Page 69 of What We Become

The monitor clicks off. Holden exhales through his nose, and I feel the debate happen behind his eyes—stay or duty—before his arm loosens.

“We should go down,” he says, like it physically costs him.

“We should.” Neither of us moves.

I give myself sixty more seconds against his chest. Count his heartbeats. Inventory my body the way I’ve learned to—ribs a dull ache instead of a knife, bruises gone yellow-green at the edges, lungs filling all the way now. Ten days of healing. Ten days of cooked breakfasts and overprotective men walking the perimeter while Milo narrates trail-cam footage like it’s prestige television.

I feel better. The nightmares aren’t so bad anymore. But I’m still bracing. Still waiting for the next brick to go in the wall.

Peeling myself out of bed, I pull on Holden’s sweatshirt, and we take the elevator down together.

The kitchen smells like butter and blueberries. Micah stands at the griddle in an apron, sweatpants, and nothing approaching a hurry, stacking pancakes tall enough to require balancing skills. Frank does laps in his bowl on the windowsill, living his best view-having life. Milo sits at the island in yesterday’s clothes with two laptops open and a coffee gone cold at his elbow, which means he hasn’t slept. Again.

“There’s my baby girl.” Micah crosses to me, kisses my temple, and sets a plate in front of me with extra blueberries arranged into a lopsided smiley face. “They’re not anatomically shaped the way Milo’s pancakes are. But they taste good.”

“Thank you, chef.”

Eli comes in from the deck with his book tucked under one arm, and Knox appears through the mudroom door two minutes later, exactly on schedule.

“Still quiet,” Knox reports. And that’s the whole report. Same as yesterday and all the days before that. He takes the stool beside me and steals a blueberry off my pancake’s face—the left eye—and he grins at me, which for Knox is full-on flirting. My ovaries explode.

“Perimeter’s clean, gate’s clean, and Stephen-the-deer is still at large,” Milo announces, looking up from the screen. “The other Stephen continues his streak of aggressive nonexistence. I’ve got scripts running on every alias, every account, every crumb of the Mercer-Davis trail, and the man has apparently achieved digital nirvana. It’s offensive. It’s personally offensive to me.”

“He’ll move eventually,” Holden says, pouring coffee. “They always move.”

“Yeah, well.” Milo stabs a pancake with his fork. “I’d like him to move on my schedule for once.”

I eat. The pancakes are perfect because Micah made them, and Micah doesn’t know how to make anything less than perfect. For a few minutes it’s almost normal—six people and a goldfish in a glass house on a mountain, bickering over breakfast like the world outside isn’t continuing without them.

Milo swirls his last bite through the syrup and stands, dripping fork still in hand like a scepter. “Right.” He shoves the syrup-soaked bite into his mouth, forcing us all to wait while he chews and swallows. “I’m going to hunt through the storage sheds for actual hunting equipment. If Stephen-the-deer is going to taunt my cameras at four a.m., I’m taking him down.”

“He’s a deer,” Holden says, without looking up from his coffee. “A harmless deer.”

“That’s what he wants you to think.” Milo points at him. “Odin stocked the pantry, stocked the wine fridge, stocked the sex room—no way a man that thorough left empty sheds. There’s equipment in there. Ropes. Tools. Possibly a ranged weapon.” His eyes gleam. “Stephen-the-deer is about to learn a lesson.”

“Leave the deer alone,” Knox says, even though, historically, telling Milo to leave anything alone has never worked.

“I won’t be touching the deer,” Milo says, not technically disagreeing.

Holden mutters under his breath.

Micah catches my eye as Milo vanishes through the mudroom like a man on a mission.

The door clicks shut.

“He’s not actually going to hunt a deer, right?” Eli asks, slowly.

“Right?” Micah echoes.

Nobody answers. We all look at Knox. Knox shrugs, which from Knox means he has no intention of intervening and possibly finds the whole thing entertaining.

“He’s exhausted and running on caffeine and revenge,” I say. “Maybe someone should be out there with him? I’m not sure it’s a good idea for him to go out hunting alone.”

“There’s no hunting equipment,” Knox rumbles into his coffee. “No rifles. Any firearm here is on one of us or locked up.”

I glance at Holden. “Do we need to be worried for Stephen-the-deer? Or for Milo?”

Holden sets his mug down and doesn’t pick it back up. “If he finds weapons, we’ll hear something. If not, the deer is probably safe.”