Out of habit, Daniel shoves the front door shut with his shoulder, which sparks fresh pain from the gunshot wound. “Fuck me,” he mutters, inhaling sharply.
“Are you okay, Mr. Carter?”
Daniel looks up at Hayes Booth standing by the car, a Maserati, by the looks.
“I thought one of the others was coming with me,” Daniel says.
“Lynell requested that I take you.”
Daniel rolls his eyes. Of course, in the forty minutes since he saw Lyn, she replaced a nameless guard with one she trusts. “I’ll drive,” Daniel says, holding out his hand. He’s never been a fan of the passenger’s seat.
Hayes tosses him the keys, and the two climb in, Daniel pushing the seat back to adjust for his height. They’re both silent during the drive, and as he’s parking, Daniel says, “You can stay in the car.”
“Lynell said I should come with you.”
“Fine, but you’re not coming into the apartment.”
“I should check it first for—”
“Look, I appreciate your obedience to my wife, but Grant is a friend, and I’ll be fine. I don’t want him to know I come with a bodyguard now, so, please, just . . . stay out of sight.”
Hayes reluctantly agrees and falls several feet behind Daniel. It’s a small complex, built several decades ago and refurbished to look nicer without actually being nicer. Grant’s apartment is behind the pitiful excuse for a dog park, on the third floor, which Daniel assumes he got to appease his worry-prone mother.
With Hayes several doors down, Daniel knocks using their old pattern, waits five seconds, and does it again.
“Jesus, dude!” comes a shout from the other side of the door. “Patience!”
Daniel knocks again, solely to annoy his friend. The door swings inward before the pattern is finished, leaving Daniel’s fist hovering in the air.
“You’re early,” Grant says.
“You look like shit,” Daniel replies. Grant is wearing torn jeans and a stained tank top, and his once-thick mane of copper-tinged blonde hair is a short, shaggy mess.
“Not all of us came into a billion dollars recently,” he grumbles. Then he smiles wide and Daniel follows suit, pulling Grant into a hug.
“Now, let’s get in there. I have some questions.”
“Didn’t anyone tell you faster isn’t always better?”
“No one ever had to.” Daniel winks. “Besides, I’m on a deadline.”
“Oooh, big important guy with the fancy wife has deadlines now,” Grant teases, dropping onto the center of what looks like a new couch.
Daniel takes in the space and is slightly surprised to see nearly all new furniture. Six years ago, everything was secondhand. “Why haven’t you moved?”
“I did, briefly. Then I came back,” Grant answers.
If Daniel had been lying about the deadline, he might’ve asked for the obvious story behind Grant’s answer. But he hadn’t, and he has a wife and child to protect, so he asks, “How secure are you in the Resurrection?”
“I mean, I’ve been with them since it was formed. I’m not on the board of directors or anything, but they know they can trust me.”
“Even Sawyer D’Angelo?” Daniel asks, sitting in the chair opposite Grant.
“Dan, what’s going on? We haven’t spoken in years, and you suddenly call and ask to meet, and now you’re poking for information on my boss?”
“Not poking. Asking questions.”
Grant crosses his arms, displaying a new tattoo on his tricep. “Ms. D’Angelo is protective of her privacy and careful about who she confides in.”
Daniel’s not surprised. He saw plenty of Ellery Klein back in the day, but Sawyer avoided the spotlight until she started the Resurrection.
“Speaking of, do you know what the Resurrection is up to? Have you . . . heard anything about Lynell?”
“Dan, you’re asking a dedicated rebel to give the husband of the Elysian heir information on the Resurrection’s plans? Really? I thought you were smarter than that.”
“She’s my wife, Grant.”
“She’s Eric Elysian’s niece. Don’t think I forgot who you used to be. You hated Eric Elysian more than anything.”
