“We’re still looking,” he told her, “carefully, so as not to trip anything. Elissa is good at careful.”
Mac stood up and stretched. “I’m going to check on the ladies. Take your time out here.” He went inside, but not before giving Colin a look that said he knew exactly what he was doing.
Maren was quiet for a long moment, looking at the flower beds where Juni had crouched in the dirt an hour ago, hunting for fairies who slept in fuzzy cocoons.
Then she looked back at him. “Thank you. For telling me.”
“You needed to know.”
“I know.” Her hand moved across the table—not reaching for his, just closer. “But you didn’t have to tell me everything you did. You could have kept it vague. Told me you were still working on it and left me in the dark.”
Colin looked at her hand on the table between them.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I could have.”
“But you didn’t.” Maren’s fingers curled slightly against the table, stopping herself from reaching the rest of the way.
Colin’s hand moved across the table and covered hers.
“We’ll figure this out,” he said quietly.
Maren nodded, her eyes holding his. “I know.”
Neither of them pulled back.
Maren looked past him, toward the house, where Juni was inside with Arden and Ellie and Star, laughing and safe. For now.
Her stomach clenched.
“If they’re watching normal systems, then they’re watching normal tracks,” she said slowly.
Colin’s gaze sharpened. “What tracks?”
“My car.” She looked back at him. “I watch too much true crime, okay? But if I were looking for me, I’d look for my car. My plates. Cameras. Gas stations. Hotels.”
“Maren—”
“No, listen. Mira and I were born in Iowa. We lived there until we were nine. If I had to run somewhere after my housewas broken into, that’s believable, isn’t it? Run to some old family friend, maybe a relative.”
Colin went very still.
“You want us to send your car to Iowa.”
“I want to protect you guys,” she said. “If they’ve followed me here, let’s make them think I kept on going.”
SIXTEEN
Maren didn’t moveher hand out from under Colin’s.
For one small, stolen breath, she let herself sit there in the soft afternoon light with flowers nodding in the breeze and the murmur of voices drifting from inside the safehouse. She let herself feel the roughness of Colin’s palm, the steadiness of his touch, the way he had looked her straight in the eye and told her the truth.
Mira had been working on something dangerous before Juni was ever conceived. Her sister’s work at LRH had touched naval weapons systems and contracts and money, all the boring, invisible pieces that kept the dangerous parts moving. Mira had opened an encrypted account. Then that account had gone dark two weeks before her death, which was not an accident, not wrong place, wrong time.
She was murdered.
Maren had pushed the thought away over the past few days, afraid of being overwhelmed. Her stomach clenched, but the nausea she expected didn’t come. Neither did the shaking. She’d expected anger, grief, fear, that awful feeling of helplessness that had lived under her skin since the second she’d opened her front door and seen the couch cushions ripped open.
Instead, calmness settled into place.
