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So I only shake my head, looking at her miserably.
God, I love her so much. I love her even more for caring so much, for helping me, for not just marching me straight back to her place and assembling every brawler in Heart’s Edge to kick some butts for my sake.
But I can’t drag anyone else under with me—especially not when they’re busy with Eli. I can’t be drowned and pulled ever deeper by more guilt, more trouble with no end.
“Ember, please. I’ll be fine. I promise,” I whisper.
She waits for a few more seconds, staring me down, then sighs and hits the plate that sends the false wall grinding open. The safe is a grooved metal plate embedded inside, nothing marking it except the keycard reader. Ember slides the card through the slot, and the red light in the upper right corner turns green.
There’s a faint hissing and clicking rising as the lock releases. At the lightest touch, the door swings open.
There it is.
All that gold.
Midas’ flipping curse.
It takes both of us and a large loading cart to haul everything into the back of my station wagon.
It’s so heavy it leaves my arms straining, and actually dips the rear of the car.
Once we’re done and heading back inside to lock up, though, I catch her arm, looking down at her, biting my lip.
“I need to get in touch with that woman you know,” I say. “Fuchsia.”
“Oh, God...what?” Ember tenses. “You can’t tell me you’re not in trouble. No one goes to her unless they’re in a hell of a bind.”
I smile faintly. “I guess Doc didn’t tell you, huh? She’s, um, kinda been tracking someone down for me.”
She pauses with a deer-in-the-headlights look.
“No, he didn’t, and...I’ll be having words with him about keeping things from me.” Her mouth tightens. “But you can’t say Fuchsia’s finding someone for you and expect me to believe you’re not in trouble. What’s going on—”
“Don’t. He’s trying to protect you.” I squeeze her arm gently. “And so am I. All the guys know; they’re helping me. Let us take care of this.”
“You don’t protect family from yourself.” Her voice trembles, a dark whisper, the look in her eyes so sweet, so caring—and it’s just that loving lightness about her that I want to protect so badly. “You fight by their side to save what matters. And you matter, Fel. Even if some idiots in this town say you don’t.”
I don’t have words to describe how this is killing me.
So I just shake my head and offer her a pained smile.
“If I fill you in later, will you feel better? I’m short on time. Tonight, just help me, please. Don’t ask. Don’t get involved. Go back to your kids and Doc and let me deal with it.”
Ember eyes me skeptically. I can tell what she’s thinking. I’m thinking it, too.
I’m about to unintentionally commit suicide.
But it is what it is.
Que sera sera—even if whatever will be will be in this instance means having my throat flayed open by a screaming banshee who’ll probably turn my skin into a new designer purse for fun.
Ugh.
Ember makes an exasperated sound and turns away.
“Just...give me a minute, okay?”
She stalks over to the small desk in the corner of the room, flips open the laptop, and rattles something off with her face bright-lit by the screen, washed out in pastel colors. Then she jots something sharply down on a sticky note in a furious scribble and tears the little blue square off the pad before circling the desk and heading over to the still-open safe.
Stretching up on her little toes, she rummages inside, one tooth stabbing down into her lower lip before she drops back down with a small, cheap-looking cell phone.
Oh.
A burner phone.
I hadn’t even thought about that.
Guess Ember’s learned a lot about these little spy games from her husband. She’s probably better equipped to face down Paisley than I am, but it’s my job, and mine alone.
She turns, thrusting the note and the phone at me, staring almost defiantly, her eyes wet.
“Never call Fuchsia from a traceable number. As soon as you’ve got what you want, you burn that Post-it, you hear?”
“Absolutely. I will.” I nod quickly, my breaths coming wet and painful, and pull her into a tight hug, clutching the phone and crumpled bit of paper against my palm the entire time. “I’m sorry, Ember. I hate this.”
I hate that it feels like goodbye.
She goes stiff, then grabs me just as tight, hugging me like she knows.
I don’t give her the chance to ask again, to say anything.
I just pull away, offering her a rueful smile.
“C’mon. I’ll drop you at home.”
We close everything up and file out to my station wagon.
As I pull out onto the road, I do one last selfish thing.
I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to call Fuchsia on my own, so with Ember there in the car with me and one eye on the road, I punch the number on the Post-it in with my thumb and lift the burner phone to my ear.
