Page 78 of Reluctant Bride

“I don’t know yet. But every incident’s moved us physically. The boundary house. The Corridor. The cove. The stables road. Somebody’s been drawing a map with our own reactions, and I’d bet good money the last stop on it isn’t random.”

Holt doesn’t say anything, which from Holt means I’ve landed on something he already suspected and hadn’t said out loud either.

Mackenzie catches my eye from across the room, a small, approving nod, the same one she gave me the day I read a hostile timestamp back to a diner full of gossips.

Gideon arrives twenty minutes later, unannounced, like he always arrives when he wants the advantage of nobody expecting him. He takes one look at the board, one look at me standing in front of it with a marker, and I watch him recalculate.

“You’ve been busy,” he says.

“I’ve been working. There’s a difference.” I set the marker down and cross the room to stand in front of him instead of behind Dawson, and I think that surprises him more than the board did. “The condition’s over, Dad.”

“Sage—”

“You put a Blackwater in his house.” I don’t raise my voice. I’ve never needed to, and I’m not starting with him now. “You wanted paper only, feelings forbidden, information brought home like a hostage exchange. That woman doesn’t exist anymore. She’s staying where she is, doing what she wants, and if you need intelligence on the Sullivans going forward, you can ask your daughter directly instead of running her like an asset.”

He studies me a long moment, the same assessing look he’s given every ledger of his life, and I let him look.

“Understood,” he says finally, his shoulders dropping on the way out, the closest thing to a concession he’s given me in years.

I catch the empty chair beside Dawson before I’ve fully turned back around, and I take it without thinking twice, dropping into the seat like it’s always been mine, my shoulder settling against his.

Finn’s eyebrows go up so fast and I hear him mutter something that sounds a lot like called it under his breath. Maren, halfway through pouring coffee, turns her whole face toward the window to keep from grinning outright. West pulls a twenty out of his wallet without a word and hands it straight to Finn, who accepts it with the smug, wordless dignity of a man who’s been running a betting pool on his own family for years and finally cashed one in.

Nobody says anything about it. Nobody has to.

Mackenzie’s phone buzzes in her hand, and whatever’s on the screen kills the last of the room’s good mood in one second flat.

“Tate cross-referenced the Highline shell account for anything more recent,” she says, already turning her laptop toward the table. “There’s a second wire. Same account, same routing pattern as the first payment to Ashley Rourke, eight summers back.”

“How old?” Dawson asks, though something in his voice already knows the answer is going to be wrong.

Mackenzie doesn’t soften it.

“Dated last week.”

TWENTY-SIX

DAWSON

Erin Van Ness’s file is clean enough to be a lie, and my wife had coffee with her this morning.

I read it twice at the kitchen island, laptop angled away from the window in case anybody’s still got a lens on this house, and both times it comes back the same. Honorable discharge. Three deployments, all boring on paper, all the kind of boring that means somebody scrubbed the interesting parts before they ever hit a public record. Security consulting license, current, no complaints filed. A woman with nothing wrong in it anywhere, which is wrong in a different direction when you’ve spent two years learning to read what people leave out instead of what they put in.

I close the laptop when I hear her feet on the porch. Second time this week she’s gone out on an evening trail run and come back saying Erin happened to be running the same stretch, and I’ve marked both, like a shipment running off schedule by the same number of minutes twice in one week.

“You’re still in your running clothes,” Sage says, letting the screen door bang like she always does, like the house owes her a little noise after a day like this one. “It’s almost six.”

“You ran into her again. Coffee and a trail run in the same day?”

“I ran into her, and yes, Erin happened to be out on the same stretch of trail.” She toes off her running shoes, easy about it, and doesn’t miss where my voice just dropped to. “She’s good company. Doesn’t talk unless there’s something worth saying and I’m letting her believe we’re friends.”

“That’s one way to describe a woman running a long game inside your own family’s security.” My jaw does the thing I hate that it does, tight and involuntary, and I hear my own voice go quieter instead of louder, which is worse and she knows it. “Twice this week.”

“Careful, Sullivan. That almost sounded jealous.”

“It’s not jealousy.” It’s exactly jealousy, and we both know it, and I’m not proud enough to pretend the time she’s spending with Erin is unrelated to how little of her I’ve gotten today.

“Sure it isn’t.” She crosses into the kitchen, already reaching for a glass of water like the accusation doesn’t even register, and lets the subject drop, her habit when she’s decided to enjoy something instead of arguing it. “What did you do all day, besides keep a jealousy log on my running schedule?”