I glanced at the time. It was already late. Decoy and Mateo wouldn’t be home until morning, but that wasn’t what had me out of my seat and pacing to the window by the kitchen sink, whatever comfort Orla offered me floating by unheard.
A bug or something. Benign fucking words, but they didn’t sit right. Mateo—and Decoy, come to think of it—never got sick. He never caught anything. Never sneezed, never puked, and only jasmine oil, and smoking Rubi’s ridiculous bong ever made him cough. Also, he was stoic as fuck, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t imagine him quitting the road because he’d hurled a few times.
How many times?
I didn’t know. Nash didn’t know. And Decoy was driving. With Mateo’s phone off, that left Rubi or Ranger, but bikes pulled up outside before I could fire off a text, a car rolling to a stop behind Cam and Viktor.
Folk.
Ivy was with him. I set my phone on the stair post and made an effort to unfuck my face as I considered what that meant. Her dads had a stricter bedtime vibe than we did with Liliana. I couldn’t think of a single reason for Folk to have hustled her out of bed and across town that didn’t make my stomach churn.
They reached the front door. I opened it and Ivy danced inside. “Where’s Lili? We’re having a sleepover.”
“Aquietone.” Folk slipped in behind her. “It’s a school night, bug. Go upstairs and get into bed. I’ll be up in a minute.”
Ivy kicked off her shoes and bustled past. Then she stopped and turned back. “Embry, why do you look scared?”
So much for unfucking my face. “Orla said she’d sit on me. Go upstairs, mermaid. There’s some fancy new soap in the bathroom.”
“What kind of soap?”
“The kind you want to eat, butdon’teat it this time, okay?”
Ivy stuck out her tongue and skipped away.
Folk set her school bag by the shoe rack and appraised me the way I tried to appraise everyone else, answer the question before I could ask it. “Cam wanted to check on you and he won’t leave me alone right now.”
I knew that—and I knew why. Folk’s low mood wasn’t a secret. But Cam could’ve called me. Waking up Ivy seemed overkill, unless he was the one who had extra information.
A bike engine rumbled to life outside. I wasn’t usually tuned in enough to know whose, but Viktor’s Ducati was distinct enough from Cam’s hog that I knew it was him revving up and zipping away.
Cam appeared a second later. His smoke-and-leather scent hit me as he pushed his hair back out of his face, as wildly attractive as Orla, but I felt it less these days. “Viktor’s heading out to join the run. River’s going with him.”
“Still no word from Saint and Alexei?”
Cam’s dark gaze flickered. “Only that they’re safe.”
An hour ago, I might’ve pushed him harder, poked more at the brick wall he’d thrown up around the mere hours Saint had spent at home before he’d ridden out to who the hell knew where. Now, I just pulled out my phone again and glared at the single tick next to my unread message.
He never lets his phone go flat.
Never had. Pápa code before I even knew he had a kid. Now he had—wehad two, and as if she sensed the worry gnawing at my heart, Hope let out a distressed wail, a cry rare enough to send me flying upstairs.
I found her standing in her cot, gripping the bars like a pint-sized prisoner, fat tears leaking from her big button eyes.
She held her arms up. “Da?”
That wasme. Her fucking dad. Still blew my mind that the blood ties drilled into my childhood meant so little in reality. That I could love a child so much who shared no DNA even with Mateo.
But, Mother of Christ, I loved this kid.
I lifted her from her bed and wiped the tears from her face. “What’s the matter, little one? Are you missing him too?”
Hope cried harder and I knew I’d nailed it. For all she had me, and her favourite Uncle Locke in reserve, she knew the man who’d caught her in his arms as she’d landed on this earth. Who’d cut her umbilical cord and laid her on her mother’s chest. She knew who her Pápa was, and hearing her cry for him wrecked me.
“Shh. He’ll be home soon.”
She didn’t believe me. I walked her round her room a while before she simmered down enough to doze on my shoulder, her tiny body still shuddering with unspent sobs, but I knew better than to try and put her back to bed. I wrapped her up and took her downstairs, through the empty hallway and into the kitchen, the silence that fell a distant deafening roar as six pairs of eyes stared back at me, alive with the kind of concern that could kill a man where he stood. “What happened?”