Novels by MeritAbi

Hailey's POV Eli had not called.I had sent that message to Evans to get him home faster and I was not sorry about it. He needed to be here and I needed to tell him what had actually happened, which was that Eli had sent one more message while Evans was at the board meeting and then gone silent completely.The message said simply: The collection. Use it. It is the right move. I am watching.I had stared at that message for a long time. He knew about the collection. He knew about the board situation. He had been watching us closely enough to understand the details of a corporate power struggle happening inside a building he had never entered.Or had he.Evans came through the front door at ten past ten looking like someone had wrung him out and hung him up to dry. I handed him coffee and told him the truth about the Eli message before he could ask anything else. He read it twice and sat down heavily."He is right though," Evans said. "The collection is still the right move.""I know,"

Evan's POV I watched Hailey stare at those three words on her phone screen.Hello, little sister.She looked up at me slowly. Neither of us spoke for a moment."Eli," she said quietly."Eli," I confirmed.She typed back immediately. I watched her fingers move without hesitation. She turned the screen toward me so I could read what she wrote.Who are you and what do you want.Not a question. A statement. That was Hailey now. Direct and unafraid in a way that still caught me off guard.The response came within seconds.Not here. Not like this. When you are ready, you will find me. You already know how.She read it twice. Then she put the phone face down on the table and looked at me. "He means the ability," she said. "He knows about it.""He would," I said. "If Frost created him first, he has been living with whatever ability he has for longer than either of you. He probably understands the mechanics better than Lena does.""He called me little sister," Hailey said."Yes.""Which means

Hailey's POV Evans came inside looking like he had seen a ghost.He closed the front door behind him slowly, locked it, then stood in the hallway without moving for a moment. I watched him from the kitchen doorway. His face was doing that thing it did when he was processing something too large to immediately put into words."Sit down," I said.He came into the kitchen and sat. I put a fresh cup of tea in front of him. He wrapped both hands around it but didn't drink."Tell me about Lena first," I said, sitting across from him. "Then whatever else happened outside."He looked up. "You saw?""I saw you stop on the front step and stand there for two minutes," I said. "Something happened. But tell me about Lena first because I need to understand Nancy's situation before anything else."He nodded and set the cup down.He told me everything Lena had said. The compound. The ten weeks. The cellular deterioration. The neutralizing agent that could slow things down but not reverse them. I list

Evans PovI knew about Calix's origins before Hailey did.That was the honest answer to the question I had just asked her. I knew and I had filed it away as irrelevant because Calix was supposed to be gone for five years and the information had seemed safe to sit on.It was not safe anymore."Tell me what Marcus found," Hailey said on the other end of the line. Her voice was very steady. Too steady."Tomorrow," I said. "When Lena comes. We deal with one thing at a time."A pause. "Evans.""I promise I will tell you everything tomorrow," I said. "Tonight I need to meet Lena first. What she tells me changes how I explain everything else."Another pause, longer this time. Then, "Fine. But tomorrow. First thing.""First thing," I confirmed.I hung up and sat in the car outside Lena's building for a moment. The street was quiet. A small café on the corner was still open, warm yellow light spilling onto the pavement. Normal life continuing around the edges of everything falling apart.Lena

HaileyEvans was still on the phone when I hung up and went downstairs.The monitors had been flickering for twenty minutes before I called him. I had been standing in the kitchen watching the basement door like it might open on its own, telling myself it was just an electrical issue, telling myself everything was fine.It wasn't fine.I pushed through the study, pressed the hidden button, and descended the stairs alone for the first time without Evans walking ahead of me. The corridor felt longer than usual. The hum of the machinery seemed louder. My footsteps echoed off the clean white walls and I focused on breathing steadily.I pulled a chair close to the tank and sat down.Nancy floated exactly as she always did. Still. Peaceful. Her dark hair drifting slowly around her face in the pale blue fluid. Her hands loose at her sides. Her eyes closed.My face.Every time I sat here I had to take a moment to absorb it all over again. The identical line of her nose, the exact shape of her

Evans PovThe voice on the other end of the line had said three words before disconnecting."He is safe."That was all. Then silence. Then a dead tone.I stared at my phone for a long moment. Hailey was watching me from across the table, waiting."Someone has Calix," I said. "But they say he is safe.""Who was it?" she asked."I don't know. The voice was male. Calm. No accent I could place." I set the phone down. "It wasn't David. David's people don't say things like that. They issue statements. They don't reassure."Hailey absorbed this quietly. "So someone else is involved. Someone we haven't identified yet.""Yes."She nodded slowly, filing it away the way she had been filing everything this morning. Methodically. Without panic. I had watched her transform over the last two hours from a woman drowning in betrayal into something sharper and steadier, and it was simultaneously the most impressive and most humbling thing I had ever witnessed."Go to your board members," she said. "Tha