Page 90 of The Final Cut

“I can’t.” Tears streak down my cheeks.

“You can because Delia needs you to be here when we bring her home.”

That breaks through. He sees it and presses harder.

“She needs you here. Alive. Free. Ready to be the reason she has somewhere to go after we pull her out.”

Pull her out.

The words are a promise and a wound.

I nod once because if I speak, I might beg, and I refuse to be the sound that follows him out of this house.

Nash kisses me hard.

Fast. Possessive. Terrifyingly controlled. Then he lets me go and turns away before either of us can make it worse.

Deacon passes me with a gun at his back and another in his hand. He pauses beside me.

“I will get her,” he says.

The promise shakes because he does not let many things shake. That frightens me more than his calm ever has.

They leave through the back hall, boots clipped and purposeful against the concrete floor. Ever seals the door after them, then crosses to the console and begins turning the cabin into something with teeth.

I stand in the war room with my heart trying to claw out of my chest.

Homer winds between my ankles, offended by motion and gun oil and human drama. I pick him up because my hands need something living in them. He allows it with a grumble, warm body tucked against my ribs.

Ever watches the screens. I watch the empty doorway.

Every part of me wants to run after them. Every old wound opens its mouth at once. The closet. Chicago. The hospital doors. Delia on the other side of another woman’s discipline. Cal breathing through a tube while men take turns guarding him because I can’t be there.

I stand still, and it feels like tearing my own hands open one finger at a time.

Nash said staying behind was doing something. I try to believe him. For Delia, I try.

I do not chase them. I stay.

I stay, and I stay, and I stay.

DELIA,

AGE 17

Isabel says love makes women stupid. I think she has it backward.

Love makes women dangerous. That must be why she works so hard to starve it out of this house.

Mother loved Father and ran.

Father loved us and died.

I loved my sister, and it still hurts to breathe around the place where she used to be.

None of that sounds stupid to me.

It sounds expensive, and it sounds dangerous—to Isabel.