Page 225 of The Silent Note

He moves his hands up and down. “My wrist has been healed for a while now, and I ordered in those special drumsticks that amputees use. I might not be able to play the drums as long as I used to, but I’m getting the hang of them. So far, I’ve been able to play for as long as three minutes.”

“Wow. Three minutes?” Sol says dully.

“Three minutes is longer than ‘never again’. Give me a few months and I can double that.”

“Six minutes?” Sol gasps sarcastically.

Zane narrows his eyes.

“Don’t rush yourself.” I touch Zane’s arm to reclaim his attention. “Besides, I do plan to earn my own keep.”

Cadence leans forward. “Where? Let me guess… a bookshop?”

I smile at her because that would have been a really accurate guess before my world imploded.

“Actually,” I watch as Dutch plucks his wife out of her seat, drops her into his lap and grunts as if that was where she’d belonged all along, “I want to…” I turn to Finn, who grabs a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge, “work for the yakuza.”

Finn chokes on the water he’d been drinking.

Dutch almost drops Cadence to the floor.

Sol pricks his finger on the tip of the knife and immediately puts his finger into his mouth to suck at the blood.

Zane blinks slowly. And then laughs. “I’m sorry. I think I heard wrong. You said you’re going to…”

“Work for the yakuza.” I jut my chin at Finn. “Or more specially, for Finn while he’s in the yakuza.”

“Grey…” Finn wipes at the water that dribbled down his chin.

“I exposed Micheals and told the world the truth about Sloane. But the man who killed her is still out there. This is as far as I can go alone. I might not be powerful enough to take down the yakuza, but Finn is.” I nod at him. “And I want to be a part of that in any way I can. No matter how long it takes.”

Zane frowns. “No, it’s too dangerous.”

“I’m not changing my mind about this, Zane,” I say firmly.

He studies me for a long minute and then he sighs. “Then you do it with me.”

“With you?”

“You, me and Finn,” Zane says.

“And me too,” Cadence says.

Dutch glares at her.

She glares back. “You heard me, Dutch.We’regoing to take down the yakuza.”

Dutch exhales so loudly that a napkin across the kitchen floats up in the air. “I guess we’re taking down the yakuza.”

Sol’s eyes brighten with a Mad Hatter gleam. “Sign me up.”

Chapter Sixty

GREY

Redwood Prep stands in all its mighty glory, lording its grand, arrogant face against the sunrise.

For the last time, I move up the stairs and walk inside.