Page 16 of Shattered Fate

“I have to text . . .”

“Let your driver know you have a ride.”

“Okay.”

She quickly sends a text, and we leave our unfinished coffees behind. Sierra smirks. I flip her off on the way out the door, and her laughter follows me onto the sidewalk. My hand brushes Zarah’s back as we cross the street, and we stand in the little glass elevator as it carries us to the fourth floor of the ramp. She doesn’t stand close to me, but she’s not backed into the wall, either. Maybe I’m slowly earning her trust. My truck’s parked in the shadows, but Baby knows I’m coming. Her head pops up and her tongue flops out of her mouth.

I open the passenger side door and try to think of a nice way to tell Baby to sit in the extended cab. I didn’t have to worry. Baby licks Zarah sloppily across her face, and instead of beingdisgusted or angry, she laughs and throws her arms around Baby’s neck.

“She’s gorgeous,” Zarah says around a face full of fur.

“She’s part husky and—”

“German shepherd. I can tell. We have two I walk with all the time.”

Trying not to be too touchy, I wrap my hands around her tiny waist and give her a boost into the cab, and Baby lays down and rests her head in Zarah’s lap. I slide behind the wheel and get a big lapful of dog butt. She better not fart.

Zarah tells me her address, and I plug it into my phone’s GPS. I know the general direction of their home, but I’ve never been out there. The estimated drive time is fifty-five minutes. Zarah watches out the window petting Baby just like she loves it between her eyes and down to her nose, and she doesn’t say one word the entire way.

The driveway itself is at least a mile long, the house set off the main highway. The crushed rock crunches under my tires, but the gravel is frozen and we don’t leave a dust trail in our wake.

“This is a beautiful property,” I say, the first words out of my mouth since we left the city.

Baby sits between us, her eyes lighting on the squirrels and bare trees. And, oh Christ, the birds. She’d have herself one helluva time out here if I could set her free without her leash. She might never come back.

“It’s Stella and Zane’s.”

I tilt my head, acknowledging the distinction. “You don’t live here?”

“I do, but one day they’ll get tired of me. Zane says they won’t, but they will. Eventually they’ll want to be alone.”

She swallows, her delicate Adam’s apple bobbing in anxiety. She’s scared of what she’ll do if that happens.

“What if one dayyoudon’t want to live here?” I ask as their enormous house comes into view. “What if one day you get better and want to live on your own?”

“That will never happen.”

“What won’t? That you won’t get better, or that you won’t want to live on your own?”

“I’m stupid. I’ll never be able to live on by myself.”

“Zarah . . .”

I stop near the house, and her brother steps outside.

Shit. It didn’t occur to me that I’d have to meet anyone. I’m not intimidated, but I’m sure I’ll be put through a vetting process worthy of a presidential candidate if it looks like I’ll be spending any time with Zarah. Especially alone.

I kill the engine.

Zarah’s out the door and I can’t say anything more. Baby follows her, of course she does, and I have no choice but to get out and face Zane Maddox.

The drugs haven’t made Zarah’s manners disappear, and she’s a polite hostess when I meet them on the bottom step of the gigantic porch. “Zane, you remember Gage, Max’s brother? Gage, my brother, Zane.”

It’s been a year since I’ve seen Zane. In person, anyway. He and Stella still pop up in the news—a night out, or a fundraiser. Sometimes on a slow news night they’ll dredge up what happened a year ago. Max’s death, too.

“Davenport,” Zane says, reaching out his hand.

“Maddox,” I say in return. I could hold a grudge, refuse to shake his hand, but Max has been dead for a year and deep down, I knew he made his own decisions and investigating whathappened to Zane and Zarah’s parents was his own choice. I feel like shit I was so angry. There was no specific reason, and there’s nothing I can do about it now except apologize.

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