Oath Bound (Unbound)

Twenty-Two



Sera

The gun was warm in my hand and Kris was warm in my arms, and Julia Tower lay dying on the floor, fifteen feet away. But all I could think about was what he’d said.

I will never let you go again.

“So...you’re not mad that I shot your bad guy?”

He pulled back so he could see me, and his blue-gray eyes were bluer than ever. “Are you kidding? I take partial credit for that kill. I taught you to shoot.”

“Oh, please. It’s not like she hit a moving target from a quarter-mile away.” Kori rolled her eyes, but her tone was familiar. She was teasing me like she teased Kris. As if she might actually like me, beneath the criticism. “And anyway, she’s not dead yet.” Kori nudged Julia’s arm with one foot. “Any questions for the bitch, before I put her out of her misery?”

“I have one.”

Kori gave me a “be my guest” gesture, and I pulled Kris with me until we were staring down at Julia Tower, who lay gasping on the floor, blood still welling from the hole in her chest.

“Why?” I demanded. Julia’s eyelids looked heavy, but she was still in there. For another minute or two, anyway. “Why did my family have to die, just so you could kill me? There must have been another way.”

“I didn’t—” She coughed and gasped, but her eyes never lost focus. “I didn’t kill your family.”

“Aren’t you supposed to confess your sins before you die?” Kris nudged her thigh with his foot. “Can’t you just admit it, and give her some closure?”

“F*ck—” Julia choked again, then swallowed with obvious effort “—you.”

Kori aimed and fired her silenced pistol before I even realized what she was doing. Julia shuddered, then went still, and her dead eyes seemed to stare right through me.

I stumbled backward, gaping at Kori in shock. “Why did you do that?”

She holstered her gun and met my gaze. “Because she wasn’t going to give you what you want, and I can live with killing her, but I’m not sure you could. I don’t want you to have to.”

“You don’t...” I didn’t understand until Kori pulled me away from Kris and wrapped me in a hug that felt like equal parts vise and embrace.

“Consider it a gift. Welcome to the family, Sera.” My eyes watered, but before the tears could fall, her grip tightened, and she added. “If you hurt my brother, I will hunt you down and cut your heart out.”

“She’s kidding.” Kris pulled his sister off me. “Tell her you’re kidding, Kor.”

Kori just gave me a creepy half smile, then walked away to help Ian, Van and Kenley with the bodies.

“She’s not kidding.” I drew him into a hug and whispered into his ear, “But she’ll never have a reason to go after my heart. I’m not going anywhere, Kris. And I would never hurt you.”

But the words were hardly out of my mouth when he stepped away, holding me at arm’s length, and the look in his eyes scared me.

“You can’t know that—” He shook his head and started over, and that unease inside me grew. “I have to tell you something.”

“Now?” I glanced around at everyone else, cleaning up without us. We should help.

“Yes, now.” He blinked, and his eyes filled with pain. “It’s my fault, Sera. What happened to your family. What happened to you...” He reached down and laid a hand on my stomach, over my clothes. “I was supposed to stop it. It was in the notebook, but I couldn’t figure it out.” He frowned. “No, I stopped trying to figure it out. If I’d tried harder—if I’d kept trying—I could have stopped it. They would still be alive. You’d still be whole. You’d be a mother.”

“No,” I said, and when his eyes shone with tears, my own started to burn. “No, Kris, that had nothing to do with you. I don’t care what Noelle said, and I don’t care what you wrote in that damned notebook. It wasn’t your fault for not understanding any more than it was my fault for going off to college and leaving them vulnerable. And I’m not going to let you steal blame from Julia. Let credit go where it’s due. Julia Tower did this. And now she’s paid for it.”

“But—”

“No. It’s over. She’s dead. I’m ready to remember my family the way they lived, Kris. Not the way they died. And if you can’t let this go, I won’t be able to.”

He stared at me like he didn’t believe me. Like he wanted to, but couldn’t.

“I want to tell you about them. I want to show you the pictures. I want you to know them, but that won’t work if you feel guilty for something you didn’t do. Let it go, okay? We both have to let it go. Starting now. With her.” Julia.

With Kris’s hand in mine, I stared down at Julia’s body, trying to decide what I should be feeling. I’d shot an unarmed woman. I hadn’t even hesitated. If Kori’s bullet hadn’t killed her, mine would have.

