Agony ricocheted through my spirit, pinging from one side to the other. My head spun. I reached up and grabbed two handfuls of hair to try to make sense of it.
“No . . . my mother . . . it was in her things.”
I blinked, trying to see through the disorder.
He shook his head. “Izzy brought this to you the night she took off, Maxon. She couldn’t go on a day more without you knowing who you’d always been to her. Who you’d been to us. The faith we had in you. She dropped it there on the ground when she found you with that girl. Pretty sure she left her heart with it.”
Oh God.
Izzy.
She’d seen me with Clarissa. That was why she’d run so far. I knew she’d hear about us, but the last thing I’d wanted was her to have to witness it.
Pain lanced, and those pieces that had been scattered between us shivered.
Strewn between thirteen years and two thousand miles.
Could sense them rushing to come back together.
“You’re everything to them, Maxon. To Izzy and those boys, and I’m not gonna stand aside and let you mess that up again without sayin’ my piece. You’ve messed up. Messed up good. But I’ve always known you belonged. Always considered you my son. A part of our family. Don’t get stupid and ruin that now.”
Benjamin’s crooked smile flashed through my mind, and Dillon’s laughter echoed in my ear.
I felt the pressure of Izzy’s hand on my heart.
It was her all along.
I’d told Benjamin I’d found that book when I’d needed it most.
It was the truth.
It was on what was probably my darkest day.
I’d found out Izzy had left town, and the little bit of light left inside me had gone dim. I’d been close to giving in, two seconds from following in my father’s seedy footsteps.
Kiel had been bugging me to get back on board. Told me I owed it to him and Clarissa. That it was stupid to resist because I was just going to end up there anyway.
I’d found it, my heart in my throat as I’d turned the pages and read the story, as I’d felt the illustrations. The message of it had been so staggering that it’d dropped me to my knees.
It was the day I’d made the decision to join the force. To commit my life to making a small bit of the world a better place. To give rather than take.
A penance. A punishment.
To prove to my mama that something good could rise out of the ashes.
That I was the dragon, after all.
My dragon.
Izzy’s tender voice swamped me.
Her belief.
It was her. It was her.
I jumped when my phone went off in my back pocket, and it jerked me out of the memories and the realization that pierced me like an arrow.
Invading.
Cleansing.
Little Bird.
All along, it had been her who’d been my savior. The one who had made me want to be better.
Different.
I dug out my phone. Pete’s name lit the screen. “Yeah?” I answered, voice clogged in desperation.
He didn’t hesitate. “I found the connection. Had to dig pretty deep, but Zachary Keeton is Clarissa’s third cousin. That car that ran you and Izzy off the road last night? It had been reported stolen. Driver ditched it in midtown Charleston.”
It was instant.
The threads coming together.
A tie.
This kid had been working with Kiel and Clarissa.
Their fucking scheme had been going on for years. Even though I had no details, my gut had known it, and out of some fucked-up obligation, I’d turned a blind eye.
I’d assigned her credit for saving Izzy that day.
And I wondered if that had been Clarissa’s plan all along.
Clarissa’s warning from last night threaded through my being. “Now, she needs to go. Send her away, Mack, before it’s too late. She doesn’t belong here with you.”
“Get me two officers here, now,” I grated, a disquiet unlike anything I’d felt before rushing through my spirit.
Ending the call, I met Mr. Lane’s worried gaze before I was shouting, “Go around the back of the house, make sure it’s clear. I’m going through the front.”
Then I was running. Sprinting across the meadow and through the trees and out onto the lawn.
Fear in my throat. Protection lining my bones.
I would never allow anything to happen to them. They were my destiny. My purpose. My right.
And I was finished letting my past dictate that.
I would ensure everything was safe at the house, wait for the officers to show, and then I was ending this.
Clarissa and Kiel and this punk kid were going down.
Pulling my gun from its holster, I broke out into the clearing, only to stumble with the force of the unrest that tumbled through the heavens.
Same as it’d been that day.
A quiet violence that skimmed and shivered through the sky.
I started running for the house. That sensation only amplified with each thud of my boots.