Page 7 of What We Become

I open my mouth and scream.

TWO

KNOX

“Milo.”

He doesn’t look up. He’s cross-legged on the living room floor, laptop open, additional screens running, a green grape clamped between his teeth. “Knox, if this is about the dishwasher, I already told Holden—the bowls go on the top rack, and I will die on that hill.”

“It’s Fury’s tracker.”

He looks up.

I hold out my phone. The pink dot on the map isn’t moving. It isn’t at the restaurant with the frozen margaritas. It isn’t on any road in between.

It’s stopped.

Blinking silently on the coast road past the boardwalk near her old apartment, in the stretch where the houses thin out and the bluffs start.

“How long?” he asks.

“Too long.”

I grab Milo by the front of his shirt and haul him up. His laptop clatters closed in his hands, but his eyes never leave the dot.

“Car.”

He nods.

Holden and Micah are in the kitchen, something simmering on the stove. The house smells like garlic and red wine. On the console beside the front door, a plastic cauldron overflows with candy for the trick-or-treaters. Milo bought enough for half the neighborhood, then claimed a second bag for “quality control.” Twenty minutes ago, I was watching Micah cook and wondering whether Fury would want pasta when she got home.

Now I’m just . . . fuck.

Holden doesn’t raise his head from the half a pound of garlic he’s chopping, but his hand pauses.

“Problem?”

“Sage checked in from the restaurant an hour ago. Nothing since. Her tracker’s stopped,” Milo says, shoving his arms into his jacket as we pass. “Pink dot’s out on the S-curve above the bluffs.”

Holden drops the knife. “Isn’t that where⁠—”

“Yeah,” I say, not letting him finish.

It’s where we found Fury under the jetty—on her knees, Brock’s hand in her hair. Where she stole my knife and opened him from ribs to groin.

Where she became ours.

Mine.

Micah is already moving. The dish towel hits the counter, stove off. “Call her.”

Milo does. Puts it on speaker. We all listen to the dead, cheerful ringing.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Voicemail.

Holden crosses the room, grabbing his keys and gun from the console drawer.