Page 85 of Crowe
I turned and looked at her. All the color had drained from her face. The portfolio was still clutched against her chest, and her knuckles were white around it.
“He wasn’t supposed to be back until Thursday,” Gator said.
“He must have cut the trip short.” She looked between us, and her eyes went wide. “The guards. He’ll see the guards.”
“The guards are out of sight,” Hawk said. “Gator moved them. They’re in the side yard. He won’t see them coming in.”
At least that meant he wouldn’t come in guns drawn.
“We’re not going to make it to the vehicles before he’s inside,” I said.
“No,” Hawk agreed.
“Then we don’t even try.” I looked at Hawk, then Gator, then at Imogen, and finally at Noah, who was standing in the doorway of the bedroom with his hands still and his eyes moving betweenall of us. “We go down, and we tell him she’s leaving. Straight up. No pretense.”
“He’ll fight it,” Imogen said. “You don’t understand what you’re dealing with. He doesn’t lose things. He doesn’t—” She stopped. Her voice was shaking.
Noah crossed to her. He stopped in front of her and waited until she looked at him. “It’s going to be okay. These three men know what they’re doing. I’ve seen them handle things that should’ve been impossible. You’re not alone in this anymore.” He was quiet, but clear.
She looked at him with the expression of a woman who wanted very badly to believe him and was scared to. “You just don’t understand what he’s like,” she said.
“Maybe not,” Noah said. “But I understand what they’re like. I trust them, Imogen, and you can, too.”
She looked at Hawk. At Gator. At me.
Then she straightened her spine and lifted her chin, and I saw the woman who spent two weeks collecting evidence under Anton Corvane’s roof without him knowing.
“Okay,” she said.
We went downstairs.
He was in the front hallway when we came down, still in his travel clothes, his bag dropped at the foot of the stairs. His guards flanked him on both sides. He looked up and took in the five of us. He looked at Imogen first, then the bag in Gator’s hand, then Hawk and me, and then his eyes found Noah and stopped.
Something changed in his face. Not surprise exactly. Recognition, and underneath it, something uglier, like a man looking at something he felt entitled to but couldn’t have.
“You,” he said. Not to Imogen. To Noah.
Noah held his gaze without flinching. I watched him do it and felt something tight and proud move through my chest.
“Mr. Corvane,” Noah said. Calm. Like they were meeting at a function.
Corvane’s jaw tightened. “You did this. This is because of you.”
“No,” Noah said. “This is because of you. I just gave her a number to call.”
The silence that followed was the kind that preceded something.
“Imogen,” he said coldly.
“Anton.” Her voice was steadier than I expected. “I’m leaving.”
“You’re not.”
“I am.” She took one step forward and then stopped, and I could see what it cost her. He knew from personal experience that every instinct she had was telling her to step back, to make herself smaller, to manage his reaction the way she’d learned to manage him, but he didn’t step back. “I’m leaving, and I’m taking everything I found on your hard drive.”
His face went through something else then. His eyes moved to the portfolio in her arms, and I saw him understand exactly what was in it, and I saw him decide something.
He lunged for her, which I hadn’t anticipated. I’d been prepared for him to tell his guards to take her or to come after one of us, but instead, he went after Imogen. It happened in the space between one breath and the next. I was moving, Hawk was moving, Gator was already cutting right, and my amazing, brave wild card came from the side.
