Before anyone could respond, the door to the suite opened. Lia stood there, looking supremely satisfied with herself. Michael stood behind her, soaked from head to toe in mud.
“What—” Briggs started to say. Then he corrected himself. “I don’t want to know.”
Lia strolled into the foyer. “We never left the suite,” she announced, lying to their faces with disturbing conviction. “And I certainly didn’t beat the pants off a bunch of professionals playing recreational poker at the Desert Rose. In related news: I have no idea why Michael’s covered in mud.”
A glop of mud fell from Michael’s hair onto the tile floor.
“Get cleaned up,” Judd told Michael. “And all of you, get packed.” Judd didn’t wait for a reply before turning to retreat to his own room. “Wheels up in one hour.”
“I do hope you found your stay to your liking.” The concierge met us in the lobby. “Your departure is a bit abrupt.”
His tone made that sound like a question. It was closer to a complaint.
“It’s my leg,” Michael told him in a complete deadpan. “I walk with a limp. I’m sure you understand.”
As far as explanations went, that one held little to no explanatory power, but the concierge was flustered enough that he didn’t question it. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said hurriedly. “We just have a few things for you to sign, Mr. Townsend.”
While Michael dealt with the paperwork, I turned to look back at the lobby. At the front desk, dozens of people stood in line, waiting to check in. I tried not to think about the fact that in three days, any one of them—the elderly man, the guy wearing the Duke sweatshirt, the mother with three small children—could be dead.
The knife is next. I knew—personally, viscerally—how much damage could be done with a knife. We’re not finished, I thought vehemently. This isn’t done.
Leaving felt like running away. It felt like admitting failure. It felt the way I had at twelve, each time the police had asked me a question I couldn’t answer.
“Excuse me,” a voice said. “Sloane?”
I turned to see Tory Howard, dressed in her standard uniform of dark jeans and a tank. She seemed hesitant—something she’d never struck me as before. “We didn’t get a chance to meet the other night,” she told Sloane. “I’m Tory.”
The hesitation, the softness in her voice, the fact that she knew Sloane’s name, the fact that she’d lied to the FBI to keep her relationship with Aaron a secret—you love him, too, I realized. You can’t un-love him, no matter what you do.
“You’re leaving?” Tory asked Sloane.
“There is a ninety-eight-point-seven percent chance that statement is accurate.”
“I’m sorry you can’t stay.” Tory hesitated again, and she said, softly, “Aaron really did want to get to know you.”
“Aaron told you about me?” Sloane’s voice wavered slightly.
“I knew he had a half sister he’d never met,” Tory replied. “He wondered about you, you know. When you stepped in front of him that night at the show, and I saw your eyes…” She paused. “I did the math.”
“Strictly speaking, that wasn’t a mathematical calculation.”
“You matter to him,” Tory said. I knew, in the pit of my stomach, that it cost her to say the words, because there was a part of her that couldn’t be sure that she mattered to Aaron. “You mattered to him before he even knew who you were.”
Sloane absorbed that statement. She pressed her lips together and then blurted out, “I have gathered that there is an overwhelmingly large chance that your relationship with Aaron is intimate and/or sexual in nature.”
Tory didn’t flinch. She wasn’t the type to let you see her hurting.
“When I was three…” Sloane trailed off, averting her eyes so that she wasn’t looking straight at Tory. “Grayson Shaw came to my mother’s apartment to meet me.” The words were costing Sloane to say—but they were even harder for Tory to hear. “My mother dressed me up in a white dress and left me in the bedroom and told me that if I was a good girl, my daddy would want us.”
The white dress, I thought, my stomach twisting and my heart aching for Sloane. I knew how this story ended.
“He didn’t want me.” Sloane didn’t go into the particulars of what had happened that afternoon. “And he didn’t want my mother so much after that.”
“Trust me, kid,” Tory replied, steel in her voice, “I’ve learned my lesson about getting in bed with Shaws.”
“No,” Sloane said fiercely. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not good at this. I’m not good at talking to people, but…” She sucked in a breath of air. “Aaron brought the FBI evidence that Beau acted in self-defense—evidence they never would have seen otherwise. I’m told there’s a very high probability he did that for you. I thought that Aaron was like his father. I thought…”
She’d thought Tory was like her mother. Like her.
“Aaron fights for you,” Sloane said fiercely. “You say I matter to him, but you matter, too.”
“Beau was cleared of all charges this morning,” Tory said finally, her voice rough. “That was Aaron?”