He takes the stack of papers from me and shuffles through them. He finds the one he’s looking for about halfway through the bunch. “Map of the surrounding houses.” He passes the paper to me. “Haven’t had a lot of time to run surveillance on the street, so we’ll need to do that for a few days.”
I put my anger and hurt on ice and study the paper. A few days of inactivity could have the benefit of keeping Isaiah on edge. Given how quickly I eliminated the other men, he might be expecting me to rush at him. Sneaking up from the side has some benefits.
The downside is this won’t be over quickly.
“You said my mom’s leaving town?” Aunt Carol lives in Montana. Her house is near Flathead Lake, surrounded by trees. It’s quiet, peaceful, and this time of year, covered in snow. It’s also in the middle of nowhere. They could be in danger, and there’d be no one around to hear them scream.
“Isaiah’s stretched too thin, thanks to you. Going after your mother wouldn’t be a smart move on his part. I can bring her here if you’d rather.” He slides the keyboard toward him and types in a command. I scoot the chair around and lean in.
It’s a schedule, complete with approximate times and destinations. I reach for the mouse, brushing Nick’s hand in the process. The brief touch sparks a wave of longing, and I hold my breath, willing it to pass.
I could touch him. Kiss him. Let him break me down and put me back together. And if I did, I’d spend more time wondering about his motives than accepting his gestures at face value, and it would destroy whatever we have left.
It was easy to ignore his concern and affection in the first few days after Turner’s death. When I left Constantine’s for my apartment, when he started coming to me at night, little chinks began appearing in my armor. Never large enough to cause much damage, but I felt him. It didn’t take long for my brain to re-wire and accept that with Nick there I could relax, snatch those precious hours of sleep.
“I don’t get it.” I tuck my hands in my lap. “If what I’ve done isn’t sanctioned by the organization, why didn’t you stop me sooner?”
Nick’s gaze remains on the monitors, two new programs springing up on the remaining screens. “Partly because my father and Uncle Anton agreed something should be done about Isaiah’s men. And because if it had been one of my sisters, my mother, or you, I would have done the same thing.”
The muscles of his jaw twitch and relax as I wait for him to continue. “There’s this rage,” he says quietly. “It’ll burn you from the inside out if you let it fester. You should have come to me first with your new plan, Cass. Not gone ahead without me and assume I’d be there to clean up your mess.”
It doesn’t burn. It freezes. It’s this thick, heavy layer of ice that threatens to kill all the good, leaving only the bad. How does Nick know about the rage? From everything he’s told me, he’s never been in the situation I’m in. “You talk like you’ve experienced it.”
He shakes his head. “I’ve got an imagination. And I’ve seen this before. It happens every once in a while in the family.” The look he sends me is one of quiet resignation. “Everyone has the capacity to kill. Some will never need to use it. Others will channel it in different ways, becoming soldiers, terrorists, hunters. Still more will access it in a moment of fear or anger.”
A capacity to kill. We’ve exercised ours more than most. “There’s another category,” I say. “The hardened. The ones who kill without compunction.”
His eyes turn to stone, and his mouth firms into a thin line. “I’m not going to let you become one of them. I’m not letting you walk away, either. We finish this together.” His gaze flits over my face, and then his eyes meet mine. He taps the monitor with the schedule like the interlude never happened. “Isaiah’s schedule, such as it is. It’s more a schedule for the house than for him personally.”
The switch in topic almost gives me whiplash. All right. We’re done with the soft, tender portion of our talk for now. I turn my attention to the monitor. “Do we know when the LAPD schedules will change? Will Tris be on this shift for a while?”
“We don’t know, which is why we’ll be doing surveillance for a couple of days to confirm this schedule.”
I reach for the mouse again and scroll through the schedule. “I’ve seen the house wake earlier than seven. Don’t know how often it happens, but there were at least two instances where someone left before six.”
“Do you remember what days?” Nick rummages through the drawers and comes up with a pad of paper and a pen.
“One was last Friday. The other might have been this past Monday, or possibly Tuesday. Guy leaving the house was the same one both times. I couldn’t get close enough to see who it was. Dark hair, on the skinny side. Wore a dark blue windbreaker.” There aren’t enough hiding spots for me to stick around for any length of time.
“Might have been Michael.” Nick hits a few keys, and a picture appears on the middle monitor. “This him?”
“Maybe. Like I said, I wasn’t very close.”
A satellite map of the neighborhood pops up on the third monitor. He taps it with his finger. “Show me where you were.”
“Zoom in.”
Slowly, the houses and cars become clearer. I trace the line of the street with my finger, pausing in front of a house three houses up on the left, on the opposite side of the street. “Here. The owners have been out of town for the past week, so I’ve been able to use their yard to watch the traffic. Not ideal, but I’ve been able to track some of the comings and goings.” I point to the house directly across from Isaiah’s. “They were out one night. There’s a large shrub next to the front porch that provided some cover, though there wasn’t a lot of activity that night. Isaiah’s men seem to be in the house by eight in the evening.” I haven’t had a chance to pull an all-nighter, mostly because there isn’t any place on the street for me to hide. Smart choice on Isaiah’s part. The residential neighborhood limited what I could gather without being seen.
“We’ll go back tomorrow night. I’ll see if there’s any traffic cameras nearby.”
Over the next few hours, we fall into the rhythm we developed over the last few months, and it’s as though the problems of the past twelve hours never happened.
The false sense of peace continues when we break for food. “How long should we wait?” I ask, dumping the ground turkey into the skillet. “I’ve already got him on edge. I know we need more information, but I don’t think we can risk more than a few days.”
“At least three.” The look of fierce concentration on his face is pretty funny, like the pepper he’s slicing is going to jump off the cutting board and run away. “Given that Tris’s schedule could change at the last minute, we’ll need to be prepared. Constantine’s working on getting us into one of the houses across the street. Couple of vacant ones with people on vacation for the holidays.”
The mention of vacation stops me cold. I set my wooden spoon aside and turn to Nick. “I would feel a lot better if my mother were here. Aunt Carol’s closest neighbor is about a half mile away, and on the off chance Isaiah decides to go after her, they’re too vulnerable.”
He doesn’t speak, just places the knife next to the cutting board, wipes his hands, and pulls out his phone. I take it from him and find my mother’s contact information.
It rings once, twice, three times. If it gets to five, it will automatically switch over to voicemail. The ice creeps back in as it starts on the fourth ring. She’s an adult. More, she’s the one who lived with Turner all these years. I have to trust she’ll be able to take care of herself.
But I