로그인The ambulance crew were professional about it.That was the most you could say. They were professional in the specific way of people who had seen enough to have stopped being surprised by most things and had developed a neutral efficiency that covered the full range of human situations without requiring them to comment on any of them.The one who took Fletcher's vitals looked at the shoulder, looked at the sand covering both of us from the knees down, looked at the general state of the beach behind us, and said: "How long ago.""Forty minutes," Fletcher said.The man wrote something on his clipboard without expression."Give or take," Fletcher added."You walked around on it for forty minutes," the man said."I was occupied," Fletcher said.The man looked at me briefly, returned to his clipboard, and said, "Right," in the tone of someone who had decided this was going in the report exactly as observed and he was not going to editorialize.I hid behind my hair for the ambulance ride.F
Nicole's POVThe medics arrived and Fletcher ignored them.Not rudely. He just kept his arm around me and looked at the man who came toward him with the kit and said, "Give me a minute," in the tone he used for things that were not actually requests, and the medic, to his credit, assessed the situation and took a small step back and waited."Sir, the shoulder really needs—""A minute," Fletcher said.The medic waited.I looked up at Fletcher's face. "You should let them—""Nicole.""You're bleeding through your jacket.""I know," he said. "I've been aware of the shoulder for the last twenty minutes. It's not going anywhere.""That's not how bleeding works," I said."It's not arterial," he said, with the calm of someone who had apparently assessed his own gunshot wound and filed it under manageable while continuing to conduct a beach confrontation. "I'd know if it was arterial.""How would you know—""Because I'd be on the ground," he said. "I'm not on the ground."I looked at him.He
He didn't go down.That was the first thing. The bullet hit him and he made that sound, low and sharp, and I watched his body absorb it and I watched him stay upright and keep moving and I stood behind the pier support with my heart in my mouth thinking: he should be on the ground, why is he not on the ground.He was not on the ground because he was Fletcher Jade and Fletcher Jade had apparently decided that the ground was not an option right now and his body had agreed to comply.His security had Daniel's remaining men contained in under
Nicole's POVMy step-brother's name was Daniel.I knew that from the tabloids, from the brief research I had done on the Harrington family in the weeks after Fletcher first told me about the inheritance, the careful late-night reading of a woman trying to understand the shape of the thing that had been coming for her. Daniel Harrington, thirty-one, photographed at galas and charity events and business announcements with the easy confidence of a man who had never once questioned whether he belonged in the room.He didn't look like his photographs right now.In the photographs he was polished, controlled, the public-facing version of a family that und
The morning of the fourth day I found my mother's photograph.Not lost exactly — I knew it was in my wallet, had always known, had put it there myself sometime in the first year after the accident when I was rebuilding the texture of my life from the outside in and had decided that having her face accessible was a form of anchor. But I hadn't looked at it properly in months, the way you stopped seeing things that were always present, and on the fourth morning when I was going through my wallet looking for the receipt from the small shop down the road I pulled it out and held it in both hands and looked at it for a long time.The fairground, she had told me once. Summer, when I was around ten. She had won something at one of the stalls, something small and plastic that I couldn't see in the photograph, and she was laughing with her whole face, the kind of laughing that closed your eyes and opened your mouth and made your shoulders shake, the kind that had nothing performed about it, ju
CHAPTER FIFTY ONE: AT THE BEACH Nicole's POV —The morning of the fifth day I finally slept without the nightmares.I knew it was five days because I had been marking them the way you marked things when the days had stopped having their usual distinguishing features, by the light through the window and the sound of the water and the specific quality of hunger that arrived at roughly the same hour each morning regardless of whether I had eaten properly the day before.I hadn't been eating properly.I knew that the way I knew most things about myself that I wasn't doing anything about, clearly and without particular urgency, the way you knew a tap was dripping but the kitchen was far away and the bed was where you were.The room had developed a shape around me.Not comfortable exactly, but familiar in the way that any space became familiar after five days of sleeping and not sleeping and sitting against the wall and watching the water through the window do its constant unbothered thing.
Xavier's POVThe days following Nicole's disappearance blurred together in a haze of frustration and growing panic. Marcus's security team had expanded their search, but every lead turned into another dead end. The bus to Chicago, a brief stop at a shopping mall where she'd purchased warm clothes,
Xavier's POVThe drive to Millbrook took exactly three hours and seventeen minutes—I know because I checked my watch obsessively, as if keeping track of time could somehow prepare me for what I might find. The address Honey had given me led to a small town that looked like something from a postcard
Nicole's POVMy heart felt like it was shattering into a thousand pieces as I sat in my room, watching the shadows lengthen across the floor as evening approached. Tomorrow, Xavier would return from his business trip, and tonight would be my last night in this house that had become more of a home
Xavier's POVThe drive to Millbrook took exactly three hours and seventeen minutes—I know because I checked my watch obsessively, as if keeping track of time could somehow prepare me for what I might find. The address Honey had given me led to a small town that looked like something from a postcard







