Chapter 45 Roads Backward
Eli’s POV
I knew something was wrong the second I walked into her bedroom and saw an old business card on the duvet beside her like it was radioactive.
Avalon Ridge. Blue letters, stiff white stock. Her fingers hovered above it, not quite touching.
“Talk to me,” I said.
Her eyes flicked up. Sharp. Tired. “They were there at my father’s table when I was sixteen,” she said. “They bankrolled Noah. They are in Sentinel Gate’s filings.” She laughed once, no humor. “Apparently I have had the same puppeteers my whole life.”
I took a step closer. “So we cut a string.”
She shook her head. “This one is tied around my father’s neck. I am going home.”
Every alarm in me went off. “Sloane.”
“Officially, it is a personal visit,” she said. “Practically, I am going to drag answers out of Graham Mercer.”
“Your father is not just a bad memory,” I said. “He signed contracts that fed this thing. You think he is going to roll over and tell you where all the bodies are buried because you knock nicely.”
“I think I am done guessing,” she said. “You coming or not?”
Of course I was coming. I just hated everything about the plan.
The next afternoon we were in a narrow private jet that had seen better days, not her usual flying glass palace. She had insisted on “less conspicuous.” The cabin smelled faintly of fuel and stale coffee. The seats were close enough that our knees brushed when we both shifted.
She stared out the window almost the whole flight, watching the city shrink into a patchwork, then give way to flat gray and brown.
“This trip is unnecessary risk,” I said finally. “We could have Harper dig. Rhea. Jonas. We do not have to walk into his living room to get what we need.”
Her mouth twitched. “You are panicking because you cannot control all the exits.”
“I hate walking into a fight where I cannot at least shape the terrain,” I said. “Out there, I know the angles. Your father’s house is his terrain.”
“Welcome to having a parent,” she replied, eyes still on the cloud line. “You should try it. The rules are different. They always hold home field advantage.”
“Even when home is a weapon,” I said.
“Especially then.”
We fell into a silence that was not comfortable, but not empty. Her hand rested on the armrest, fingers tapping an anxious rhythm. I wanted to cover it. I did not.
Her hometown was smaller than I expected. Industrial edges, strip malls with tired signs, a main street with one decent coffee shop and three churches. The sky felt lower here.
From the car, I saw the house she pointed out with her chin. Two story, vinyl siding, small yard. Not a mansion. Just a place where a teenage girl had once sat in a bedroom and cracked into systems worth more than the building under her.
“That one,” she said.
We passed the school she had walked past. Brick. Faded paint. Kids spilling out in backpacks and cheap jackets. Normal. That word sat wrong in my chest.
The hotel Harper had booked us was a chain off the highway, beige everything, the kind of place businessmen used for conferences and affairs. The clerk did not blink at our names, which was a nice change.
“Two rooms,” Sloane said quickly when he offered a junior suite. “With an adjoining door.”
She did not have to explain that one. Emotional survival, not optics. Sharing a wall with me was one thing. Sharing a bed down the hall from the man who had branded her an asset was another.
Upstairs, the corridor smelled like cleaning solution and tired carpet. Our doors faced each other, the little interior door between them already unlocked.
“I will do another sweep after you shower,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “You are not going to find a sniper behind the ironing board, Eli.”
“Humor me,” I said.
Later, we both stepped out at the same time, drawn by the siren song of the ice machine at the end of the hall. She was in an oversized T shirt and leggings, bare feet, hair in a messy knot. I was in a worn T shirt and boxer shorts, no armor between me and the world but thin cotton.
We stopped dead outside our doors, each with a plastic bucket in hand.
Her eyes swept down my torso and back up so fast someone else might have missed it. My gaze definitely caught on the length of her legs and the way that T shirt hit mid thigh.
“Nice… security uniform,” she said.
“Yeah, well,” I said, trying not to stare at the curve of her neck. “Shield of cotton. Very advanced.”
We lingered there, stupidly, for three breaths too long. Close enough I could have reached out and touched her hip. Close enough to smell her shampoo over the industrial air freshener.
“I should get the ice,” she said at last.
“I should make sure the ice machine has not been compromised,” I answered, because I could not stop myself.
She snorted, shook her head, and walked past me, shoulder brushing mine. I watched her go, then watched myself watching her, and went to check the damn machine anyway.
That night, I lay on a too firm mattress and stared at the textured ceiling. The hum of the air conditioner was just loud enough to make thinking hard and not loud enough to drown out my own anger.
I pictured sixteen year old Sloane sitting on a bed in this town with a secondhand laptop, fingers flying as she slipped into her father’s network for fun. I pictured Graham seeing that text file and seeing dollar signs instead of a daughter. Monetizing a kid’s curiosity. Selling her as a feature.
My jaw ached.
In the morning, her knock on my door was sharp, precise. She had her hair tied back, armor of a fitted coat over simple clothes. No makeup heavy enough to hide the shadows under her eyes.
“You ready,” she asked.
“No,” I said. “But we are going anyway.”
Graham’s new place was everything the old house was not. A condo in an assisted living complex that called itself luxury. Wide hallways, tasteful art, the faint smell of chlorine from a pool we passed on the way up. The kind of place you bought with investments in other people’s work.
He was still getting paid from hers.
At his door, she froze.
Her hand hovered an inch from the wood, fingers tense. For a second, the woman who could stare down a federal investigator without blinking looked like she might bolt.
Before I could think better of it, I slid my hand into hers. Just for a second. Warm. Solid. A squeeze that said I am here, not I am taking over.
She looked at me, that sharp blue cutting through years. Then she squeezed back, let go, and knocked.
The lock turned. The door opened.
Graham Mercer stood there, hair more gray, lines deeper, but the eyes were the same razor cut slate I had seen in old photos.
“Well,” he said, smile thin and appraising. “If it is not my favorite asset.”
Every instinct in me reacted to that word.
Favorite.
Not daughter.
Asset.
I had never wanted to hit an old man more in my life.