I watched Lucas's face as the light from the phone screen illuminated the hollows of his cheeks. He looked like a man already in his grave, just waiting for the dirt to be thrown over him. I felt a flicker of something—not pity, but a cold realization. This man had been a shadow in my peripheral vision for years. I had trusted him with the perimeter of my son's life, and he had used that trust to map out our deaths. Every time I had walked past him at the gate, every time I had nodded in his direction while holding Leo, he had been calculating the cost of my head.
I leaned over him, the scent of the rain-soaked earth still clinging to my skin. "Do you remember the day you started, Lucas? I told you that the Reeds don't just pay for your time; we pay for your life. You took the money. You took the protection. And then you sold us for a ghost."
