“You knew Mira,” Colin said. “But I don’t think she knew you. Not completely. She didn’t know how brave you really are. How selfless. She kept you in the dark because she thought she had to trick you into doing the hard thing.” His hand tightened around hers. “But I’ve watched you, Maren. Everyone in this room has. You don’t need to be tricked. You’ve been put into impossible situations over and over again, and each time, yourise.”
“But I’m still terrified,” she whispered.
“Which makes you all the stronger.” He clasped her hand. “I can see the determination in your eyes. It’s killing me that you want to go back there, put yourself in danger. I would do anything to change your mind if I could. But I can’t, no one can. I get it. That’s you, down to your soul. You’ll do the right thing, even if you’re terrified. So I’ll do everything I can to make sure you are safe. We all will.”
Maren closed her eyes and let out a long breath. “Thank you for understanding. She was trying to make it right,” Maren said. “Whatever she found, whatever she was doing, she was trying to stop him. I have to remember that. She was trying to do the right thing, too.”
Colin wiped a tear from her cheek. “Yes.”
“And Ray died trying to finish it.” Maren drew in a breath. “So Ihaveto finish it.” She opened her eyes and looked around the room. “I can be tricky, too. As tricky as Mira was.”
Gina’s eyebrow rose. “What do you have in mind?”
“We use Lynn Carr,” Maren said. “I don’t trust her. I sure as hell don’t forgive her. I don’t even know if I can look at her without wanting to hit her with something heavy.”
Gina’s mouth twitched. “Understandable.”
“I don’t think we just walk in, retrieve the evidence, and hope for the best,” Maren said. “I think we play him.” She looked atKyle. “He expects guilt. He expects me to think I’m the weak spot. He expects you to care more about Lackland than you do about me.”
Kyle’s eyes went glacial. “Then he doesn’t know me very well.”
“No,” Maren said. “He doesn’t. That’s why it works. You tell him that you’re going to turn me over. That I mean nothing to any of you, and you intend to protect Juni because she’s a blood relative and you aren’t going to let anything bring down Watchdog.”
She paused. “Tell him you resent me for hiding Juni from you. Tell him you’ve threatened me using Juni and you’re sending me to San Diego to get whatever Mira left behind and hand it over to end this. We let him believe he’s getting exactly what he wants. Then Lynn makes sure she’s the one Voss sends to receive the handoff. She gets her protection from us. He gets nothing.”
“There’s a problem,” Gina said. Not dismissive—she was already running every possibility through her mind, Colin could see it. “Voss won’t send Lynn alone, not for something this important. He’ll send insurance.”
“Dekker,” Colin said, grinding out the name.
“Dekker.” Gina nodded. “Which means we need a handoff location that works for us and against him. Controlled sight lines. Limited exits. Somewhere we can move fast if it goes wrong.”
“One more thing,” Kyle said. He looked at Maren directly. “You understand that even with all of this, we still don’t know if the attorney will cooperate. We don’t know if he’ll recognize that you’re not Mira.” He paused. “Did you ever put an obituary in the papers for your sister?”
“I didn’t. The probate lawyer said that he put one in some obscure little town paper somewhere to fulfill the letter of thelaw so that if there were any creditors, they wouldn’t find out she was gone until well after probate.”
Kyle nodded. “It’s no guarantee, but that helps our chances.”
“We still don’t have the code word,” Gina added.
“I think I might have it.” Maren stood up and crossed the room to Juni’s backpack on the leather couch. She carried it back to the table, unzipped it, and pulled outA Blue Fairy’s Treasury of Tales. “I’ve been through every page. There’s nothingphysicalin here. However…” She set it flat on the table and opened the back cover to the sketch on the endpaper.
Colin had seen the look on her face exactly once before—standing above the river, when she’d saidI understand why Sean loved it here.
Maren looked up at Gina. “I think this is the key.”
Gina nodded slowly, recognition dawning on her face.
Maren turned the sketch to show Kyle. “When we were kids, if one of us had a secret, or if we needed to talk where no one else could hear, we’d say ‘hammock.’” Maren’s voice was barely above a whisper. “It meant meet me there. Just us.” She looked down at the sketch. “Even after we moved to San Diego. Even after there wasn’t a hammock anymore. It still meant the same thing.”
Maren touched the sketch. “She didn’t hide the key inside the book we loved. She depended on me remembering our code word for our safe place.”
“Hammock,” Gina said softly.
Maren nodded. “That’s the code word. It has to be.”
Colin covered her hand with his.
She turned her hand beneath his and held on.