“She didn’t know he was her uncle until two weeks ago,” says Daniel. “She’s innocent in all of this.” The low-burn heat in his gut hints that he might not believe his own words, but Daniel extinguishes it. Lynell might not be innocent, yet she isn’t responsible for what her family has done to this country. “Look, I’m not asking you to betray the Resurrection. I just want to protect my wife. And to possibly help D’Angelo.”
“Help her? What do you mean? What’s going on?”
Daniel rubs his forehead and manages to hold in a groan. Scraping through his mind, he finally says, “I’m trying to find a way to get Lynell out of the position she’s in. She’s not an Elysian. Biologically, sure. But that’s not who she is. Neither one of us will ever be safe or happy if she’s forced to become a true Elysian.”
Grant is quiet for too long. Daniel is about to start panicking when Grant finally says, “Fine. I don’t have a lot of information for you, but my ex might. Drea’s on the Resurrection board of directors.”
“Drea Chapman? You dated her?”
Grant laughs. “Don’t act so surprised. Your boy has game.”
Daniel smiles and lets out a heavy breath, his chest relaxing. “If you had game, would she have broken up with you?”
Grant gives a mock gasp of offense. “What makes you assume she broke up with me?”
Dropping the smile and raising an eyebrow, Daniel gives Grant an unamused glare.
“Okay, yeah. She broke up with me. But it ended on good terms. She wants kids, and I . . .”
The calm atmosphere between them shatters. Daniel leans forward and squeezes Grant’s knee once. “I’m sorry, man.”
“Yeah.”
Grant once had a wife and a son. But some psychopath Registered his son and kidnapped him. Took the kid straight out of school. They found the body two weeks later, a few hours shy of the end of the Registration period. It was clear that the last two weeks of the boy’s life had been hell on earth. But because he’d been Registered, the man who killed him could only be charged with rape, not murder or kidnapping or anything else that he deserved to go to jail for. Worse still, there wasn’t enough evidence to convict the guy.
The next quarter, Grant’s wife Registered and killed the man who tortured and murdered their son. Then she killed herself.
Grant decided never to have another child. The experience broke him.
“Anyway,” Grant says, a thickness hinting to unshed tears in the word. He clears his throat as if to break up the emotion. “Drea and I are still friends. I’ll see if there’s anything she can tell me, but no promises. The Resurrection is a lot more organized than we were back in the day. The board doesn’t share secrets or plans willy-nilly with any rebel that comes asking.”
“Anything could help.” Then, before he forgets or decides it’s a bad idea to ask, Daniel adds, “Have there been any threats to the Resurrection recently? Or specifically to D’Angelo?”
“We’re chronically threatened. You should know that, living in the lion’s den.”
Daniel’s toes press hard against the ground, relieving some vexation. “Someone aside from the typical Registration loyalists. Like, a new person hanging around or anyone trying to take her place?”
The tip of Grant’s tongue peaks between his teeth as he thinks, a habit Daniel recognizes from when he met him nine years ago. “How new? We’ve had an upswing of recruits in the last six months, and a new board member recently joined.” A short pause, then his eyes lift and he adds, “I heard my guys discussing Bruce Macgill, the oligarch? Apparently, he’s been going to church, one primarily for anti-Registration folks, including Ms. D’Angelo’s great-uncle. Macgill was asking about Ms. D’Angelo and her family. Nothing overtly weird, just how they all are. If he wasn’t a selfish, rich, Registration-supporting oligarch asshole, I’d think he’s being nice.”
“But he is a selfish, rich, Registration-supporting oligarch asshole,” Daniel says.
“Exactly. So his niceness is probably ill-intentioned. But he hasn’t done anything to suggest he hates Ms. D’Angelo or the Resurrection more than anyone who profits off the Registration would.”
Daniel nods. “Okay. Thanks, man.”
“No problem. Let me know if I can do anything else.”
“Thank you.”
Likely hearing the disconnect in Daniel’s voice, Grant says, “I’m serious. I miss you, Dan. A bunch of us do. If you ever want to relive your rebel days, we’d be happy to welcome you into the Resurrection. Even if you are married to an Elysian.”
