Page 35 of What We Become

“You gonna finish that?” I ask, nodding to the burrito.

He glances at it, a mere flick of his eyes before they’re right back on the house. “Not hungry.”

“You need food.”

“I’ll eat when we have eyes on something.”

“We have eyes on an empty driveway. Odin’s team has cameras on the gates, motion sensors on the perimeter, a two-man rotation parked literally right there.” I point to the SUV that screams federal tax fraud. “If Stephen so much as farts within fifty yards of this place, someone’s getting an alert.”

Holden says nothing.

I take another bite.

The silence in the car has weight. Not the comfortable kind. Not even the hostile kind, really. Just a dense, metallic pressure that makes every small sound louder—the crinkle of the breakfast wrapper, the tick of the cooling engine, the distant cry of gulls over the water.

I swallow. Wipe the hot sauce off my wrist with a napkin. “Okay, so. I’m going to say something annoying and reasonable.”

“That narrows it down to every sentence you’ve ever spoken.”

“Thank you. My point is, if you don’t eat, you get meaner. And you’re already at baseline glacial asshole, so⁠—”

He turns his head and looks at me. Then he takes one mechanical bite. With eye contact. Then he resumes staring.

I’m a little bit hard.

Why did that turn me on?

I blame sleep deprivation, trauma, and the fact that Holden looks best when he’s one bad decision away from felony assault.

He chews like he’s doing paperwork about it.

I look back at the house because that’s safer than looking at his mouth. The Davis place sits up on the bluff all rich and dead-eyed, all clean lines and expensive windows and curated coastal charm. The kind of house that says nothing bad has ever happened here, which is funny, because I could list a couple pretty easily.

My phone buzzes in my lap. I pick it up, thumb through the notifications, and feel my whole body go weird and still.

“Well,” I say.

Holden doesn’t move. “Well what.”

“We got something from the credit pull I shoved through at”—I check the time—“Jesus Christ. It feels like I’ve lived three separate lifetimes since yesterday afternoon.” I turn the screen toward him. “Holden.”

That gets his full attention.

He takes the phone from my hand. The muscles in his forearm shift under his sleeve as he scrolls, reading fast.

The credit card Jamie used to pick up the tab at the margarita bar yesterday—like a thoughtful little golden retriever with a laptop bag—links to a virtual payment profile. The profile links to a house-sitting app account. The app account is under J. Mercer. The identity docs uploaded to verify it? Fake as we suspected. Good enough to pass the automated review, not good enough to survive me being petty at four in the morning.

Behind the fake driver’s license is an old utility deposit. Behind that is a real name.

Stephen Mercer-Davis.

Holden goes very still when he gets to that part.

“He’s a Davis?” he says.

“Hyphenated. Mercer-Davis.” I take the phone back and pull up the chain Fenrir sent through. “Here’s the trail. James Mercer—the real one—was Stephen’s father. Died when little Stevie was three. Industrial accident at a bottling plant outside Tacoma. Press arm came down wrong and flattened half his chest before anyone could hit emergency stop.”

Holden’s jaw tightens.