What did that say about me? That I was more like the Towers than even Julia had known? That I’d just put an end to their reign of brutality?

Was it even possible to end violence with violence?

“Hey.” Kris took my chin and stared into my eyes. “Are you okay?” he said after less than a second. “She deserved much worse, Sera. Kori would have let her suffer first, if she hadn’t wanted to take the death off your hands. Do not feel guilty for this.”

“I don’t.” And that was part of the problem.

“You saved a lot of people today. Everyone Julia would have gone on to hurt owes you a thank-you.”

“I know.” And I did know. Julia had to die. Someone had to kill her. Someone had to step up and do what needed to be done. The part that bothered me was that I didn’t feel guilty. I felt...nothing.

Nothing but disappointment. I’d wanted a confession. Without one, her death felt...empty.

“Is it over?” Kenley asked, and I turned to see her staring at Julia with one arm around Vanessa’s waist, her free hand holding her torn, blood-splattered shirt closed.

“Almost.” I held my hand out, and she let go of Van to take it. “I’m Sera, by the way.” She was a slightly shorter, slightly curvier version of Kori, without the obvious hard edges. Except for the fresh bruise on her cheek.

“Kenley.” She shook my hand, then shot a questioning glance at her brother.

“Jake’s biological daughter.” His arm tightened around me. “Sera just inherited...well, nearly everything Jake had.”

Her curious gaze found me. “Including the contracts?”

“Especially the contracts,” Kris said.

“But I’m not going to keep them.” I glanced back to see Olivia, Ian and Cam unrolling sheets of black plastic, while Kori came in from the darkened hallway with a gallon jug of bleach in each hand, rolls of duct tape climbing her thin forearms like bracelets. “I don’t want any part of this. I’m going to release them. All of them.”

“You’re serious?” Kenley stared at me in disbelief. “You don’t want...the power?”

I shook my head. “All I wanted was justice, and Kris was right—it didn’t live up to my expectation.” Without a confession, even though Julia’s death had no doubt saved countless people from years of suffering, I had no closure.

I would have to recover from their deaths the long way. With time. And Kris, and the new family that had welcomed me into their fold.

“So, you’re just going to give it all up?” Kenley was obviously having trouble with the concept. Or with believing me.

“Yeah.”

“Not the money!” Kori called, helping Ian heft a dead Tower guard onto a sheet of black plastic. “She’s going to keep the money. And if we’re all very nice to her, she may use it to help us take down—” she glanced at Cam and Liv, then seemed to be rethinking whatever she’d been about to say “—other hostile organizations. There’s no better way to put blood money to use than by taking down the remaining bad guys.”

The Cavazos syndicate, obviously. But if Cam and Liv had any real knowledge of that, they’d have to report it. If I understood correctly.

“But we can discuss that later.” Kori folded plastic over the dead man and Ian ripped a long piece of duct tape from his roll.

Kenley laid her hand on my arm. “Sera, if you’re serious...there’s a short cut. It wasn’t possible before, because neither Julia nor Jake wanted to break the seal, but if you really want to...I can... Well, I can just remove your will from the contracts I sealed for Jake.”

“All of them?” I glanced at Kris for confirmation, but he seemed as surprised as I was.

“All of them at once.” Kenley gave me a shy smile. “I would have done it years ago, if I could have, but it can’t be done unless the instigating party wants to end the agreement.”

I stared at her, stunned. “I do. Let’s do it.” The sooner the better. I hated knowing there was still a target on my back—from Cavazos—and I didn’t know how to protect myself from him like Jake and Julia had.

But then, I’d outlived them both. Surely that meant something.

Kenley frowned apologetically and looped her arm through Van’s. “I’m pretty tired right now, but...”

“Give us a day to get her fed and rested.” Vanessa squeezed Kenley’s arm and gave me the brightest smile I’d yet seen from her. “We’ll do it in the morning. Then this will be over.”

“It’ll never be over. Not as long as there’s anyone out there willing to step into Tower’s shoes.” Kori’s proclamation was followed by another rip of duct tape. “But this is a start.”

“She’s right.” Kris leaned in and kissed me, then whispered into my ear, “This is a damn good start.”

* * *

We spent most of that day cleaning up the massacre. Wrapping bodies in plastic, bleaching and scrubbing the concrete and getting rid of every sign that Julia and her men had ever been there. And that we had.

