Page 264 of What We Bury
I’ll find them. I’ll be the last thing they see.
For now I sit in the dark and listen to the house breathe. Eli’s out there somewhere, walling himself off from the only good thing any of us has. Micah’s in the kitchen, learning to live with anohe’s never said before. Milo’s chasing a ghost through dead databases. Holden’s got her wrapped up safe, for tonight.
Fury upstairs. Alive. Breathing.
She’s the only thing that matters.
I sit, and I wait, and I keep them all safe the only way I know how.
SEVENTY-TWO
ELI
Five days.
Five days since the noose, and we have nothing.
I’m driving to the club at six-forty in the morning with Sage in the passenger seat and a headache that hasn’t let up since Thursday. She’s got a coffee in one hand and her phone in the other, scrolling through nothing. She’s been doing it all week—filling the silences with motion, keeping busy so the stillness can’t catch her.
We haven’t left her alone since it happened. Not once. Someone’s always with her—at the diner, at the house, on the drive to and from work. A wall of us, shifts and sight lines, every gap accounted for.
The same thing we’ve been doing since the jetty, really. And it didn’t change a damn thing. Someone walked through all of it and hung a rope from her ceiling.
I keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel, because if I look at her too long I’ll say something I can’t take back.
“Same deal as last time,” I say, pulling into the lot behind the club. “You wait in the bar while we meet with Odin.”
“I’d rather be in the meeting.” She tips her head against the window. “But I get it. While some lunatic’s threatening me with a noose, it’s not the moment to ask if I can be the first hang-lady.”
It’s a good line. Before the rope, I’d have given her something back. Now I just put the car in park.
She notices my lack of response. The same way she notices everything—it’s half of what makes her impossible to keep safe.
Her smile slides sideways, a strip of sunshine over something brittle. “I’ll sit on my hands and try not to eavesdrop through the ductwork. Be a good little damsel while the men decide my fate.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“I know, Eli.” She looks at me, and there’s a question under the smile I don’t let myself answer. “I’m kidding. Mostly.”
We head inside and find Knox standing behind the main bar, working the fancy espresso machine. He cuts the steam and pours some milk into a ceramic mug, finishing the latte off with a flourish and sliding it toward Sage. “Fury.”
He pours the remaining milk into a second mug and slides toward me with a nod. I glance down at mine, then at Sage’s, and frown.
“Why doesn’t mine have a love heart in the foam too?”
Knox looks at me with a bored expression. “Because I love you like a brother, Eli. I’m notinlove with you.”
Sage’s whole face lights up in a way I haven’t seen before. She tosses her hair, leans over the bar, and crooks a finger at him. “Get over here and say that to my face.”
Knox gives her that big, gentle-bear smile. He comes around the bar, lifts her right off her stool, and kisses her so hard I feel like maybe I should look away. She giggles into his mouth, and then he just holds her, tucks her head under his chin and rocks her side to side like he might die if he ever lets go again.
“I love you, Fury.”
“I love you too, Knox.”
Knox sets her back on the stool and goes behind the bar like nothing happened. Sage wraps both hands around her latte and glows.
I sip mine and watch the easiest thing in the world happen—a man telling a woman he loves her out loud, in daylight, like there’s nothing in it that could get her killed.
