Page 35 of My End

I stepped away from the table and moved to the doorway. I felt Jake move behind me before I heard him. A wall of heat and tension.

I paused and turned slightly. “Jake,” I said, quietly.

He didn’t look at me. “Yes, ma’am.”

I swallowed. “Are you okay?”

He blinked once. Slowly. “Just doing my job.”

There was something in his tone. Something just beneath the surface.

I nodded, but I didn’t move.

He did.

He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Be careful.”

“What?”

His eyes finally met mine. “Just… watch yourself.”

And then he was gone to trail Boone and Gibbs down the hall like a shadow.

I stood frozen for a full minute.

Something was off.

I didn’t know what. Or why.

But whatever was going on in this house… I wasn’t as far outside of it as I’d thought.

Chapter Fifteen

Stretch

I paced the damn length of the room for the tenth time in an hour.

The worn rug beneath my bare feet was doing little to quiet the thud of my steps, and the overhead light was too damn bright, but I hadn’t turned it off because the last thing I needed was to be in the dark with my thoughts.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered.

Tilly.

Tilly was the problem.

She was crawling under my skin like a damn splinter I couldn’t dig out.

The moment I told her to be careful, I knew I’d fucked up. Not because it wasn’t true—hell, it was more than true—but because I’d possibly opened her eyes to what was going on. I should have just kept my mouth shut. What if she ran to Boone to tell him I had told her to be careful? I was done. One wrong word from her and I’d be strung up by my ankles in the wine cellar, or whatever underground crypt Boone kept for people who crossed him.

I dragged my hand down my face and let out a breath that did nothing to calm me.

It wasn’t just that she was soft when this place was hard. Or that she smiled like she didn’t know what a real threat looked like. It was the way she looked at me, like she saw something worth noticing in a man like me. Like I wasn’t already drowning in lies and blood.

She was a fucking spotlight in a world I was trying to disappear into.

And it was going to get me killed.

I stopped pacing and leaned my forearm against the cool plaster wall. I let my head rest against it, and my eyes squeezed shut.