If I hadn’t already harbored a moral objection to murder, I would have developed a labor-based objection founded solely on the amount of work it took to get rid of the evidence.

By the time we finished, there was a stack of bodies against one wall and more trash bags than three of us could carry. Kenley was beyond exhausted by then, even though she’d spent most of her time with Julia in a chemical coma. Evidently “unconscious” isn’t the same as “sleeping.” So Kris took her back to the House of Crazy to get cleaned up and rest, where she could keep an eye on Gran and Gran could fuss over her youngest granddaughter.

It took several trips through the shadows to get all the trash out of the warehouse, and once that was done, Kris took me back to the house so I could check on Gran and Kenley and come up with something for dinner. Something that would feed nine.

Gran was glad to see me. Kris had been checking in on her throughout the day, but I wasn’t sure how many of those visits she actually remembered, and Kenley had taken a long hot bath, then laid down for a nap.

I promised Gran I’d help with dinner as soon as I’d cleaned up.

When I turned off the downstairs shower, clean, but even more exhausted, I could hear Gran holding a conversation with herself while she cubed cheese for some kind of spicy dip she said Kris had loved since he was a kid. I dried and put on more borrowed clothes, then rung my hair out in my towel. I was wiping the mirror with a clean rag, ready to pull a comb through my tangled hair, when someone answered Gran’s question.

The rag fell from my hand into the sink and I froze, listening carefully.

The voice spoke again. It was a woman, but it was definitely not Gran. Or Kenley.

I glanced around the bathroom for several seconds, searching for Kris’s phone—which I’d had all day—and my gun before realizing I’d left both in the living room. On the coffee table.

Damn it! I hadn’t expected to be threatened in our own House of Crazy. But unarmed or not, I couldn’t leave Gran alone with whoever she was talking to, so I opened the door as quietly as I could, then stepped into the hall. I’d gone two steps toward the kitchen, listening as Gran listed ingredients for her dip, before the loose board in front of the hall closet creaked, announcing my approach.

A woman stepped into the living room doorway, and even with her form backlit by the brighter light from the kitchen, I recognized her.

“Sera!” Gran called from behind her, chopping onions at the counter. “Do you know Gwendolyn? She and her friend are friends of my daughter, Nikki. They’re going to try some of my dip while they wait for her to get back.”

I smiled at Lynn and ran the fingers of my left hand through my wet hair. Poor Gran. “Nikki is...”

“I know. Nikki may not be back for a while.” Lynn winked at me as her friend stepped into the doorway with her—a tall man who nodded at me, but didn’t smile. “This is Sean. He gave me a ride.”

Sean was a Traveler. He had to be, because the only way they could have gotten into the locked-up house was through the closet we’d left dark for Kris and the rest of my new family.

“Hi, Sean,” I said. He nodded in greeting, but said nothing. “What...um...what are you doing here?”

“We were worried about you.” Lynn frowned, studying me. Looking for signs of injury. “My sister-in-law has been ranting about you for days, and that woman is... Well, messing with Julia is never a good idea. When she disappeared yesterday, we worried that she’d gotten to you.”

“You were worried about me?” The widow was worried about her husband’s bastard daughter?

Lynn shrugged. “You may not be my family—not by blood, anyway—but you’re my children’s sister. I couldn’t face them if I hadn’t done everything I could to make sure you were okay.”

Wow. Julia, my own flesh and blood, had wanted me dead. But Gwen searched me out on her own, just because it was the right thing to do. Speaking of which...

“How did you find me?” Suspicion raised the hairs on my arms. I was untrackable.

“It wasn’t easy.” Lynn gave a nervous little laugh. “And the solution was kind of...grisly. When Julia disappeared, I searched her office. I found a bag of blood in the cabinet labeled with Kenley Daniels’s name, so I used it to have her tracked, on the off-chance that you were with her.” She shrugged. “We got no reading on her for the longest time, then, suddenly, she was just...there.”

When Kris had taken her back to the house, and out of the influence of my jamming ability.

And that’s when I noticed that my gun was no longer on the coffee table.

My pulse raced so fast that my vision started to swim, but I made myself smile. I stopped myself from fidgeting, or glancing nervously at Gran over Lynn’s shoulder, or doing anything else to tip them off to my suspicion. Which was ill-formed, at best.

