Mason's body tenses immediately. He searches my face and reads my retreat before I've even moved. “Lily?—”
I don't wait to hear what he has to say. I turn and move through the bar with precision: smooth, controlled, using the crowd as cover. I don't run—running signals panic. Running makes a predator close in on you.
But I movefast, and I move with purpose. I need air, and I need space to think where I’m not staring into endless dark eyes that see too much. I dart through the crowd and out the door to my car.
As I pull out of the parking lot, I see Mason standing there, hands at his sides, watching me drive away.
13
MASON
Ilet her go. It’s how to handle an operative in retreat: you give them space and let them think they've escaped.
Then you track them to ground.
I return to my truck, parked three blocks away in the opposite direction. I don't rush. I take my time, letting Lily get distance, letting her think she's clear.
Then I follow.
14
LILY
The drive home is uneventful.
I check my mirrors every thirty seconds. No headlights following. No vehicles maintaining consistent distance. Mason didn't follow.
Or he's good enough that I can't detect him.
That possibility makes my hands tighten on the wheel. Because it freaks me out, or because of the anticipation that he might show up? I don’t know.
I live in a residential neighborhood on the edge of town. The houses are from the fifties and exactly like you’d imagine in a small town like Iron Ridge: affordable, unremarkable, and small. My neighbors are nosy—a single-woman vet is an oddity they can’t leave alone—and the houses are pressed so close they can probably hear me pee.
In other words: it’s perfect. No one would be able to get to me without one of my neighbors noticing.
I pull into my drive and turn off the car, taking a moment to check out my house. It looks like it should, but I pull out my phone and check for notifications from the motion sensors I have installed.
No triggers while I was gone. The house is secure.
I let myself in through the back door and step inside, immediately disarming the security system. I have thirty seconds to input the code before the alarm triggers. I make it with ten seconds to spare.
I turn on all the lights, starting with the kitchen, one by one as I move through the house, checking each room. By the time I’m done, it practically looks like daytime inside. I don’t mind the electricity bill. I hate the dark.
Shrugging out of my jacket, I leave it and my purse within easy reach of the door—an old habit from years of midnight emergency calls and needing to move fast. At least, that’s what I tell people.
The truth? I started doing it after I escaped. Cold, half naked, barefoot and running for my life taught me I never want to get caught unprepared ever again.
I slump onto my secondhand couch, my hands covering my face. Tonight didn’t go the way I thought it would. Because when I set out for the Rusty Spur, I had no idea I’d see Mason Rivera, or that he’d flirt with me, like he saw every damaged, paranoid piece of me and wanted closer anyway.
Neither had I expected to see the man who killed Mandy.
“That’s a win,” I tell myself, lifting my head and reaching for the laptop on the coffee table in front of me. I shoot off an email to Wes, to tell him who I saw and what Mason told me about him.
I don’t tell him that Mason warned me away from Turner and his foreman.
I also don’t tell him that Mason looked at me just like my friend Emma said—like he likes me. Like he wanted to get to know me a lot more.
At least until he looked at me like I was something fragile that needed protecting.