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Because that was when the cavalry arrived.
Alaska Force came in like the well-oiled machine they were. Isaac and Jonas entered the room low and hot, weapons at the ready. Blue knew that meant Griffin was on point and Templeton was walking the perimeter.
To say nothing of the guys out in the truck.
“You missed the party,” Blue told them, still smiling. “Typical.”
“Looks like you had a nice swim,” Jonas retorted. “Was it a pool party?”
“We always miss the good stuff,” Isaac said, though his gaze never left the woman writhing on the floor.
And that was it, Blue thought, stepping back so Jonas could zip-tie the goon’s hands behind his back. He rubbed his hands over his face, and when he dropped them, Everly had moved. She was shakily lowering herself onto the couch behind her, but her gaze was fixed on him while she did it.
Broadcasting things he didn’t want to see and certainly didn’t want to feel.
“Cheer up, Everly,” he said, still smiling like he was having fun.
He ignored the clamoring thing inside him that toldhim truths he didn’t want to know and refused to articulate, even to himself.
He’d had a job. He’d done it. The end. “It’s over.”
• • •
Much, much later, Blue pulled his SUV back around behind his mother’s house. There was no need to hide it anymore, but old habits died hard.
Or you still don’t want anyone to see you,a voice inside piped up.Coward.
Blue wasn’t a fan of that word. But he also didn’t park out on the street, where the fact that he was here could be noted by, say, someone in a house across the way.
Alaska Force had descended on the house in Winnetka with their usual devastating might. The local police had come next. It had been hours and hours of giving reports. Clearing up details.
Blue appreciated Isaac’s abilities in times like these. The man had contacts and friends everywhere. What might have taken days in other circumstances, thanks to the usual bureaucratic nonsense, Isaac managed to get done in a few intense hours.
Now there was nothing for Blue to do but grab his bag and head back to Alaska, where he belonged.
Blue let himself in his mother’s back door, then paused as the screen slapped shut behind him. That same sense of déjà vu that had messed with him last night walloped him again, hard. There were still too many ghosts. It made his mother’s kitchen feel crowded, even when there was nobody there but him.
Maybe it was just him. Maybe he was the one who was haunted.
He started across the kitchen floor for the stairs, but then sensed more than saw a figure appear in the entrance to the living room. His mother.
“I’m going to grab a shower,” he said. “Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Did... whatever you were doing work out?” his mother asked. “Is Everly all right?”
Blue didn’t know what to tell her. He hadn’t told her why they were here in the first place, so he didn’t see the point of laying it all out for her now. What would he say? Everly had been cleared of everything, at last. Annabeth Lambert and her surviving muscle had been rounded up and taken into custody. It was all over.
He couldn’t even tell her that the last two weeks had transformed him into a different man, whether he liked it or not—and he didn’t like it at all—because he’d made certain his mother didn’t know what kind of man he was in the first place.
It was better to say nothing.
Just like it was better to avoid all these entanglements in the first place, Blue thought darkly, because he’d rather get shot than navigate all these...feelings.
“Everything’s fine,” he said, and tried to sound slightly more friendly than a drill sergeant. “Everly’s fine, too. Like I said, I won’t be long. Just a quick shower, then I’m out.”
He expected the long sigh his mother let out then. Or he wasn’t surprised by it, anyway. But he didn’t expect her to stay where she was, hovering there in his peripheral vision like one of those ghosts he wanted to avoid.
“I can’t pretend to understand all the hate you carry around in your heart,” she said quietly, and he wanted,desperately, for that to make him angry. But it didn’t. Because his mother didn’t sound as if she was trying to score points—she just sounded sad. And what defense could he have against making his mother sad? “But you’ve always been too stubborn for your own good. What I’m going to hold on to is the fact that when you needed somewhere to go, you came here. I’ll tell myself that means that your heart knows the truth, even if you don’t want to.”