Why were they really here?

“Well, you’ve found me. And I’m fine, as you can see.” I spread my arms in demonstration.

“And Julia?” Lynn watched me carefully as I sank onto the arm of the nearest living room chair, desperate to look casual. “Have you seen her today? She’s still...missing.”

Oh. Could that be it? Was she trying to find out if we’d taken Julia out of power? Or out of the world? I knew from my first encounter with them both that there was no love lost between the widow and her sister-in-law.

“Julia’s... You won’t have to worry about her for a while,” I said. Or ever.

“Oh, good!” Lynn looked so relieved I couldn’t help smiling with her. Until she pulled my gun from behind her leg and aimed it at me.

My heart clawed its way up my throat, then got stuck there, where I had to speak around it. I stood, my hands out to show that I was unarmed. “Lynn?” Her name came out as a croak—that was all the sound I could force out.

“I’m sorry, Sera. You seem like a sweet girl. But there’s no place for sweet girls in this city, and there’s certainly no place for them in the Tower syndicate.”

“But...I don’t want the syndicate. If you’ll just listen...” If she’d just let me explain that I was going to set them all free, surely...

“That’s good. And if you’d been willing to give it up, I would have let you walk away. But rumor has it you want to disband the syndicate. Honestly, you’ve been difficult from the beginning, and that little stunt you pulled with the texting campaign...” Disgust shone in her eyes. “I can’t let you give it all away. This syndicate belongs to my children. It’s their father’s life’s work, and you are not going to take that from us.”

I heard her, but the part that kept playing over and over in my head was... “The beginning? What does that mean? What’s the beginning?”

Nonononono...! But I understood, even before she could say it.

“The hiding, Sera. You’ve been hiding from me for years. At least, that’s what I thought until Julia let it slip that you’re a Jammer. Just like Jake.”

“You were looking for me? Before Jake died?” The House of Crazy was full of guns. Any other time, I’d be tripping over them, but now, when I needed one, there were none to be found.

“At first. For nearly a decade,” Lynn admitted. “Then I gave up for a while. I thought maybe you were dead—how else could Tracker after Tracker fail to find you?”

“Did Jake know?”

“Of course not. If he’d known about you, he would have wanted you. To raise you. I only knew because Julia told me. To hurt me. On the morning of my wedding, that bitch leaned in like she’d hug me and instead told me that my husband had a lover and a bastard daughter.”

She’d known all along? She and Julia had both known about me?

“I made him swear an oath, right then and there, that he’d never touch another woman. I had it sealed in blood and everything. He didn’t know why, because he didn’t know about you. I guess I came off looking like a jealous, paranoid bride, but I wasn’t going to take the chance of him fathering any more of you.”

“My family...” I sank onto the chair arm again, struggling to think through this barrage of information. “Julia didn’t...”

“She tried to find you and your family, but she never could. I found your mother’s name and info in her stuff. In the documentation from when she’d tried to find them herself. And when I tried, I got lucky. You’d left for college.”

Leaving my family vulnerable, without me there to jam their psychic signals...

It was all my fault.

“You had them killed on the chance that I’d be there that weekend?”

Julia chuckled and stepped over the threshold into the living room, Sean close at her back, threatening me with his very presence, while Gran chopped ingredients, evidently oblivious. “That was another stroke of luck. My plan was to flush you out by killing them. Who else would you have had to turn to then, other than your real family? I didn’t know you were there that night until the man I hired showed up for his money.”

That’s why he didn’t look for me. Curtis hadn’t expected more than one daughter.

“So, what now? You’re just going to kill me? So your son can inherit?”

Before Lynn could answer, a streak of movement from behind her caught my eye. Sean made a strange, pain-filled sound and when Lynn turned, I saw Gran standing behind him, her hand still around the hilt of the knife she’d buried in his neck.

My heart nearly burst through my rib cage.

Gran let loose a primal scream of rage, then shoved the dying man at Lynn, who instinctively tried to catch him. But he was heavy, and she was wearing heels. She stumbled beneath his weight and went down on one hip. Without dropping my gun.

Gran stepped around her and I grabbed her hand, then hauled her down the hall with me, away from the psychotic bitch with the gun. “Good timing!” I said, following her into her room.

