Page 14 of Last Man Standing

Curious, I bring my focus back around. “A pet rock?”

“Mm. He’s big, he’s in my house, he lacks basically any redeemable qualities, and yet, I think I’d be a little sad if I lost him.” She looks past me to the man I know stares right back. I feel his gaze warming the tip of my spine. “I think he considers himself irredeemable, too. Just a machine, a mass-produced soldier pushed into warfare.”

“You don’t think that’s true?”

She wrinkles her nose, grinning up at the bird playing high above his head. “The cardinals say otherwise.”

6

SEBASTION

LA BRUJA

“You were supposed to be here six days ago, Sebastion.” My mother’s harsh voice bites along the line, her disappointment hitting me more forcefully than any man’s fists ever have. “For our home to function at its best, for our security to remain fortified, it’s important that we all perform our roles. We’re stronger together.”

“I know.” I walk the border of Nova and Lincoln’s home much the same way I would if I were where my mother wants me to be. I study the road, one direction leading into town, and the other, eventually taking drivers to the highway that bustles with traffic. I consider the trees Lincoln prefers in the summer, when the branches are thick and lush with life, a cover for him and Nova to hide behind.

Personally, I prefer winter’s barrenness. I prefer to see if my enemy is just on the other side.

“Sebastion?” My mother exhales an unhappy sigh. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know.” I turn toward the house and ponder its ability to appear as though no one is home. Despite the cars parked out front. Despite the trio going about their day inside. “I’m still working. I intended to bring the final code keeper back with me, but she has a visitor right now, and I’m unwilling to bring them with us. It’s not safe.”

“So eliminate the code keeper, dump the visitor, and end this charade. It’s time for you to come home, baby.”

Baby.

I exhale a silent laugh and allow myself a single moment of dropping my gaze. Dropping my guard. I’m thirty years old, twice her size, older than she was when she brought me into this world, and still… she calls me baby when she’s feeling a certain way.

“Sebastion?”

“I’m not eliminating her. She’s a good girl, and she deserves better than the shit life threw at her. Ry trusted her with his code, which means I’m gonna trust her not to screw us over.”

“You’d bet our lives on her keeping her trap shut?”

Probably. Maybe.

Frankly, Nova Nichols has no reason to want to share what she knows, and more importantly, she has just one fifth of a code that leads to my family’s three-decades-hidden location. The other four have been destroyed and will never see the light of day.

“Yes.” Finally, I acknowledge the question my mom so desperately needs answered. “I’m betting our lives on it. She’s not a problem for us, and because she’s not, I won’t eliminate her. Her only crime is existing.”

“So leave her behind!”

Arabella Aster is the strongest woman I know. The bravest. The fiercest. And sometimes… the coldest. To survive what she has, she’s had to find a way to turn off that switch inside her that controls her humanity. Not always. Not even often. But every now and again…

“Leave her with Castro. Leave them with their visitor. You come home.”

“I can’t yet.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because the visitor, Castro’s sister, is shoulder-deep in trouble she doesn’t know how to handle.”

“So? That’s not your problem.”

I cast one last look at the road, empty but for snow sludge and ice slicks, then I come back around and start across the yard. “I feel like maybe her trouble is our trouble.”

In an instant, my mother’s bad mood steps aside and makes room for the fierceness her soldiers know her for. “Explain.”