A sudden noise from a darkened corner startles me and I whip round to see David sitting in the steel chair we set out for him next to the dishwasher.

“Jesus Feckin’ Christ,” I hiss as I bend at the waist and slap a hand against my heart as its chambers flood with adrenaline. “What the hell are you still doing here?”

David doesn’t answer me, of course. He’s not spoken a single word since we found him in Thorsten’s mansion. His vacant gaze is caught on the floor as he rocks a slow rhythm in his chair, something he seems to do on the rare occasions when he’s agitated.

I walk over to him and lean down enough to scrutinize his expressionless face. He seems to calm a little when I lay a hand on his slumped shoulder. Nothing else appears amiss about him.

“Thank fuck I came, mate. Hate the thought of you spending the night in here.”

I leave him to look at the schedule of shifts on the whiteboard. There’s a note for the line cook Jake to drive David home after brunch. Jake is our newest staff member here, having relocated from Seattle six months ago, and he’s been nothing but reliable so far, so this is level of fuck-up is unusual and definitely something I’ll give him shit for on Tuesday.

When I’ve got David settled with a glass of water, I focus on the task at hand, flipping the switch for the fans. One of them doesn’t turn on. There’s not much I can see with the filter shielding the mechanism from view, so I gather my tools from the office and head to the electrical panel to kill the power for that section of the kitchen. Once I’ve dismantled the casing, it doesn’t take long to find the source of the problem—a disconnected wire. It takes a little fiddling to get everything put back together, but it’s a pretty straightforward job and I get it all finished just a few minutes before four o’clock.

“I’ll be right back, David,” I say, my brow furrowing as his gentle, metronomic rocking resumes. “I’m just going to turn the breaker on, then as soon as Sloane arrives, we’ll get you home, okay?”

I don’t know how much he comprehends. Nothing changes in his demeanor.

Shaking my head, I turn away and gather my tools to store them in the office. With a flip of the kitchen switch in the breaker box, I turn the power to the fans back on.

When I return to the kitchen and round the stove, I stop dead.

The cold muzzle of a gun presses to the center of my forehead.

A deep chuckle and the smooth, unfamiliar voice of the man holding the Glock clash with the panic that floods my veins. “Well, well,” he says. “The Butcher of Boston.”

I raise my hands as the muzzle presses harder to my face in warning.

“And your little Orb Weaver will be here any minute, too. As tempting as that party of three sounds, I’d really like to spend some quality time together, just you and me. So, you’re going to make her leave.”

A key slides into the lock of the back door as the click of the safety releases on the gun pointed at my face.

“If you don’t, I’ll kill her,” he whispers, taking a step backward toward the shadows that envelop the corner of the room. He shifts the weapon, pointing it toward the door for the corridor, the one Sloane will walk through any moment. “And I’ll enjoy every second of making you watch.”

OceanofPDF.com

21

OceanofPDF.com

KEYS

OceanofPDF.com

SLOANE

I slot my key into the lock at the service entrance of 3 In Coach and push the heavy steel door into the shadows of the corridor. When I slip it into my pocket, I keep my hand around the cool metal. Aside from the one to Lark’s apartment, I’ve never had someone else’s key before. Knowing how much the restaurant means to Rowan and his brothers, the ridged metal feels sacred to me. I like to hold it against my palm, to know that I mean something to Rowan too, enough that he wants me to share this place with him.

I know Rowan has been incredibly stressed with everything going on. I’ve felt him close down from time to time, and whenever I questioned him on it, he said he just wanted to leave the problems at work and forget about them for a while. That made sense, and I’ve tried to create the same safe place for him that he’s always made for me. Our own little realm where the outside world disappears for a while. But this morning was the first time I felt the picture shift in a way that had my guts twisting and my heart crawling into my throat. Until now, I’d not asked myself if the burden that weighs him down is me.

I have to keep reminding myself to take him for his word, that he didn’t mean it that way, even though my insecurities keep rattling around in my head like insects pinging against panes of glass. If he said I’m not a burden, then he’s being honest… right? We all say things we don’t mean. It will just take a day or two to shake it, and things will get better once Butcher & Blackbird is fully up and running.

I press the key tighter in my palm. It’s proof. He and I are not temporary. Our circumstances are, and they’ll pass in time.

“Rowan,” I call out as I near the kitchen. “I found this place online that looks pretty cool, with a rooftop patio. Maybe we could…”

My voice trails off as I enter the room.

Rowan is standing with his hands braced against the edge of the stainless steel prep counter, his shoulders tense, his head bent. When his gaze collides with mine, it’s wracked with darkness and defeat.

“What’s wrong…?” I ask as I slow to a stop and take him in. My heart surges with worry. Every spark of intuition tells me everything about this is very wrong. “Did something happen with the restaurant? Are you okay?”

I start to approach him, my hand raised to touch his arm, but he straightens abruptly and backs out of reach. My feet halt instantly. My heart rate doubles.

“Are you okay?” I ask again.

His voice holds no kindness, no warmth, not even familiarity when he says, “No, Sloane. I am not okay.”

My throat collapses around the words I want to say. Heat erupts beneath my skin, burning every inch of me from the inside out. My gaze bounds between the confines of Rowan’s dark, sharp stare, its edges bordering on lethal. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that you need to go home.”

“Okay… I’ll just get an Uber—”

“No. To Raleigh. You need to go back where you belong.”

“I don’t…” a sudden burst of emotion chokes my throat. My nose burns. A sting floods my eyes. “I don’t understand.”

Rowan drags a hand through his hair and breaks his gaze away before he takes another step backward, clearly agitated that I’m lingering here. I’m desperate to take a step closer, to just touch him and make whatever this is stop before it all disintegrates in my hand like a castle of sand swept out to sea.

“Did I do something? If I did something, you need to tell me. We can talk it through.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose as a frustrated sigh empties from his lungs. “You didn’t do anything Sloane, this just isn’t fucking working. And I need you to go.”

“But… I thought you said we would do what normal people do. Talk to one another. Make it work.”

“We’re not ‘normal people’, Sloane. We can’t pretend to be something we’re not. Not anymore. I told you this back in April, on the tenth. I said that I never wanted to be like everybody else.”

I shake my head, trying to claw my way through confusion and into my memories. “I don’t remember—”

“Tenth or the thirteenth. Whatever. It’s just like I told you in the car on the way to the gala. I said even then that the restaurant was the only thing that made sense in my life. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that there are some things we can never have. I can never have a normal life. Neither can you. We’re monsters in this world.”