Fifty-Four

“Here? Shaw is coming here?” Lark’s voice pealed off the walls, a baritone bell filled with trepidation. “This is bad. Fucking bad.”

Michael couldn’t blame him. The last time they’d faced Livingston Shaw together hadn’t ended well for either of them.

“Would it’ve killed you to stick with the plan?” Ben said, leaning back in his chair to glare up at him.

“It’s the same plan, I just hit fast forward.” He shot a glance over Ben’s head, his gaze landing on Sabrina. She’d been here when he came downstairs, standing as far away from him as she could get, hips leaned against the counter, watchful dog at her feet. She’d performed some sort of emotional triage—tying off her feelings about everything that had happened between them over the past eight hours, letting them atrophy. The look she gave him was relaxed. No anger. No hurt. It was as if the last night never happened.

He envied her.

“How long?”

He looked down to find Ben watching him and gave him a tired shrug. “Who knows? Ten, twelve hours at the most.”

“You know too much,” Ben said, his tone ringing with certainty. “He’s going to kill you.”

“Not before I kill Reyes. Your father is smart enough to want that tie good and cut, and he knows I’m the only one who can do it.” He shrugged. “Who knows, maybe if I manage to bring the Maddox boy back, he’ll change his mind.” He took a look around the room and knew he hadn’t managed to fool any of them. They all knew the truth. No matter what kind of miracle he managed to perform, as soon as it was over, Michael was as good as dead. “Reyes is keeping the kid on his private island. That’s where I’m headed.”

“How do you know?” Lark said.

“A little birdie told me,” he said before filling them in on the what had happened the night before. His infiltration of Reyes’s operation. His confrontation with Estefan. His late-night conversation with Reyes himself. He left out the parts that really mattered: that Reyes had threatened Sabrina and that Estefan was looking to overthrow his father. Ricin capsule or not, Lark was still a liability.

“This whole thing has been a setup, from start to finish.” He looked at Sabrina. “The fact that you found Leo Maddox’s doppelganger. That he was dumped in a house tied to Alberto’s operation. Reyes wanted us here; he wanted you involved.” He left the rest unsaid. That she was in danger—always would be in danger as long as he was around.

Ben looked at his watch and stood. “If I know my father, he’s already halfway here. That ten- or twelve-hour window he gave you? Cut it in half,” he said, taking charge of the situation. “Sabrina and I are going to go meet her contact for the death certificate on the Maddox kid.” He shot a look at Lark. “You ready to make the Internet your bitch?”

Lark grinned, flexing his fingers. “It’s what I do best.”

“Good. I want to know why my father targeted the Senator’s grandson. He didn’t have him kidnapped for shits and giggles. You have three hours to find out why,” Ben said.

Lark nodded and stood, ready to work.

“Before you go,” Michael said, tossing him a flash drive.

Lark snatched it out of the air and gave it a glance. “What is it?”

“A list of every scumbag Reyes sold a kid to. I want every single one of them burned,” he said.

Lark gave him a lopsided grin. “I’ll put it on my to-do list,” he said, heading for the sunroom where he’d set up shop.

As soon as Lark was gone, he looked at Ben. “What about me?” he said. “I’ll be damned if I’m just gonna sit here and play fattened calf.”

Ben smirked. “I have a video conference set up with the Senator at nine o’clock. You can take it. Fill him in on what’s happening.”

Michael shook his head. Leon Maddox wasn’t going to listen to a word he had to say. He’d been branded a traitor to his country and had worked as a hitman and personal guard for the drug lord responsible for kidnapping his grandson—neither of which exactly inspired trust. “You really think that’s a good idea? No way is Maddox going to talk to me.”

“You’d rather go with her?” Ben cocked his head in Sabrina’s direction. “Right. Like I was saying, I’m gonna go grab my jacket.” With that he was gone, leaving the two of them alone.

He looked out the window, watching Miss Ettie lead Alex around her garden. The boy shuffled after her, head cocked to the side like he was listening while she jabbered on about her flowers in a language he didn’t even speak.

“Do you know why I went to see Phillip last night?”

Caught off-guard, he redirected his gaze. Looking at her, he shook his head slowly. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled something out. The red silk pouch.

“After I killed Wade, I thought it was over. I thought I’d won, gotten my life back. And then he started talking to me,” she said in a low voice, like she was afraid to wake someone who was sleeping in the next room. “Every day, he got louder and louder, closer and closer until he was here.” She touched the side of her head. “Living inside me. I couldn’t get rid of him.” She dropped her hand. “You don’t have to tell me how crazy I sound, trust me … but Phillip’s cousin, the one you met last night, she saw it. She saw him,” she said, her fingers tightening around the pouch. “She called him a Gae Dokkaebi—a ghost.”

“What’s in the pouch?” he said, even though he didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to care.

“Tea.” She looked down at the bundle of red silk in her hand. “When she gave it to me I thought she was crazy, but it worked. When I drink it, Wade’s quiet. It’s like there’s a wall between us… one I can’t hear him through.” She frowned for a moment before looking up at him. “But he’s still there. I can feel his … weight inside my head. Scratching at that wall between us. Trying to push his way through.” She grinned. “Crazy, right?”

He thought of them—all of them. The friends he’d lost. The family he’d failed. All of them dead because he’d been too selfish or too stupid to save them. “Not even a little bit.”

She shook her head, her mouth twisted in an expression that said she didn’t believe him. “When he gave me the tea, Phillip warned me it was a temporary fix. That once a Gae Dokkaebi finds his way inside you, you’ll never be rid of them. You’ll be haunted forever. Or until they destroy you …” She offered him a smile that held an odd mixture of humor and sadness, and he could see that her front was crumbling. “You want to hear something funny?”

He shrugged.

“Last night, when you and I were together? Wade wasn’t there. Not just quiet; he was gone. I was truly and completely free of him for the first time in what feels like forever.” She dropped her hands to her sides, fists banging against her thighs, one of them strangling the pouch of tea she held onto. “So now I need you to tell me something, Michael, because I’m having a hard time figuring it out on my own.”

He looked away from her, forced as much contempt into his tone as he could scratch together to hide the ache in his throat. “And what’s that?”

“How am I supposed to give that up? How am I supposed to walk away from the only person who’s ever given me peace? The only person who’s ever made me forget?” She jammed the pouch back into her pocket. “Because, I’ve gotta tell you, whatever Reyes said to you last night, whatever he threatened to do—it’s worth the risk to me. You’re worth the risk.”

He shook his head, opened his mouth even though he wasn’t completely sure what was going to come out, but before he could say a word, Ben walked into the room.

“Ready?” he said, adjusting the way his black leather jacket sat on his shoulders. He bounced a look between the two of them. “I’ll just go wait in the—”

“No. I’m ready. Let’s go,” Sabrina said, shooting Michael one last look before she walked out the door.