Chapter 7

"Absolutely not."

Wade said it before Silas even finished reading the message a second time, his voice low and hard in the way it only got when he'd already made up his mind about something. "That's not an invitation, Silas. That's bait. You walk out there alone, you're walking into whatever they've got waiting for you."

"I know what it is." Silas didn't look up from the phone. "I'm going anyway."

"Then I'm going with you."

"It says alone, Wade."

"I don't care what it says." Wade's jaw set the same stubborn way their father's used to, the one expression neither brother had ever managed to argue their way out of inheriting. "You're not doing this by yourself. Not tonight. Not after what just happened to her building."

Reagan hadn't let go of Silas's arm since he'd pulled her into it, and her grip tightened now, hard enough that he felt her nails through his shirt. "If you think for one second I'm standing on this sidewalk while you two drive off to meet whoever sent that, you don't know me anymore."

"Reagan—"

"No." She cut him off, and there was something in her voice that hadn't been there two nights ago, something sharper, something that had stopped asking for permission somewhere between the fire and this street. "You don't get to decide that for me. Not tonight."

Silas felt the words land harder than she probably meant them to. He didn't have a clean answer for her, not one that didn't sound exactly like the thing she was accusing him of, so he didn't try to argue it.

"Fine." The word came out rough. "But you stay behind me. You do exactly what I say the second we're out there, and if I tell you to run, you run and you don't look back to check on me. Understood?"

"Understood."

Wade was already climbing onto his bike. "I'll get two of the guys to hang back a quarter mile out. Not with us. Close enough to move if we need it."

"Fine." Silas was already moving for his truck. "Let's go."

The industrial lot sat behind a rusted chain-link fence that had sagged in the same spot for as long as Silas could remember, floodlights long since burned out, the gravel beyond it lit only by the headlights of a single car parked dead center, engine off, driver's door hanging open.

Grant's car.

Silas cut his headlights fifty yards out and rolled the rest of the way in on nothing but moonlight, gravel crunching soft beneath the tires. Wade pulled in behind him, doing the same. Reagan sat rigid in the passenger seat, her hand finding Silas's on the console without either of them deciding to reach for the other first.

"Stay in the truck until I say," Silas murmured. "Please."

"Silas—"

"Please, Reagan. I need to know exactly where you are every second out there."

Something in her expression softened, just slightly. "Okay."

He stepped out into the cold, gravel shifting under his boots, Wade falling into step half a pace behind him, both scanning the dark edges of the lot where the moonlight didn't quite reach.

"Grant?" Silas called out, his voice carrying flat across the open space. "You wanted to talk. So talk."

Nothing moved for a long moment. Then a shape stepped out from behind the parked car, hands raised slightly at his sides, not in surrender exactly, more like a man showing he wasn't holding anything that could hurt them. Even in the dark, Silas could see how wrong Grant looked tonight, his usual polish stripped down to something rattled and unraveling, his tie gone, his shirt untucked, a bruise blooming dark along one side of his jaw that hadn't been there two days earlier.

"I didn't send that message," Grant said, his voice cracking on the last word, sounding almost nothing like the composed man who'd sat so calmly at Reagan's kitchen table days ago. "Someone sent that from my phone, but it wasn't me, I swear it."

"Convenient timing," Wade said flatly.

"I know how it looks." Grant's hands were shaking now, visible even from a distance. "My father found out Reagan found the phone two days ago. He hasn't let me out of his sight since. Tonight he took my phone, told me to wait here, and I don't know what he's planning. I'm telling you the truth because I am scared out of my mind right now."

Silas felt an old instinct sharpen, the one that had kept him alive through worse nights than this one. "Where is he. Right now."

"I don't know." Grant's voice broke fully this time. "He said he had one more thing to finish tonight and wouldn't tell me what. He took my keys and left me standing here for forty minutes wondering if I was about to die."

"Why should we believe a single word out of your mouth," Wade said. "After everything you've done."

"Because I love her." The words came out raw, stripped of every ounce of polish Grant usually wore like armor. "I know that doesn't mean anything to either of you right now. I started this as an assignment from my father. Somewhere along the way it stopped being that, and I never had the courage to tell her."

Behind Silas, a truck door opened.

"Reagan, stay back—"

But she was already walking toward them, jaw set, steady on her feet despite everything, stopping close enough to look Grant directly in the eyes.

"Where's your father right now," she said. "And don't you dare lie to me again."

Grant's mouth opened, and whatever he meant to say died in his throat as headlights swept suddenly across the far end of the lot, a second vehicle turning in through a gate none of them had noticed was still standing open.

"That's not one of ours," Wade said, already reaching for his belt.

The car rolled to a stop at the edge of the floodlit gravel, and the driver's door swung open slow and unhurried, like whoever sat behind the wheel had all the time in the world and knew it.

Silas felt Reagan go still beside him.

"Silas," she whispered. "Who is that."

A man stepped out into the moonlight, tall and unhurried, silver at his temples, a calm, patient smile already forming on his face like he'd been looking forward to this exact moment for a long time.

"Marcus Ellery," Silas said quietly. "In the flesh."