And then he had stepped back and looked at her through the window with an expression she couldn’t fully read. something between resolve and something raarer than that. Something he shut down before it fully formed. “You’re not coming,” she had said. “Not a question. I’ll be there by morning.” He said, “There are things I need to close from this end first.

” “What thing?” “The person who bailed Ryan out,” he said. “I know who it is now.” She had wanted to ask more. The car had moved before she could. Now, it was 1:00 in the morning, and Ethan was in the smaller bedroom, and Emily was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. She wasn’t drinking, listening to the ocean she couldn’t see, and the guards she could feel and the silence that pressed in from every direction.

And she was thinking about the look on Damian’s face through the car window. She had spent 3 weeks telling herself she didn’t know this man, that gratitude wasn’t trust and proximity wasn’t connection, and the fact that he’d made Ethan nearly smile once did not constitute a foundation for anything.

She had told herself all of this with great discipline and considerable success. And then he had looked at her through that car window and all her discipline had done was make it very clear in stark and inconvenient detail exactly what she was working so hard not to feel. She drank the tea. It had gone cold. At 7 in the morning, a car came up the drive and Ethan, who had been awake since 6:00 and stationed at the front window with his sketchbook, wrote one word and held it up him.

Emily’s shoulders dropped an inch. She hadn’t realized how high she’d been holding them. Damian came through the door story looking like a man who had not slept and had no intention of discussing it. His jacket was gone. There was a tension in his jaw that meant the night had not gone cleanly. But he was upright and present.

And when Ethan held up his notebook, which now showed a rough drawing of a car on a road, clearly the arrival he just witnessed, Damen looked at it and said, “Good likeness.” Which was objectively not true because Ethan had drawn the car with six wheels. But Ethan looked pleased anyway. Emily waited until Ethan was occupied with Rosa, who had apparently been at the safe house since yesterday, which meant Damen had been planning this longer than one day.

And then she pulled Damen into the hall. “Who bailed him out?” she said. “A man named Victor Caruso.” Damen said, “He runs operations on the south side. We have history.” “He’s using Ryan to get to you.” “He’s using Ryan to destabilize my attention,” Damen said. “Keep me focused on a personal situation while he moves on other interests.

It’s not sophisticated, but it doesn’t need to be. Disruption rarely does. So, what happened last night when you said you were closing things from your end? He looked at her steadily. Victor and I reached an understanding. That’s the same non-answer you gave me about Ryan 3 weeks ago. Yes, Damian. Victor will not fund Ryan again, he said.

Or interfere in this situation or in anything connected to you. That is what I can tell you. and it is the part that is relevant to you. She held his gaze. And Ryan without Victor’s backing. Ryan is angrier and more alone and considerably more desperate than he was a week ago, Damen said. Which makes him more dangerous in the short term and easier to close permanently in the long term.

More dangerous, she repeated. That’s what you lead with. I lead with what’s true. She turned away then turned back. I need you to understand something. Every time you give me half an answer, you put me in the position of trusting you with incomplete information. And I’ve been doing that. I’ve been trusting you in a situation where you hold most of the cards and so far you’ve earned it.

But I need you to know that it is not something I do easily or for free. He was quiet for a moment. I know, he said. Good, she said. So tell me the whole truth about how dangerous the next few days are. He looked at her. Then with the careful deliberateness of a man making a genuine choice, Ryan knows where he is now in terms of options.

The bail was his last external resource. He’ll move within the next 72 hours or he’ll lose his nerve entirely. I believe he’ll move. I believe he’ll try to come here. I believe we are prepared for that. But I also believe in telling people the truth about what they’re walking into. So there it is. The kitchen was very quiet.

He’s going to come here, Emily said. Probably. You brought us to a place you think he’s going to attack. I brought you to a place where I control every variable. He said there is a difference between the place a threat is expected and the place you are least protected. This is the former. Your apartment was the latter. She thought about that.

She thought about it the way she thought about everything practically without the luxury of panic. How many guards ate outside? Two inside, one of whom is Marco. And you and me. She nodded once. Then Ethan can’t know. If something happens, nothing will happen to Ethan. He said, I need you to hear that. Things you can’t guarantee.

I am guaranteeing it, he said, and the quality of his voice when he said it was the same quality it had had that first night in the restaurant office when he’d said, “Okay.” total unqualified. the voice of a man who had decided something was true and was making it true through the force of his intention. She believed him.

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