Page 36 of Stone’s Cage

I feel gut punched in a good way when she tells me this and lays and hand on her belly. Lily, so quiet and still, takes my hand.

On the train ride back, my shoulder hurts and I can't get comfortable. It’s nearly an hour train trip and it's all I can do to hold Lily's hand.

The next day is Monday and it's my turn to be there for Lily. Coach retrieves the gun and Lily calls an Uber. Together, the two of us walk into the 11th Precinct.

It’s cold and breezy and she looks frail. Thin. She didn’t eat this morning or last night. She's too angry to eat. Anger is her fuel.

"I'm fine," she says as she marches through the door I hold open for her. She's got the gun in a sling pouch on her shoulder, still wrapped in the plastic bag.

"Detective Reilly," she asks an officer behind a bulletproof shield. We have an appointment and get waved down toward an elevator. When the door slides shut she looks at me with those big, soft, golden eyes and sets her mouth. She's steeling herself. She doesn't want to cry. But I see her finger tremble when she punches the button for the third floor and she sighs hard, forgetting to breathe. I put my arm around her. I feel her sag a little against me and I kiss the top of her head.

Detective Reilly's office is light, modern, though there's a dead fern on the desk and a chipped blue coffee cup. We sit on desk chairs and watch him pull up the case on his computer, while listening to Lily tell her story. How the gun will match the bullet that killed her brother, how the killer's fingerprints are still on the gun, how the gun might be implicated in the death of a woman named Monica Knight. How the killer is Shreves Mallory. This raises an eyebrow.

"The youth leader?"

"He's recruiting for the Hooks from the youth club," she says.

"We know," Reilly says, pushing back from the screen. "We're just waiting for him to mess up. We've been watching him for six months," he says, reaching across his desk to snatch up a pencil. "How did you get possession of the," he pauses, "weapon?"

"I don’t think we need to go into that. The person who found it kept it for a very good reason." Lily's answer is rehearsed.

"Blackmail?"

"Protection," I say, cutting her off. I don’t want her to have to make anything up to save Coach. But this is the truth. Coach kept it for my protection. "For protection," I repeat.

Lily continues the answer, "The person who found it, kept it to protect his family."

"Why is he giving it up now? What's changed?"

I give Lily's shoulder a squeeze, just to let her know I'm right here with her. "Everything," I say.

Epilogue

Lily

Stone grabs me around the waist and, with one arm, lifts me to kiss him. Outside, the warm, June air is dry and I'm getting ready for my internship interview for the summer at a law office in downtown Boston.

"Stop it!" I say, trying to wriggle my pencil skirt back down.

He sets me on the floor and takes my face in his hands. "I love you." Pressing his lips to mine, he slips a hand under my bra and strokes a breast. My ribcage shudders at his touch and I'm electrified. Warmth floods between my legs.

"No," I gasp a little, pulling away from him. "I'm going to be in these undies all day."

He grins, sitting down on our bed, slipping on gym shoes. "Don't wear any then."

I watch him tie his shoes and think back eight months ago to when we first met, when we sent Shreves Mallory to prison for both my brother's and Monica Knight's murders. The ballistics report came back positive for both crimes and other evidence put Shreves at each scene.

Coach and Stone set up their own gym in Stoneham just north of Boston. It's a gorgeous facility they bought in pre-foreclosure just as the builder ran out of money. Gleaming equipment, a sauna, pool, cherry lockers. We live above it in one of two roomy apartments. Coach is in the other. Their clients are high end business people, single parents, college students, and every Wednesday they head off into Boston to visit youth groups and talk about health, being safe on the streets, staying away from gangs and making plans for the future when you don’t have money.

It all seems so far away and yet Sam is still with me every single day. My brother will always be with me.

"I want to thank you," I say, sitting down next to him, stroking his back, his muscles hard and lean. If possible, he's toned up even more, having dropped a little weight now that his diet is better.

Stone pushed me to go back to school. I wrote a compelling case for the Dean at Tufts, where my parents taught. She did them a big favor, and within five weeks I had caught up. My parents, at first shocked, and then angry, listened to the reasons why I did what I did and I'm not sure they’ve forgiven me yet. I do know they are slow to warm up to Stone. A cage fighting boyfriend is not what they had in mind for their college-daughter.

To be fair, however, my parents offered a hundred-thousand-dollar reward for any evidence leading to a conviction, and they followed through. Though Stone didn’t want to take it, I made him. That's when he and Coach decided to go in on the gym together. Stone offered Coach the choice of splitting the money with him or become a business partner.

Coach chose the latter. They both wanted out of New York.