Page 124 of The Final Cut

I turn to her. Her eyes are dry. Too dry.

“Sabine got you out,” I say.

Delia nods once.

I want to say I’m sorry, but the words feel useless and small, and I am tired of useless things.

Ever’s screens flash with a new notification. Coordinates, probably. Another place to hide. Another route through back roads and water and dark. Another set of walls Isabel will eventually learn how to test.

I look at the marked glass. The impact blooms spread across it like pale flowers. All at once, I see the pattern too clearly.

Hospital. Cabin. Convent. Drones. Calls. Corrections. Accidents.

Isabel moves, and we react. Isabel chooses, and someone bleeds. My hands curl at my sides.

“This ends now,” I say.

Ever looks up from the monitors. Shiloh turns in the hallway. Deacon’s gaze settles on me with a weight I feel all the way through my bones.

I look at Delia. My sister. My twin. The girl who survived by becoming useful to the woman who took everything from us. The woman who knows routes and rooms and guards and knives.

“We stop waiting for her to choose the time and place.”

Delia studies me for a long moment. She doesn't argue.

“We choose it for her,” I say.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

NASH

By the time Ever sends the drone report, I already know the cabin is dead.

Not structurally. The glass held. The walls held. The security systems did what I paid an obscene amount of money for them to do. But a safe house only works while it’s unknown, and Isabel has seen the shape of this one now. She has tested the windows, counted the response time, confirmed both sisters’ presence inside, and reminded every person under my protection that walls are only as useful as the enemy’s ignorance.

The cabin bought us time.

Now time is over.

I stand outside Cal Boudreaux’s ICU room with my phone in one hand and his latest labs in my head, already building the next move while a ventilator hisses behind the glass. Shiloh left less than an hour ago after three arguments, two threats, and one attempt to charm a charge nurse into violating hospital policy. He had not wanted to leave Cal. He had wanted to leave Reva even less.

I ordered him back to the cabin because the cabin had become a moving target, and Shiloh protects best when the thing he loves is in front of him.

Now he is at the penthouse with the others, or close to it, and I am still here, looking at a man who saved Reva’s life and wondering how I am going to tell her his body is making decisions none of us can command.

The doctor stands beside me with a tablet tucked against her ribs. Dr. Mehta is competent, direct, and tired enough not to waste comfort where facts are needed.

“His pressure dropped again twenty minutes ago,” she says. “We stabilized him, but his liver enzymes are climbing, and the repeat imaging shows more fluid than we’d like. Not catastrophic yet, but concerning.”

“Bleeding?”

“Possibly slow. Possibly inflammatory response from the initial trauma and surgery. We’re watching both.”

Watching.

I have developed a deep hatred for that word.

“What are next steps?”