Page 29

Cash doesn't answer. His eyes find mine.

And I'm already sayin' no before he asks. Shakin' my head. "No, bro. I don't have it. She never shared it with me. I saw her use it once, but that's it. Just once. I could guess, maybe."

"It's better than nothin'," Wyatt says, and starts pulling me towards the door. "Let's fuckin' go."

We run.

Mercy's got two fists knotted in my shirt and she's not lettin' go, so I don't make her. I just scoop her up on my hip like she's four instead of nine, and she wraps her legs around me, and buries her face in my neck, and I run with her like that, shotgun in my other hand, Cash and Wyatt out ahead of me, boots poundin' gravel, then flagstone, then the big front doors bangin' open against the walls.

Inside, every light is on. Wyatt's doin', probably. The whole place lit up like a church on Christmas.

Up the stairs. Two at a time. Mercy's breath hot and wet against my collarbone, and she's whisperin' somethin' I can't make out, and I don't ask. I just keep climbin'.

Savannah's door is open. Her phone's still on the floor where Wyatt said it was, screen cracked, face down. Nobody picked it up. Nobody wanted to be the one.

The closet.

Her scent hits me the second I cross the threshold and I gotta lock my knees. Lavender, and horse, and that clean cotton smell that lives in everything she owns.

It's everywhere. It's in the dresses hangin' in rows, all those ruffles, and pearl buttons, and soft faded prairie colors, and it's in the air, and it's on me, because she was wrapped around me not two hours ago kissin' me goodbye like she was memorizin' my face.

Mercy slides off my hip. Her legs just quit. She sinks down onto the floor against the back wall and the hem of a blue gingham dress falls over her shoulder, then another one, cream with little flowers, till she's half hidden under Savannah's clothes like a kid hidin' from a storm. She pulls her knees up. Doesn't say anything. Just watches me with those swollen Kane eyes.

Cash and Wyatt crowd the doorway behind me. Nobody breathes.

The keypad is set flush in the wall behind a panel of cedar shelving. Ten digits. One light that glows red right now.

I let out a long breath. Then another.

Think, Demon.

That day. Red clay still caked under my nails from thirty-six graves, my hands still smellin' like Montana dirt and gun oil. She didn't say a word. Just took my hand, and led me in here, and reached past me, and I was starin' at the side of her face, not her fingers, because I was tryin' to figure out if she already hated me.

But I saw it. I know I saw it.

Her hand came up. Top row first. I remember that. Top row.

Then down.

Then—

Fuck.

Top row.

I press a seven. Then down. Four. Then—nothin'. My hand hangs there over the keypad like it's waitin' for her to come stand behind me and finish it.

Red light.

I try again. Seven, four, one, two. Red. Seven, four, one, five. Red. Her birthday backwards. Red. Eleanor's. Red. The year we met. The year I went in. The year I got out. Red, red, red.

Slow down, Demon. You saw it.

But I didn't. I saw the side of her face. I saw the little vein in her temple that jumps when she's holdin' somethin' back. I saw her jaw set like she was carryin' me, and the dirt, and all of it, and I let her. I let her carry it and I didn't watch her fuckin' hands.

Seven. Eight. Red. Seven, nine. Red.

The keypad's got a lockout. I figure that out around the fortieth try, when the light stays red longer than it should and the pad goes dead under my thumb for a full minute. So I stand there and count, sixty, and press again. Red. Count. Press. Red. The cedar shelvin' is cool against my forehead when I lean into it and I don't remember decidin' to do that.