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Lila. There was a hard cast to his eyes, a harder look than she’d ever seen from him before.
“Does Tristan know you’re offering this to me?”
Dixon shook his head and pushed the handle of the knife into her hand.
Lila pulled up her hood. “I don’t need it, Dixon. I carry a knife in my boot, too. Did you know that?”
Another no.
“I’ve never wanted to use it before today, but I’m not going to. He’s not even awake. I’d be no better than him.”
Dixon took out his notepad from his pocket. He started it.
“True.”
I’m sorry about yesterday. We shouldn’t have done that. We weren’t thinking. Tristan’s sorry too. He’s been sad since you both spoke at the hospital. His shoulders slumped, and he feathered the corner of his notepad with his thumb.
In that moment, Dixon reminded her of Pax as a child, the look on his face when he’d clumsily tumbled into a briar patch on a hiking trip and taken Lila with him. It hadn’t been the cuts on his face and neck that had made him cry, but Lila’s sprained wrist. He’d never hurt anyone before that, and he’d been miserable and apologetic and scared for her the whole way to Randolph General, watching her wrist swell to twice its normal size.
“I know you’re sorry.”
The pair left Peter before the doctor returned, and climbed the stairs to the top floor. Tristan emerged from his room as Dixon opened the door, shirtless and dressed in black pants. He wiped at his hair with a damp towel. “Dixon, I swear, if you don’t turn down that damn heater, I’m throwing it—”
He broke off, seeing Lila come through the door.
She pulled off her hood.
“You look awful,” he said, his eyes not meeting hers.
“Thanks.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. You just look exhausted and pale. You should rest.”
“I’ll rest later.”
Tristan excused himself and returned to his room. He came back a moment later, towel gone, black t-shirt pulled over his head.
He turned down the heater and dropped onto the couch.
“I just came by to tell you what happened this morning,” Lila said, sitting down on the opposite end. She squeezed a pillow in her lap and recounted the arrest of Patrick Wilson and his mother, embarrassed once again that her prediction had been so wrong.
“So let me get this straight. Patrick Wilson has been behind the false arrests this entire time? It’s been Patrick paying off Slack & Roberts? You can’t expect me to believe that Chairwoman Wilson didn’t know.”
“Of course she knew, or at least condoned what was going on. Chief Shaw and I suspect that she was too busy trying to get pregnant to pay close attention to what Patrick was doing. He did a great many things in her name.”
“He ordered Peter to kill you?”
“Zephyr told him how to do it, but yes. Killing me kept both their secrets. I misjudged Zephyr. He’s not afraid of spilling blood.”
“Do you think he knows that Patrick and his mother have been arrested?”
“Yes.”
Do you think he’ll run?
“No. He’s not sure how exposed he is yet. He’s got too many highborns in his pocket to give it up that easy, especially since he lives right here in New Bristol.”
“You found him?”
