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Riot closed his eyes for half a second.
That was answer enough.
Declan spoke from beside me. “You knew too?”
Riot looked at his oldest son. “Yeah.”
Declan’s face changed. Not wildly. Chief didn’t do wild. But something hard settled into it. “And you didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
I felt something inside me trying to become anger. It didn’t quite make it.
Fear was taking up too much space.
I understood why Dad had done it before he explained.
That was the worst part.
The past few days had not exactly made a compelling argument for handing me every terrifying piece of information the second it existed. I had lost time. Heard voices nobody else heard. Crawled toward a drain while my entire family begged me to stop.
Dropped everything and sprinted into woods I had refused to enter for nine years and stayed gone until dark.
If Dad had believed Wade Mercer was nowhere near me, telling me he was free would have sounded less like honesty and more like setting my nervous system on fire for sport.
I didn’t like it. I understood it.
Dad stepped toward me. “Babygirl—”
“I know why,” I said.
He stopped.
Everyone looked at me.
I rubbed my thumb against the side of my finger. “I know why you didn’t tell me.”
Dad’s face somehow looked worse.
“You thought he couldn’t get near me.”
His answer came immediately. “Because he was accounted for. Yes.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I know.”
“But I get it.”
Sunshine did not look nearly as understanding. “I don’t,” she told him.
Dad turned toward her.
She had folded her arms now too, mirroring Marion without noticing. “You tell me when the man who kidnapped our daughter gets out of prison.”
“Emily—”
“No.” Her blue eyes flashed. “ You don’t get to decide I’m too fragile for that information.”
