Slow Poison

Lyon's POV

I was still on the back steps when I heard my name.

Christie was standing in the doorway, her phone in her hand, her face different from how it had looked ten minutes ago when she went inside. The ease from our conversation was completely gone.

"Someone sent me this," she said, holding the screen out.

I stood up and took the phone.

‘We know where you are, Doctor Graves. Come home or we come to you.’

I read it twice. I handed the phone back and said nothing for a moment.

"Lyon."

"I heard you."

"Who would send that? How would anyone know where I am?"

I looked at her. "The men at the gate two nights ago. They had cameras."

"But they left," she said. "You scared them off."

"Scared them off the property. Didn't erase what they recorded before that." I moved past her into the house. "Come inside. Don't stand in the doorway."

She followed me in and I closed the door and locked it.

"I need to go back," Christie said. "I can't just stay here while people are making threats. I have a lab, I have work, I have—"

"You're not going back," I said.

"You don't get to decide that."

"Someone just told you they know where you are and they're coming for you," I said, turning to face her. "Your mother sent armed men to this property two nights ago. The same night you arrived. You want to walk back into that?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again.

Okay, I shouldn't have just dropped that on her like that.

"Christie. You're not going back until I know you're safe. That's not a command. That's just what's going to happen."

"You can't keep me here indefinitely," she said, her voice rising slightly. "I came to do a job. Nima is stable. I've done what I came to do and now I need to get back to my life."

"Your life," I said. "The one where your mother calls you a disgrace in front of a room full of people and hired men to drag you back to a suitor you never agreed to?"

She went quiet.

"I heard enough from that phone call the first night," I said. "And I saw the men who showed up here. You want to go back to that."

"It's still my life," she said. "It's mine. And I get to choose what I do with it."

I looked at her standing there, her chin up, her eyes tired but steady. She was serious. She meant every word.

I said the thing I hadn't planned to say.

"You're the first person who has walked into this house in years and made it feel less empty."

The room went completely still.

Christie stared at me. I heard myself say it and I wanted to pull it back immediately. It sat in the air between us and I had nowhere to put it.

Her expression shifted.

She didn't say anything.

She looked at me for a long moment, then she looked down at her phone, then she said, "Goodnight, Lyon," and walked up the stairs.

I stood there until I heard her door close.

‘Smooth,’ Obsidian said.

Shut up.

‘You meant it though.’

I know I meant it. That's the problem.

I grabbed my jacket from the hook near the side door and went out to do a perimeter check. I needed air and I needed to move.

Ren was already at the east gate when I got there. He was crouching near the base of the stone post, holding a flashlight low to the ground.

"Sir," he said when he heard me coming. "Good that you're here. We found something."

He stood and held up a small glass vial between two fingers. The liquid inside was clear, barely visible.

"Where was it?" I asked.

"Wedged between the gate post and the wall." He paused. "But that's not the part you need to hear."

I looked at him.

"We found traces of the same substance on the door handle of the guest room," Ren said. "The room Doctor Christie was sleeping in before you moved her. Someone placed this near her room earlier this evening, sir. Before you moved her to the other side of the house."

I took the vial from him carefully.

"What is it?" I asked.

Ren's jaw was tight.

"Slow poison," he said. "The kind that takes two days to show symptoms. By the time she felt anything, she'd have been back in the city and we'd have had no way to trace it back here."

I closed my fingers around the vial.

"Find out who went near that room today," I said. "Everyone. I want names by morning.”