw each other and—”
“And now you all live together?” Amy’s trying for casual but her voice goes up half an octave. “Is it, like, a commune?”
“More like a crime syndicate,” Milo says, emerging from the hallway with a duffel bag over his shoulder. “But with better snacks and far less paperwork.”
Amy grins, and you can see some of the old brightness coming back. She tucks her hair behind her ear, keeps her focus on Knox. “So what do you do for work?”
“Security,” Knox says.
“And you?” she asks Micah.
“Bartender aka counseling for the inebriated,” Micah deadpans. If there’s a more perfect answer, I cannot imagine it.
Amy laughs, and just like that, the tension in the room drops a notch.
Micah starts asking her about her teaching work, and Amy responds the way most people respond to Micah—by relaxing without knowing why.
He has that effect. Something in his voice, or his eyes, or the way he listens like you’re the only person in the room.
The conversation continues and I listen for a while, but the reality of my life hits me like a Mack truck.
Up until now, I’ve been stubbornly ignoring the mounting pile of threats against me. But as I look up at the light fixture, all I can see is the noose. The threats and abuses of the last few weeks crush down, burying me under a pile of memories I don’t want.
Not again.
Not again.
Not again.
Tyler wants to corner me. Tyler and his friends, whoever they are, want to intimidate me into telling them what happened to Brock. Making her understand the consequences of lying. My chest tightens, and suddenly I’m not in the living room anymore.
Not again.
I’m under the jetty, and Brock’s hands are on me, and his breath is in my ear, and the ocean is crashing below us and I can’t breathe, I can’t move, I can’t—
I blink. I’m in the apartment. Amy is laughing at something Micah said. Knox is watching me with those dark, steady eyes that miss nothing.
I look away before he can read what’s on my face.
But my eyes land on the ceiling again. On the light fixture in the center of the living room, where the noose was hanging with a note that said you’re next.
Not again.
You’re next.
Making her understand the consequences.
Brock’s hands. The jetty. The rope.
The light fixture. The noose.
The intercom buzzes and I jolt, make a beeline for the door.
“Kitten, wait,” Milo calls out.
“The food,” I say in a rush. “That’d be the food.”
“I know. I’ll get it.”
“No. I want to.”
Micah’s on his feet immediately. “You’ll need help bringing it up.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m coming.”
I don’t argue. If I argue, I’ll have to explain, and if I explain, I’ll fall apart, and I’m not doing that in front of Amy. Not tonight. Not when she’s finally stopped crying and started laughing and doesn’t need another person’s breakdown on her plate.
“We’ll be right back,” Micah tells the others. Knox nods once and turns back to Amy with whatever passes for small talk in Knox’s vocabulary.
We take the stairs down and step out through the lobby into the evening. The air is cool and smells like salt. I close my eyes and breathe.
When I open them, there’s nobody there.
No delivery guy. No paper bag sweating grease onto the concrete. Just the front steps, the dusk, and a moth hurling itself suicidally at the lobby light.
Micah leans out, glancing left, then right. “Hello?”
Nothing.
I look down the walkway, irrationally sure I’m going to see someone jogging away with our dinner and a guilty conscience. But the street is quiet—just a car passing at the end of the block, the low hush of the ocean somewhere beyond the buildings.
Micah looks at me. “Did they text?”
I shake my head. “They’re old school. You call the order in and one of their family members delivers.”
“Okay. Well, if it was someone buzzing the whole building to let them in, we’d have passed someone on the way down.”
“Maybe some asshole kid hit random units and ran,” I suggest.
He scans the lot one more time, shoulders loose but alert. “Want to head back up?”
I look up to the darkening sky. “I’d rather wait out here—if that’s okay.” I take a deep inhale. “Need some air.”
“Of course. I doubt they’ll be much longer.”
I nod, grateful. I’ve been feeling so strong. So secure with my guys around me that I haven’t felt this tightness for weeks. But now . . .
Now the danger feels too close.