She frowned at me, confusion shining in her eyes. “Nikki’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes, Gran. I’m sorry. But thanks to you, so is that bastard in the kitchen.” I closed the bedroom door and twisted the doorknob lock. And jammed Gran’s rocker beneath the doorknob, for what little good it would do.

Then I lurched across the room toward the window and jerked it open. “Can you make it through?” I asked as Gran stepped into her slippers to protect her feet.

“I’m not that damn old, child!” She bent—she was nimble for a seventy-four-year-old—and I helped her get one leg out of the window, then the other. I lowered her slowly until her feet hit the ground, then handed her the cell phone from her dresser.

“Call Kris!” I said as the first bang of Lynn’s fist shook the bedroom door.

“Sera!” Lynn shouted. “Come out now, or I’ll go find Kenley.”

“You can’t kill her.” For the same reason Julia couldn’t—that would break the bindings she wanted her son to inherit.

“No, but I can take her. And if I do, she won’t be sleeping on silk sheets. I’m not going to pamper her like Jake did. I watched him for years, Sera. I saw every mistake he made.”

“You’re going to take her anyway.” I said it as soon as I realized it, and I believed it the moment the words left my lips. She needed Kenley alive and in custody just as badly as she needed me dead.

“I will, unless you come out and stop me.” Her footsteps retreated, and I recognized the creak of the floorboard in front of the closet—and the soft click as she turned the light on, locking Kris and Kori out.

Shit!

I glanced around Gran’s bedroom until I found the lamp with the infrared bulb, which was kept on at all hours. I turned the lamp off, then flipped the regular light switch next to the door, throwing the room into darkness, except for what moonlight shone in from the open window.

Then all I could do was hope that Kris would find the pocket of darkness I’d left for him. And that he’d bring an extra gun.

I’d found the woman responsible for the slaughter of my family—evidently the third time really is a charm—and this one, too, deserved a bullet.

But when Kris failed to materialize more than a minute after I’d given him darkness, Lynn’s steps retreated down the hall toward the living room. And the staircase, leading to Kenley’s room. Surely Kenley had heard the commotion.

Surely she knew to hide.

But I couldn’t take that chance.

When I heard the landing creak with her weight, I eased Gran’s door open and tiptoed down the hall, careful to avoid the noisy board in front of the closet. Lynn was halfway up the stairs, but I snuck past her to the body still leaking blood on the carpet where he’d fallen half-out of the kitchen. Surely Sean was armed.

But he was not. Or else Lynn had already relieved him of his weapons.

Crap!

She was almost to the top of the stairs.

“Lynn!” I ducked behind an armchair when she turned, already aiming at me. “Leave Kenley alone.” Lynn didn’t have a way out of the house anyway, unless she’d already called in another Traveler. How was she planning to get Kenley out?

Her footsteps came closer, down the stairs, but I didn’t dare peek for fear of getting shot in the head. I had no idea how good her aim was.

I could only listen as she descended the stairs, squeaked on the landing, then stepped onto carpet. Her pant legs whispered against each other as she came toward me, and I circled the chair slowly, still squatting, trying to stay out of view.

“You have nowhere to go,” she said, but her taunt sounded more like a statement of fact. “You can’t get out of this boarded-up house. You have no weapon and you’re hiding from an armed woman. And before you decide you can take me, you should know that even if you killed Julia, you weren’t her real downfall. Her biggest mistake was underestimating me.”

I didn’t doubt that for a moment.

She came closer, and my heart thudded in my ears. I circled the chair to my right as she followed on my left, and my thighs burned from holding a squat for so long.

Then Lynn lurched into view on my left, grim smile in place, aiming my own gun at me. “Stand up, Sera. At least face death like an adult, and know that your sacrifice will mean the world to your brother and sister, when they’re old enough to understand.”

I stood, because my legs were cramping. And because she was right. What kind of dignity was there in being shot on the floor?

“At least your death will be more merciful than your sister’s. I promise I’ll aim for your head.”

“You bitch!” I lunged for her without thinking, aiming low, like my dad had taught me as a kid. My shoulder caught her in the chest, but only because I’d surprised her. She went down on her ass, but it only took her a second to regain both focus and aim.

I froze, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I was facing my death when I’d only just rediscovered life, and all it had to offer. Kris. Family. Freeing people and taking down bad guys.