Daniel smiles slightly. “Sure. Thanks again.”
He leaves, any warm nostalgia lost in the intense heat of his love for Lynell.
Once home, Daniel calls Fenn Vaughn, Anna’s social worker, and their family lawyer to prepare for a possible custody battle. He wants to reach out to Catherine, Zoe’s younger sister, since Anna is staying with her until custody is decided, but everyone advised him against it. All he can do is try to prepare for the custody battle, which he does for several hours before taking a break to go on a bike ride. He’s pleased—but not surprised—that his personal bike was brought here from his old apartment.
He rides until the sun begins setting, then heads back. Still in tight running shorts, with sweat soaking his thick waves of dark hair, Daniel heads inside. His cleats clack on the wooden floor all the way to the bedroom, where Lynell is pacing back and forth, a fingernail between her teeth and hair bun falling apart.
Daniel steps in front of her and curls his hands around her chin and the back of her neck. “Lyn, baby. Breathe.”
But she’s not hyperventilating, and her pupils aren’t blown. She doesn’t seem lost in a panic attack. He drops his hands and steps back to give her space.
This is one of the most difficult things about being Lynell’s husband, but it’s also one of his favorites. A husband unwilling to learn the intricacies and various supportive needs of his partner isn’t a man, he’s a leech.
Lyn isn’t a simple video game where learning the correct sequence guarantees a win every time. No, she is a myriad of activities. Her trauma and anxiety are a tight dance between two partners. She needs him close, his skin against hers and his movements gently leading her. It’s a chess match, her devious and reckless curiosity that likes to jump before looking over the edge to see what would happen. He reacts to her plays while looking several steps forward, because someone needs to be there with anti-itch cream or a bungee cord. Her simple childlike joy is a paint by numbers canvas, where the directions are there but neither she nor Daniel have any plans of following them. Art, after all, is in the eye of the beholder.
This element is mostly in her head. The scheming brilliance that always sees the path to success is a tall cliffside, perfect for rock climbing. Without her other aspects, this could warp her into a more selfish, inconsiderate tyrant than Eric, because she’d have the wisdom, strength, and tenacity to be unstoppable. But she’s more than one thing, she isn’t alone, and Daniel knows his role here, too.
Step back, watch her climb, and be ready to catch her or pull her back down.
“What happened?” Daniel asks.
“Not much with Tamara or Verity but, Danny, he found him. Ramsey found the bomber.” Her smile is so at odds with her words and tone that he wonders if she’s already climbed too far.
“Who is it?”
“Thomas Johnson. The Sin-Fighting Warriors. It’s him. Or them.”
Her energy is difficult to match because he doesn’t know its source. She’s not happy, but the news still inflates her with eagerness. “Okay . . . Did they catch him?”
Her smile falls. “No, but don’t you get it? Johnson killed Ellery Klein out of some perverse justice because he disagreed with her life and values. Name me a more obvious suspect for who could be threatening D’Angelo?”
He realizes it’s not joy or eagerness she’s feeling. Its justification and motivation. Because they know now that D’Angelo and Lyn can help each other. “You think he’s the person also threatening her.”
“Don’t you?” Lyn asks.
Before he gets the opportunity to answer, someone knocks at the door. They both turn to see Ramsey step through, his jaw tight and his knuckles nearly white from gripping his phone.
Instantly, Daniel’s entire body goes into alert, his bones recognizing the danger before his brain can register the events unfolding.
“What happened?” Lyn asks.
Ramsey’s expression isn’t instantly recognizable, probably because Daniel’s never seen the emotion on his face.
Fear.
“It’s Anna,” Ramsey says.
The shrill roar of a hurricane’s center fills Daniel’s ears. He’s enveloped in a cold darkness, like he fell into his own shadow.
“She’s gone.”