Page 33 of Face Off

“You too, Aye.”

She held me for another second, then stepped back and restored the expression she used when feelings became inconvenient.

“Charm is in the east wing,” she said. “Your room is in the west.”

“I don’t need to be managed.”

“That wasn’t management. It was information.”

“Sounded like management.”

“It’ll sound different when I start managing you.”

Bliss tugged Aura toward the ballroom before the argument could grow. Cade told the front desk clerk to place Briggs and Lyric in separate rooms unless Briggs personally requested otherwise. Briggs objected, then stopped when Lyric emerged from the elevator without him and walked toward the gardens.

He didn’t follow her. That felt like progress, though nobody said it.

After we checked in and left our luggage upstairs, Cade asked Rider, Easton, Briggs, and me to meet him inside the library on the first floor.

The room sat beyond the main staircase, separated from the lobby by carved wooden doors. Afternoon light poured through tall windows and caught across shelves filled with leather-bound books nobody had probably opened in decades. A tray of whiskey waited beside five glasses, though Cade remained standing near the fireplace with four black boxes arranged across the table.

Easton entered beside Rider, still wearing the Detroit training shirt he traveled in. Briggs arrived last, without Lyric.

He noticed everyone looking toward the empty doorway behind him. “She wanted to rest.”

No one responded.

Briggs closed the doors. “If this is where Cade formally asks us to participate in a group murder, I need to know whether we’re burying the body before dinner.”

“We’re not murdering anyone,” Cade said.

Easton poured himself a drink. “Then why did you invite Briggs?”

Cade waited until Rider and Briggs stopped arguing over who would be more helpful during a felony before lifting the first box.

“I wanted to give you these without everybody else watching.”

“That means someone will cry,” Briggs said.

“It’ll be you,” Rider told him.

“It usually is.”

Cade handed Rider the first box. Inside was a black watch with a brushed silver face. Rider turned it over and read the engraving along the back.

“For the one who always sees what the rest of us miss.”

Rider stared at the words longer than he would’ve allowed if the women were in the room.

Cade clasped his shoulder. “You’ve never needed to be the loudest guy in the room to change what happens inside it. You see people, and you stay. That mattered more times than I ever told you.”

Rider swallowed and closed the box. “You’re making it difficult to insult you.”

“You’ll recover.”

Easton received a pair of silver cuff links engraved with the number thirteen on one side and a captain’s C on the other.

He looked at Cade. “You know I own cuff links.”