Page 47 of What We Become

Speak of the devil.

He’s standing by the main doors like he grew there—charcoal suit, dark hair peppered with a touch of silver, those pale gray eyes that see everything and give back nothing. He’s got two men behind him wearing suits and earpieces, the whole production, and through the glass I can see a black SUV idling on the gravel drive, mountain air hazing the treeline behind it.

“Miss Adams.” He nods at me. “You look considerably better.”

“People keep saying that. I’m starting to think the bar is catastrophically low.”

The ghost of a smile. Maybe. With Odin it’s hard to tell if it’s genuine or if he’s forcing the movement to appear polite.

Holden stops. Surveys the scene. “What’s going on?”

Odin’s eyes sweep the group, then return to Holden. “I don’t think it’s wise for you to go home.”

Knox’s hand tightens on the wheelchair handles. I hear the shift in his grip.

“Stephen knows where you live,” Odin continues. “And for five days, all of you have been driving between Holden’s house and this facility. If he was watching the house, it’s not a stretch to think he might have tracked or followed one of you.”

Holden’s jaw tightens. “You think he knows about this place.”

“I think he may. Between that possibility and what Fenrir found, I’m not gambling on your safety when we have no actionable information.” Odin glances toward the glass doors. “You need somewhere Stephen doesn’t know exists.”

“So where do we go?” I ask, because someone needs to be direct here and I’m too tired to dance around this.

Odin reaches into his jacket and produces a folded piece of paper. Handwritten. Coordinates, a rough map, a gate code.

“A cabin. Private. Remote. Fully stocked. It’s not much. You’ll be roughing it, but it will do as a safe house for now.” He hands the paper to Eli. “It has no public connection to any of you or to me. It’s accessible only with these coordinates, and no flight path has ever been filed to or from it.”

“How long?” Eli asks.

“As long as it takes.”

“I’ll need to notify the school,” he says, brow furrowed. I can tell he’s worried about his students, the butterfly habitat . . .

“I’ll have my people arrange a substitute for your classroom,” Odin says. “The school will be told you have a family emergency.”

“A family emergency,” Milo repeats. “That’s technically true when your family is a murder polycule with a surveillance problem.”

“Jesus Christ,” Micah mutters.

“What?” Milo says. “If we’re doing forced trauma exile in the woods, the out-of-office language should be accurate.”

Eli unfolds the paper, scans it once, then again. His face doesn’t change much, but I know him well enough now to catch the tiny shift in his mouth.

“How remote is this place?” he asks.

“Deeper into the mountains,” Odin says. “Limited access. No nearby neighbors. Cell service is weak and inconsistent, which in this case is a feature, not a flaw.”

“Any cameras on the property?” Holden asks.

“Exterior only,” Odin says. “My system. Encrypted. Local storage, no cloud access. You’ll have the feed on a closed device when you get there.”

Knox hasn’t spoken. He’s standing behind my wheelchair with his hands locked on the grips, and every time Odin opens his mouth the chair shifts a quarter inch under me.

In true Knox fashion, he hasn’t said much about how finding me bricked into a wall affected him. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t hurting. And a hurting Knox doesn’t want to hide. He wants to hunt.

“Knox,” Odin says. “I understand your objection.”

“I didn’t make one.”