Page 95 of Commit

I head out with Atlas beside me.

“Look at you being all polite,” he jokes as we climb into the car.

Kenzo is already in the driver’s seat.

“You find anything useful?” I ask him.

“No, you?”

“Not as much as I’d hoped.”

The numbers thing is bugging me though. It’s clearly not a nod to how many victims there are. So what’s the damn significance?

Atlas fills Kenzo in as he drives us back to the airfield.

“I’m surprised that they lived so close for years, and I never ran into them,” I say when he’s done.

Kenzo laughs. “You’re not exactly social, Pete.”

I tip my head in acknowledgment. “What do you make of this lawyer? Think we should look into them?”

“It won’t hurt, but they won’t share anything with us if it’s protected under client confidentiality clauses,” Atlas reminds me.

“I’ll dig anyway, see what I can find. But I’ll do it from home. I don’t like being too far from Trix while she’s pregnant.”

“She’s still good, though, right? How was the doctor’s appointment?”

“She’s fine. They both are. But the baby is turning out to be just as stubborn as it’s mother.”

I chuckle. “I’m guessing you couldn’t find out the sex?”

“I swear to fuck the kid was hiding it on purpose. Every time the technician moved the wand to see, the baby would roll away.”

“Healthy is all that matters, though. Who cares if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Well, if it’s a girl, I need to know. I need to get more guns and guards.”

“And I thought you were bad, Atlas.”

“You don’t have girls, so you don’t understand. But think about it: Starling’s eighteen, so it stands to reason that one day she might want kids. Now imagine a daughter with her eyes and hair and picture men like us pursuing them,” he tells me grimly.

“Fuck that. I’m not having daughters.”

“We’ll see,” he says knowingly.

I picture a little girl running around, one who looks just like Starling, and feel a strange sort of panic.

“My daughter will never date a man like me, even if I have to send her to a convent.”

Kenzo grins at me in the rearview mirror. “I dare you to tell Starling that.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Starling

Another five days pass with no sign of Abbot. The longer he’s gone, the deeper the claw marks inside me feel.

I stare up at the pink cherry blossom swaying above me and sigh. “Where is he, Eloise? I just need to know that he’s safe.”

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