Page 63 of Song Bird Hearts

I turn, grabbing the black book where it had flown from my jacket, and walk out of the vault without looking back.

Yes, I limp, but I move like a man who has just declared war. There won’t be many people of Victor’s caliber outside. I can handle security guards and whatever I need to so I can make it back to her.

I’ve gotten my first true taste of freedom, what that would look like beside Valerie, Knox, and Gilden, and I want it. I need it. Valerie needs it.

And I’ll do anything to give it to her.

Chapter31

Valerie

Iknow he’s back before the dust ever rises in the gravel road.

I stand barefoot on the porch, the boards warm under my feet despite the late-afternoon chill. The horizon stretches out pink and low, the sky turning that gentle gold Wyoming likes to pull over the world before dusk. Somewhere behind me, Gilden is cooking. Knox is oiling one of the rifles I’d given him from the gun safe, claiming it needs some TLC. I didn’t argue. I think it’s his way of relaxing.

The tension the last two days hangs like heavy smoke. None of us have talked about Wolf since the first conversation. Not really. Not out loud. But I’ve felt him the entire time. That thread, tight and pulled taut between us as I waited for him to come back.

Now, he’s tugging on that thread again.

The crunch of the gravel is the only warning of the black car driving up it.

Knox is off the porch before I can blink, his gun in his hand. Gilden isn’t far behind, coming out with his gun and not bothering to remove the pink “Kiss the Cook” apron he’s wearing. Earlier, I’d kissed him when he put it on. He’d called me “cher” and set me on the kitchen counter while he prepped the vegetables. It was intimate, domestic, and everything I’ve ever wanted from a man.

Slowly, I follow them, barefoot, uncaring of the way the gravel bites into the soles of my feet. He doesn’t pull all the way in. He stops just where the driveway widens and the gate stands as a barrier, and puts it into park. The driver’s side door opens and he steps out.

When I get a good look at him, I gasp.

His face is bruised, one eye swollen shut. His lips are busted, and there’s dried blood on his neck where a wound tore open in the time between it scabbing over and now. When he starts to walk forward, it’s with a limp, and his shoulders are rolled inward. The Wolf I know walks upright with square shoulders, strong, powerful. For him to be so curled in, he has to be hurt pretty badly.

In his hands, wrapped in black leather, is a book. It’s thick and worn, some insignia I don’t recognize foiled on the front with the number twenty-seven. It’s the kind of thing I imagine the devil brings to make a deal. Are there contracts signed in blood inside?

“You came back,” I say softly when he reaches us.

“Of course I did,” he replies. “You’re here.”

Knox raises the rifle when Wolf moves to push open the gate and step toward me. “Not another fucking step.”

Wolf doesn’t flinch. Instead, he steps forward anyway, pushes open the gate, and lets the barrel of the rifle press against his neck. When no one says anything, he holds the book out to me, his hand shaking just the barest amount.

“What is that?” I ask, staring at it, but I don’t reach for it.

“A ledger,” he explains. “A record. Everyone the foundation has ever created, destroyed, controlled, or used.” His lips twitch. “Foolish for them to keep it in a book, but these kinds of people live for nostalgia and ego.”

Knox’s jaw clenches. “And you just walked away with it?”

Wolf grins at him and it has a certain horrifying terror to it with his face as messed up as it is. “Not exactly. I left behind a trail of blood and they’re going to be coming for it. But I’m here now. And it’s yours.”

He extends it further toward me, but he doesn’t step closer, not with Knox’s gun at his neck.

I still don’t move to take it. My voice is careful, calculated. I’ve had this conversation a million times over in the past two days and it suddenly seems so much heavier than my practiced sentences.

“You’d give this to me? After all of it? Even though you were one of them?”

“I’d burn every one of them to the ground if you asked me to,” he says quietly. “I’d destroy anything for you, little star, the Foundation, the world. So long as you ask me to.”

Knox’s jaw twitches again. “How the hell do we know this isn’t a trap?”

“You don’t,” Wolf admits. “But you’ve got your gun. Use it, if you need to.” Slow and deliberate, Wolf presses tighter against the barrel of Knox’s gun. “Do it,” he murmurs, his gaze never leaving mine. “Shoot me. I deserve it.”

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