LOGINChapter 68 Joss“No,” I said. “No, that’s not right. You’ve got it wrong.”Gawin’s dad didn’t argue. He just stood there by that rusted fence with his hands in his pockets and let me say it, like he’d been expecting exactly this and knew nothing he said would get through until I ran out of breath.“My mother packs my lunch when I race,” I said. “Still. I’m twenty six and she still does it. She sat up with me every night when the suppressants made me sick as a kid. She’s not some, she wouldn’t…”“She did it because she loves you,” he said quietly. “That’s the part you need to hear before anything else. She wasn’t trying to hurt either of you. She was terrified.”“Of what?”He looked at Gawin then, and then back at me, and something in his face went almost gentle.“Of what you did to him that morning.”Gawin’s hand tightened around mine so hard my fingers went numb. “What did he do?”His dad walked a few steps along the fence to the spot where the old starting grid used to be, the whit
Chapter 68Gawin “Dad?”The word came out of me cracked in half, like a kid calling from the top of the stairs after a nightmare, and I hated how young it made me sound.“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it’s me, buddy.”Buddy. He used to call me that when I was small enough to sit on the hood of his car and hand him the wrong wrench on purpose so he’d laugh. I hadn’t heard it in almost ten years, and hearing it now, on a dead man’s phone line, on a cold kitchen floor at three in the morning, made something in my chest twist so hard I had to press my hand against it.“What the hell,” I said. “What the actual hell, Dad. Why do you have this number? Why did a hunter I met four hours ago have a card that calls you?”“Keep your voice down.”“Don’t tell me to keep my voice down, you don’t get to tell me anything, you haven’t told me anything since I was fifteen years old!”I heard him breathe out on the other end, long and shaky, and when he spoke again his voice was rougher. “I know. I know I have
Chapter 67 Gawin “The men who pulled the trigger are being picked up right now. Two of them. A traffic camera caught their car leaving that street and the plates came back to a rental under a fake name, but the fake name has been used before, and I have friends who remember things like that. The police will have them before sunrise. As for the photographer, Derek Pryce was handed over an hour ago with every file off his phone. Voss fired the entire contracting firm the moment I called him. He was, and I’m quoting him here, sick to his stomach.”Arnold let out a long breath and leaned back in the chair. Boston’s hand found his knee without either of them seeming to notice.“You did all that tonight,” Joss said. It wasn’t quite a question.“I did all that in the last three hours, actually. It turns out when someone threatens my family I can move a lot faster than when I’m threatening it myself.” His voice went rough on the last part, and there was a long silence where nobody knew what
Chapter 66 GawinThe apartment Joss’s security people found for us was on the twelfth floor of a building I’d driven past a hundred times and never once looked at twice, which I guess was the whole point. Two bedrooms, a kitchen nobody had ever cooked in, and a couch so stiff it felt like sitting on a closed suitcase. One of the guards checked every room before he let us in, then stood outside the door like a statue, and I remember thinking that a month ago my biggest problem was understeer in turn six.Joss didn’t sit down once. He paced from the window to the kitchen and back again with his phone in his hand, checking it every ten seconds like it might have changed its mind about ringing.“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” I said.“Then they can bill me for it.”“Joss, sit down before you make me throw up just from watching you.”That actually stopped him. He looked at me, then at my hand resting on my stomach, and he came over and sat next to me on the suitcase couch like
Chapter 65 JossWe were barely inside the house when my phone started buzzing in my pocket, over and over, the kind of buzzing that meant somebody wasn’t going to stop calling until I picked up, and when I finally pulled it out and saw Arnold’s name flashing across the screen my stomach dropped before he’d even said a single word.“I need you to sit down,” he said the second I answered, no hello, no warm up, just straight into it, and something about the flatness in his voice made the hair on my arms stand up.“I’m not sitting down, Arnold, tell me what’s wrong.”“Joss.”“Tell me.”He took a breath I could hear all the way through the phone, shaky, like he was trying to steady himself before he said the next part, and I felt Gawin’s hand find my arm again, gripping tight, because he could see my face changing even though he couldn’t hear anything on the other end yet.“There’s a body,” Arnold said. “Found about an hour ago, two streets over from Gawin’s mom’s place. One of my contact
Chapter 64 Gawin Sunday came faster than any of us were ready for, and I spent most of Saturday night convinced my mother was going to poison Joss’s food out of pure spite, which honestly wouldn’t have surprised me given the mood she’d been in all week. Joss showed up at six on the dot wearing an actual tie like he’d promised, hair combed in a way that made him look like he was heading to a job interview instead of dinner with a woman who’d already threatened to end him.“You look ridiculous,” I said, opening the door before he could knock.“I look respectful.”“You look like you’re about to ask my mother for a business loan.”He laughed, but I could tell he was nervous underneath it, shifting his weight on the front step like he wasn’t sure he was actually allowed inside yet. My mother appeared behind me a second later, arms crossed, studying him head to toe with the same expression she used to give race officials who tried to argue with her about penalty calls.“You’re on time,” s







