With caresses and murmurs, I guide him to bed. I’m almost expecting to have to talk him to sleep, but as he falls down on the mattress, it’s like his light goes out.
He practically collapses, brute exhaustion cutting his legs out from under him.
Before I know it, he’s gone, his huge chest rising and falling.
I settle at the edge of the bed and gently brush his hair back, looking down at a face ravaged by fear and guilt even as he slumbers.
Sweet Lord.
This might be my last chance to ever touch him.
Because if I’m not dead in forty-eight hours tops...then I’ll definitely be someone he never wants to see again.
I wait just long enough to make sure he’s thoroughly asleep.
Then I stand, pocket my phone, snag my keys, and slip out the front door into the dead of a late and troubled night.
I can’t let this happen to Alaska.
I can’t let this be Eli and Tara’s fate.
I’m going to make sure they’re okay, no matter the cost.
No matter what that bitch-brat from hell takes from me.
Even if it’s my life.
Plenty of guilt to go around, so why not pile it on thicker?
I feel extra awful for dragging Ember away from home when she’s probably just as exhausted as everyone else after a night out beating the brush or being cooped up worried sick.
It’s worse knowing she has a loving husband, a family, and a friendly black cat named Baxter waiting for her.
But I can’t get into the safe without her.
Moving like a sloth, she unlocks the door at The Menagerie, lit only by the headlights from my station wagon. The shadows underscore just how raw and worn down she looks, how worried.
I can only imagine what’s been going through her head all night.
She’s a mother, too.
What if it was her kid?
What if.
The worst part is, it too easily could’ve been.
All because she’s my cousin.
All because she’s helping me.
There are so many people vulnerable to Paye’s sick vendetta. So many people I love who have everything to lose if I don’t end this, pronto.
I’m the only one with nothing.
The only one worth zilch.
No one should suffer for my problems—for Dad’s—but me, myself, and I.
As we step inside and head into the back, Ember pauses outside the foldaway wall that conceals the safe, the keycard folded into her palm. She gives me a fraught look.
“Are you sure about this, Fel?” she asks softly in that searching way she has. She’s too perceptive for her own good—and mine. “Coming for this gold in the middle of the night like this...something’s up. Is it Eli?”
“No.” I shake my head, hoping it’s not a total lie, hugging my arms tight against myself. “I’m just restless. That’s all. I think every time Heart’s Edge has another crisis, our minds go to the darkest places, and having this gold might make you a target.”
“A target?” She stares at me. “For who? Felicity, who’s after you?”
I can’t even answer.
I’m so tired of having to lie, to downplay, to make excuses.
But I also can’t tell her the truth.
So I only shake my head, looking at her miserably.
God, I love her so much. I love her even more for caring so much, for helping me, for not just marching me straight back to her place and assembling every brawler in Heart’s Edge to kick some butts for my sake.
But I can’t drag anyone else under with me—especially not when they’re busy with Eli. I can’t be drowned and pulled ever deeper by more guilt, more trouble with no end.
“Ember, please. I’ll be fine. I promise,” I whisper.
She waits for a few more seconds, staring me down, then sighs and hits the plate that sends the false wall grinding open. The safe is a grooved metal plate embedded inside, nothing marking it except the keycard reader. Ember slides the card through the slot, and the red light in the upper right corner turns green.
There’s a faint hissing and clicking rising as the lock releases. At the lightest touch, the door swings open.
There it is.
All that gold.
Midas’ flipping curse.
It takes both of us and a large loading cart to haul everything into the back of my station wagon.
It’s so heavy it leaves my arms straining, and actually dips the rear of the car.
Once we’re done and heading back inside to lock up, though, I catch her arm, looking down at her, biting my lip.
“I need to get in touch with that woman you know,” I say. “Fuchsia.”
“Oh, God...what?” Ember tenses. “You can’t tell me you’re not in trouble. No one goes to her unless they’re in a hell of a bind.”
I smile faintly. “I guess Doc didn’t tell you, huh? She’s, um, kinda been tracking someone down for me.”
She pauses with a deer-in-the-headlights look.
“No, he didn’t, and...I’ll be having words with him about keeping things from me.” Her mouth tightens. “But you can’t say Fuchsia’s finding someone for you and expect me to believe you’re not in trouble. What’s going on—”
“Don’t. He’s trying to protect you.” I squeeze her arm gently. “And so am I. All the guys know; they’re helping me. Let us take care of this.”
“You don’t protect family from yourself.” Her voice trembles, a dark whisper, the look in her eyes so sweet, so caring—and it’s just that loving lightness about her that I want to protect so badly. “You fight by their side to save what matters. And you matter, Fel. Even if some idiots in this town say you don’t.”
I don’t have words to describe how this is killing me.
So I just shake my head and offer her a pained smile.
“If I fill you in later, will you feel better? I’m short on time. Tonight, just help me, please. Don’t ask. Don’t get involved. Go back to your kids and Doc and let me deal with it.”
Ember eyes me skeptically. I can tell what she’s thinking. I’m thinking it, too.
I’m about to unintentionally commit suicide.
But it is what it is.
Que sera sera—even if whatever will be will be in this instance means having my throat flayed open by a screaming banshee who’ll probably turn my skin into a new designer purse for fun.
Ugh.
Ember makes an exasperated sound and turns away.
“Just...give me a minute, okay?”
She stalks over to the small desk in the corner of the room, flips open the laptop, and rattles something off with her face bright-lit by the screen, washed out in pastel colors. Then she jots something sharply down on a sticky note in a furious scribble and tears the little blue square off the pad before circling the desk and heading over to the still-open safe.
Stretching up on her little toes, she rummages inside, one tooth stabbing down into her lower lip before she drops back down with a small, cheap-looking cell phone.
Oh.
A burner phone.
I hadn’t even thought about that.
Guess Ember’s learned a lot about these little spy games from her husband. She’s probably better equipped to face down Paisley than I am, but it’s my job, and mine alone.