Chapter 7

The morning of her departure arrived before dawn.

She had laid everything out on the bed — the false papers, the fake jewelry, the small velvet box of pearl earrings that were a parting gift from her father and also, she suspected, a tracker.

And the last one, the most important, the one that had survived fire and betrayal. But when Rayna reached for it, the drawer was empty.

She knew, without needing to think, who had taken it. She knew, without needing to think, who had told her.

She found Mia in the side garden.

Mia was sitting on the low stone bench in a pale dress, the sun in her hair, a small pile of dry grass on her lap.

“Mia.” The name came out of Rayna's throat low and shaking.

Mia's hand jerked. The last of the woven body came apart in her fingers. The straw fell into her lap in a small, dead heap, and there was nothing recognizable left of it at all.

Mia looked up with wet eyes. "Rayna—" The word was small, watery, prettily broken. "Please don't be angry. I wanted to make Ethan something to remember me by — just a little keepsake — I didn't think you'd —"

She rose to her feet as she spoke. Apologetic. Trembling. Both hands lifted, palms out, as if she were the one being threatened.

And as she rose, the toe of her shoe came forward — perfectly aimed — and ground down on what was left of the straw on the gravel.

Carefully. The way a woman crushes out a cigarette.

The last of the rabbit's shape disappeared under her shoe.

Rayna's vision went white at the edges.

She moved before she thought. Her hand went to the small holster at her hip, and the pistol came up, and she took two steps forward with the muzzle already rising.

A hand closed around her wrist from behind and twisted hard.

She knew that grip before she saw the face.

Ethan locked her arm across her own chest, pinning the gun against her ribs, and his voice was low and tight against her ear.

"It's a straw rabbit, Rayna. You're going to pull a gun on family over a straw rabbit?"

She turned her head. Her eyes were burning.

“You gave it to her,” Rayna said. Not a question. “You told her where I kept it.”

He didn't answer. Ethan’s silence was the only answer she needed.

“Let me go,” she whispered.

He didn’t.

“Ethan. Let. Me. Go.”

He held on tighter. “Because of you, Mia might die on that mission. Does a pile of straw really matter more than her life?”

"A pile of straw." Rayna repeated it, very quietly. "You know exactly what that was. You know who made it."

His jaw clenched.

“It was my mother’s.”

Ethan flinched. His grip loosened—just a fraction.

“I’ll make you another one,” he said. “A better one.”

Rayna wrenched her wrist free and lunged for Mia. “I don’t want anything from you.”

In a single motion Ethan drew his sidearm and leveled it at her chest.“Stop, or I’ll shoot!”

She stopped. She looked at the gun. She looked at the man holding it.

The second time, now. The second time he'd put a gun on her under this roof.

She laughed—a thin, wild laugh—and she kept walking.

Ethan saw something in her face and flinched. His arm jerked. The pistol kicked in his hand before he could catch it.

The crack of the shot rang off the marble.

The bullet tore past her shoulder, grazing skin. Blood soaked through her sleeve.

Time stopped.

Rayna looked down at her own hand—still holding the training pistol she had grabbed.

Ethan’s gun clattered to the ground. His face went gray.

He had just realized.

The pistol in her hand was a training replica. It couldn't have fired a round if she'd begged it to.

“You weren’t going to shoot,” he breathed. “You never… you never had bullets. Why didn’t you shoot me, Rayna? You hate me. Why didn’t you pull the trigger?”

She didn’t answer.

Her legs gave out. She fell into his arms before she could stop herself.

Ethan caught her. She felt his arms close around her, felt how badly his hands were shaking. She had held back tears for two days.

Now one slipped down and broke against the back of his hand.

He flinched as if she'd burned him.

“Sorry,” he said. “God, I’m sorry.”

She weren't even armed.

Why was he so certain she'd kill him?

She tried to speak. Her eyelids were too heavy.

Something was rising in his chest that he couldn't name and couldn't swallow, something that locked his throat shut.

In Ethan Chase's arms, in the wreckage of a straw rabbit, Rayna closed her eyes.