LOGINCHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND FOUR
ELI'S POV
I sat down next to Calvin because there was nowhere else to sit.
The booth was red vinyl, cracked along the seam. Gabriel García faced us with a slice of lemon pie between his hands and a clean napkin spread over his knee. Reyes stood at the door. Bishop stopped behind my shoulder, close enough that I could smell his aftershave.
I had known Alejandro's voice in the dark, in the back of a car, saying a name and a s
CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND FOURELI'S POVI sat down next to Calvin because there was nowhere else to sit.The booth was red vinyl, cracked along the seam. Gabriel García faced us with a slice of lemon pie between his hands and a clean napkin spread over his knee. Reyes stood at the door. Bishop stopped behind my shoulder, close enough that I could smell his aftershave.I had known Alejandro's voice in the dark, in the back of a car, saying a name and a street. Gabriel had the same voice with the edges sanded off. That was what made him worse. Alejandro had shouted. Gabriel never needed to."You have not touched your coffee," Gabriel said to Calvin."I don't take it from men who check my collar.""Fair." He nodded at the little recorder by the sugar dispenser. "Please. Take it back. It's empty."Calvin didn't move."You switched it off yourself when I mentioned it," Gabriel said. "A kind of handshake. Mrs. Benn
CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND THREEJAX'S POVI slept in my clothes on the second bed of a motel room by the river, and I woke with my boots still on.Calvin had not slept at all. He sat at the little table by the window with a legal pad in front of him, writing in a small, square hand. A paper cup of old coffee sat at his elbow. The curtain was open an inch, and a gray light came through it."What time is it?" I asked."Six-forty.""You didn't lie down.""I don't sleep before a meeting." He turned a page. "Noon, at the diner. I'll go alone.""I'm coming.""He said one man. He'll count." Calvin did not look up. "If he sees you, he stops talking. If he stops talking, I have nothing.""If he sees you alone, he has you.""He has had me for eleven weeks, Eli. I've been walking around in his pocket." He set the pen down. "I'm the one he can't threaten. I don't have a son in a school Gabriel's men can find."Tha
CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND TWOGABRIEL'S POVI turned off the lamp in Procedure Room 3 myself. It clicked with a small sound I had learned to hate. The room was cleaner than any room I had ever owned, and it still smelled of lilies. That was the one thing I had never been able to change. Morrow insisted on them, and I had never asked why."Wait outside, Reyes," I said.He nodded and shut the door. My daughter stood in front of me with her arms folded across her chest. She looked tired, and she looked thin, and she had her mother's face when her mother was afraid. At eight she had held a baby in her arms and looked at me with exactly that face, and I had told her it was a dream."Why this room?" Scarlett said."Because you have been in it before."Her face went blank. She was good at that. I had made sure of it."I bought this building the week after the crash," I said. "I could not bear the thought of you waking in a stranger's ho
CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND ONESCARLETT'S POVReyes came for me at dusk.He did not knock. I heard the key turn, the one my father had never taken back, and then he was standing in my hallway in his black coat with his hands at his sides."Get in the car," he said."Good evening to you too.""Your father wants you.""Where?""Get in the car, Miss Lenay.""Is Riley alive?""She is resting.""You sound like a pamphlet.""Get in the car."I had not slept properly in four days. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Riley's hand on her stomach and a red stain spreading on a sheet. I picked up my bag, and then I stopped at the smoke detector over my door and looked at it. The little black eye looked back. I walked past it without looking up.In the back seat of the sedan, I took out my phone and thumbed Logan's number. I had typed three words before Reyes's hand came back over the seat and clo
CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDRILEY'S POVBrandt had talked all the way down the corridor. I had listened to every word."Is Dr. Morrow new?" I had asked in the lost voice."Oh, no. She's been with the clinic from the beginning.""The beginning of what?""Of the clinic, dear."Now the cold was the first thing. Then the lamp, and the smell of lilies so thick it coated my tongue.The room was small and spotless. A steel table, a screen on a stand, a counter along the far wall with a white cooler on it. A woman stood at the counter with her back to the door, laying out instruments in a row. She wore lavender gloves and a surgical cap, and she was humming.Three notes. Then the same three notes.My hands went cold on the blue blanket. I did not move them."Dr. Morrow," Brandt said, "this is Miss Kane."The woman turned. She was about fifty-five, with gray eyes above her mask and a face that had never needed to rai
CHAPTER NINETY-NINERILEY'S POVI counted before I opened my eyes. Two cameras, one in each top corner. A monitor beeping on my left. A window.A real window. I opened my eyes and looked at it. Pale green walls, a ceiling without stains, and past the glass a service road with a concrete wall rising behind it. The curve of the arena roof showed above the wall. I knew that roof. I had skated under it twice.So this was Eastbridge ground. Of course it was."Good, you're awake," a voice said. "I'm Nurse Brandt. Don't try to sit up fast."She was small and gray-haired, with a clipboard held flat against her chest. She wrapped the cuff around my arm."One fifteen over seventy-two. Very nice. Dr. Hale has already looked at your labs.""Where am I?""A private clinic. You were moved for the babies' sake."I opened my mouth to say the lost thing. Where's Logan, who are you, what day is it. Then I stopped. Tasha's eyes had







