Page 68 of Fatal Pattern

Blade paused with his coffee cup halfway to his lips. “Random question.”

“I need a distraction.” She gestured at her phone. “And I was thinking about your whole swamp childhood thing. So, is it real or just some tourist-trap nonsense?”

A slow grin spread across his face. “Oh, it’s real. My uncle Ricky used to make decent money at it during tourist season. Couple hundred bucks a show if he was lucky.”

“Are you serious?” She set down her fork. “People pay to watch someone wrestle an actual alligator?”

“Tourists eat it up. Uncle Ricky had this whole routine. He’d start with the smaller ones, maybe six or seven feet, work his way up to the big boys. Twelve, thirteen feet.” Blade reached over and stole a bite of her pie. “The trick is knowing where to grab them. Get behind the front legs, clamp down on the snout, and don’t let go.”

“That’s insane.” But she found herself picturing it. Blade in the mud, all that controlled strength focused on something that could kill him with one snap of its jaws. “Although I have to admit, seeing you tackle a twelve-foot gator might be amusing.”

“Amusing?”

“Educational. I could study your technique. For science.”

“Uh-huh.” He took another bite of her pie. “You’d probably be taking notes. ‘Subject demonstrates poor decision-making skills. Recommend psychological evaluation.’”

Despite everything, she laughed. “I would not.”

“You absolutely would. You’d have your little notebook out, documenting my risk-taking behaviors and maladaptive coping mechanisms.”

“Okay, maybe I would.” She reclaimed her fork before he could steal more pie. “But only because wrestling prehistoric death machines would definitely qualify as abnormal behavior.”

She leaned into the banter and felt a real smile curling at the corners of her mouth. They were just two friends sharing terrible diner food instead of two people whose worlds had been turned upside down by murder and conspiracy and family trauma that had shaped their entire lives.

“Do you still see them? Your brothers and sisters?”

The easy smile faded from Blade’s face. He stared down at his coffee cup. “No.”

“Not at all?”

“Not since I was fourteen.” His tone carried professional distance. “They made their choice. I made mine.”

She waited, recognizing the pain behind those simple words.

“After everything went down, my parents decided I was too much trouble.” Blade stole her fork again and raked lines in the chocolate with the tines. “They had seven other kids to worry about, and I was the least of their worries.”

“Blade—”

“It’s fine.” But the tightness around his eyes said otherwise. “Better this way. Clean break.”

She understood that logic. The brutal mathematics of survival that foster kids learned early. Sometimes cutting ties was the only way to move forward. But understanding it didn’t make it hurt less.

“You want to know the funny thing?” Blade’s laugh held no humor. “I was the good kid before that night. Quiet, stayed out of trouble, helped with the younger ones. I was fishing off that pier, waiting for my parents to finish some business deal, when I heard you scream.”

They’d never talked about the details of what that night had cost him. All these years, she’d carried the guilt of the reckless choices that put her at that pier. The violence that followed.

“I was such a mess back then,” she said. “Angry at the world. Running with this crew that made me feel tough, shoplifting, staying out all night. I thought I was so smart, so independent.”

“You were a kid.”

“I was an idiot.” She wrapped her hands around her coffee mug, seeking warmth. “The guy who attacked me was connected to the gang I’d been running with. I was tired of it. Tried to walk away, and they decided to teach me a lesson about loyalty. If you hadn’t been there, if you hadn’t acted . . .”

“But I was there.”

“And it destroyed your life. Your family, your future, everything you’d planned—”

“Tori, look at me.”