“Fine. A graceless death it will be.” Lynn frowned up at me from the floor, taking aim two-handed. The world came into crystal-clear focus as the last seconds of my life ticked away, and I saw her finger tighten on the trigger.

Then sound erupted around us, and the side of her head f*cking exploded.

I stumbled back in shock. My ears rang. My pulse raced. The gun fell from Lynn’s hand, and her body hit the floor, half on its side. Bits of her brain dripped down the screwed-shut front door.

My breath came and went so fast the room started to spin around me. Then I saw Kris standing on the landing, still aiming at the dead woman, and the world came back to me. Everything went still, and he seemed to cross the room in slow motion.

“How...” That was all I could manage.

“Kenley let me in through her bedroom.” He reached down to pull me up, and then I was in his arms, and I was alive, and he was crying, but he looked so happy. “I thought you were dead. I thought you were both dead.”

“Is she okay?” Kenley asked, and over his shoulder I saw her at the foot of the stairs in a thick bathrobe, holding Vanessa’s .22 like a kid with a water pistol.

Kris pulled away enough to get a good look at me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, and tears spilled down my face. “I’m good. I’m so good.” He wiped my cheeks with both hands, but more tears followed. “She killed my family, Kris. It was her, not Julia.”

His brows rose in surprise, then a smile grew on his face, which felt odd, considering the dead woman at his back. “So...I really did kill your bad guy?”

I nodded, still crying. “You did. Thank you.” I kissed him. Then I kissed him some more. And when I finally let him go, it was only so that I could say the most wonderful sentence ever. “I think we did it. I think we actually just put the Tower syndicate out of business. For good.”

“You rat bastard!” Kori shouted, and I pulled away from Kris to see her standing halfway down the stairs. Staring at the stain in the carpet formerly known as Gwendolyn Tower. “I wanted to take out the last of the Towers! I’ve f*cking earned it!”

Kris laughed. “No one’s taking out the last of the Towers.” He pulled me closer. “We’re gonna keep her.”

“I’m not a Tower,” I insisted. But Kevin and Aria were. I hoped with every cell in my body that it wasn’t too late for nurture to overcome nature for them, as it had for me. And I fully intended to give it my best shot. With Kris at my side.

Kori stomped down the rest of the stairs and propped her hands on her hips, looking down at the corpse. “I’m not cleaning that shit up. He who spills the brains cleans the brains. You know the rules.”

“I tell you what,” Kris said, and his grin was irrepressible. “If you clean up this one teeny little corpse for me now, I’ll let you take out Cavazos all on your own. Bargain of the century, Kor. Act now—this offer won’t last long!”

“Go f*ck yourself,” Kori grumbled on her way into the closet, presumably to bring Gran in out from the cold. “Both of you.”

Kris laughed so hard I was afraid he’d choke.

“Don’t mind her,” Kenley said, clicking the safety on her little pistol. “That’s how she says ‘I love you.’”

“Well, in that case, she can go f*ck herself, too,” I said. But I secretly hoped she was already gone and hadn’t heard me.

“So, now what?” He tugged me away from the cooling corpse still oozing gray matter onto the carpet. “What will you do now that your mortal enemy’s dead, her kingdom in ashes scattered over her corpse?”

“I want to give it all back, Kris.” I stared into his eyes and saw my need reflected in his. “The money. The house. It’s all stained in blood, and the only way to clean it is to use it for good. For your kids.”

“My kids?”

I nodded. “What more could you do for them with Tower’s fortune? How much better could you hide them? Protect them?”

“You’re serious?” He stared into my eyes, searching for the truth. Demanding it.

“Yeah. But there’s a catch.”

“And that would be...”

“Me. And Kevin and Aria. We come with the money. You get all of us, or none of us.”

I pulled him close for another kiss, and he groaned. “I’m in...” he murmured against my lips. “Kevin and Aria are younger than the kids I’m used to dealing with, but if they’re your brother and sister, they can’t be all bad.” He frowned, reconsidering. “Well, they can’t be worse than Kori, anyway. So I’m in for all of it. The only question is...how much of you do I get?”

I laughed as his steamy gaze traveled south of my chin. “All of me. But only if you say the magic word.”

“Agh!” he growled as I followed him up the steps. “You and that damn word.”

But in the end he said it.

In the end, he said it all night long.