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“Don’t do that shit,” he breathed, grief falling heavily from him.
“You know I could’ve,” I argued as I stared at the charred hull in front of us. “If I’d just—”
“Fucking don’t,” he snapped, his voice wavering when he continued. “We had a plan. Sofia made her own decision. Lily—” An anguished sound left him. “Lily knew better than to come here.”
“And I could’ve prevented it,” I yelled as I turned to face him, pushing him back when he tried grabbing my shoulder. “We knew who it was. We knew who we were looking for.”
“And who it is was the reason we were staying away from here,” he seethed, his voice low but no less firm. “Lily knew that.” He stepped back when tears started falling, dragging his hands over his face. A hushed curse left him before he met my stare again. “Sofia knew that.”
“My job is to find the threat,” I reminded him.
“Mine is to end it,” he countered. “If it’s on you, then it’s also on me. But there were orders to stay away from this house.”
My head shook as I started looking away from him, but I forced my attention to the ground when I automatically searched out the girl whose name was a steady thrum in my veins.
“You’ll never convince me that this wasn’t on me. And if you ask Dare?” I briefly glanced in Dare’s direction before meeting my brother’s devastated gaze. “Betting he’ll say the same.”
“Diggs—”
“Has anyone called Libby?” I asked over him, my body jerking anxiously as I unlocked my phone. “Because after letting Dare know I can’t find his wife, I figure it’ll be a piece of cake telling Libby that I let her sister-in-law and mom die.”
“Evan...”
“So, I’ve got this,” I said before Maverick could continue, shoulders jerking up like I was fine. Like everything was fine.
And then my body betrayed me by turning toward Willow when I’d been doing everything in my power to ignore the draw to her, and I nearly crumpled at the sight of her.
Her confusion.
Her worry.
Her fear.
Forcing my back to her, my head listed like I just might lose the battle in going to her as I pleaded, “Check on Willow for me.”
Before Maverick could respond or leave, I grabbed his arm when I looked at my phone. At the messages I’d received and left open.
“They said happy hunting,” I muttered as my mind raced. Handing off my phone to my brother, I turned, stare darting everywhere as I looked for a thread...a starting point...anything.
“They said happy hunting,” I repeated, “but we’d already established there was nothing for me to track because of the weather. They said it after they blew up the house.”
Maverick’s head shook slowly. “What does this mean?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled just as Kieran appeared beside us.
“We need to get Dare out of here,” he said softly but urgently.
“The messages Diggs—”
“I don’t know what it means yet,” I said over Maverick, snatching my phone from him and sliding it into my pocket.
Kieran’s cold glare shifted from Maverick to me, but I just looked at where Dare was delivering harsh demands into his phone. His face twisted in agony. His body visibly trembling, even from where we stood.
“I’ll stay behind,” I said, nodding as I did. “See if I can find anything.”
“And Willow?” Maverick asked as if just hearing her name didn’t cause a physical reaction in me. Making my heart wrench and my hands twitch with the need to pull her close. To feel her, whole and safe, against me.
“Get her away from this. Damn it—gas.” The last words left me as if they’d been forced from my body. “I could smell gas.”
