Page 55 of Savage Surrender

Owen climbs the steps and tries the door. Locked. A keypad glows beside the frame.

“Code?” he asks.

Tristan walks onto the porch and enters the numbers.

“Her birthday?” Owen questions.

The keypad flashes green and every head turns toward Tristan, but he looks at me over his shoulder with a slow, dangerous curve to his mouth, like the question on my face is one he has been waiting years for me to ask.

The lock whirrs and then Tristan opens the door.

14

TRISTAN

The door is wide open, but Bianca doesn’t move.

Her gaze lifts from the keypad to my face while the flowers Freddie bought shift against her chest, several purple stems trembling in the wind. She’s deciding whether her birthday is sweet, stupid, or proof that I’ve been hiding another secret from her.

Owen crowds my shoulder for a look inside. Freddie leans around Weller, openly curious, while Weller has gone statue still and I can feel the question he has yet to ask.

All three of them want an answer. Making them wait has been one of the better parts of the trip.

“After you.”

“That sounds like a good way to get murdered in a strange house.”

“If I’d brought you all this way to murder you, using your birthday as the door code would be an interesting choice.”

“Comforting.” She peers past me into the shadowed entry.

I hold the door wider and smile when Weller breathes my name through his nose. His patience has been thinning since the airport, Owen’s disappeared somewhere around the third vague answer, and Freddie is beginning to suspect I’ve outdone myself in a way none of them will forgive.

He’s always had excellent instincts about people.

Bianca steps over the threshold and the breeze catches the edge of her cover-up and carries the clean smell of the outdoors through the open entry area. I press a button on the wall and the shades raise with a low hum, letting sunlight spill across pale wood floors, a long kitchen island, and a large sectional couch. Beyond the wall of glass, live oaks knot around the deck and break the ocean into bright blue pieces.

Bianca takes in none of that before she figures out where the home is exposed.

The front door. The French doors that lead to the back deck and a side door to the outdoor shower. Her attention catches on the large dark television screen mounted on the wall, then the open space beneath the staircase, and I can practically watch her clear every place a person could stand before she lets herself look at the view.

Every useful instinct she has is one I wish she’d never needed. Unfortunately, watching her use them does things to me.

Owen peels off toward the back of the house and Freddie closes the door behind us and tests the lock, which earns him a brief look of approval from Weller before our fearless leader turns it back on me.

“Tristan.”

“I hear you. Give her a minute.”

“I’ve given you hours.”

“And I’ve enjoyed every one of them.”

Bianca is frozen, staring out at the view.

“Oh my God.”

The flowers drop to her side as she presses closer to the glass, her whole face changing. Freddie nearly walks into a chair because he’s watching her instead of where he’s going, and even Owen pauses in the mouth of the hallway when she lets out a sound a lot like awe.