to convince herself that she was just being paranoid.
But when her sister appeared out of nowhere and grabbed her arm, she bit her own tongue so hard to keep from screaming that she tasted copper.
“What are you doing?” she whispered fiercely at Lindsay. “You scared the—”
“You should go back to your dorm,” Lindsay said, and this time, there was something stark in her gaze. Too much knowledge, maybe. Something unflinching that made the knots inside Julia’s belly sharpen into spikes. “And stay there.”
And all the things they never talked about directly seemed to swell in the cool spring night. The truths that no one spoke, for fear of what it might unleash. Not just because they were afraid of Mickey and his friends, whom he often called his brothers but treated with far more respect than he gave the members of his actual family, but because acknowledging a thing made it real.
It had never occurred to Julia before this very moment how deeply and desperately she’d clung to the tattered shreds of her denial.
She and her sister stared at each other in the inky black shadows of the ominous night, and she couldn’t tell anymore if it was the dark that threatened her, or if it was the truth.
Whatever was coming, there was no escaping it. Had she always known that? Whether it was this night or another night or twenty years down a road that ended up with her seeing her mother’s tired, fearful face in the mirror, this life she’d been so determined to imagine as a path she could choose had only ever been a downward spiral. To one single destination.
Sooner or later, they were all going to hell. Or hell was coming for them. It didn’t matter which. She was going to burn either way.
Julia wanted to throw up.
But at the same time, a heady sort of giddiness swept over her, and it took her a second to realize what it was. Freedom, of a sort. Or relief, which amounted to the same thing.
She reached out and laced her fingers through her sister’s, the way she used to do when they were little. Back when it was easier to pretend.
“Come with me,” she said fiercely.
And Lindsay looked as if she wanted to cry.
“It’s too late,” she replied. Her voice was soft. Painful. “He asked me to marry him.”
“You don’t have to say yes.”
“I love that you think it matters what I say.”
“All the more reason to come with me,” Julia said stoutly. “We can figure it out. We can . . . do something.”
Lindsay’s smile pained Julia, like someone had prized her ribs apart.
“Julia,” she began.
But when hell came, it came out of nowhere.
A bright, hot, terrible flash of horror.
They were both on the ground, dazed and stunned, and Julia lifted a hand to her temple, where she felt something sticky. But she couldn’t find her way to caring about it much. Something was wrong with her ears, her head. Something was wrong.
Car alarms were going off up and down the street, there was a siren in the distance, and she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten to the ground. She pulled herself to her hands and knees, grabbing for Lindsay as she went.
And they knelt there, hugging each other even though it hurt, and stared at the roaring fire where their childhood home had been.
Their mother. Their brothers. Even their father—
Julia couldn’t take it in.
Lindsay made a shocked, low sort of sound, like a sob.
And somehow, that crystallized things, with a wrenching, vicious jolt inside of Julia. Half panic, half resolve.
She turned to her sister and took her shoulders in her hands, ignoring the stinging in her palms.
“This is the other choice, Lindsay,” Julia said, her voice harsh and thick and not her own at all. But she would get used to it. She would grow into it. If she survived. And she had every intention of surviving. “But we have to choose it. Now.”
One
The call came in at 2:47 A.M.
Isaac Gentry wasn’t asleep because Isaac rarely slept, especially when Alaska Force was running active missions.
And Alaska Force always had active missions.
As the owner and leader of the most elite group of ex–special forces operatives in the world—the kind of individuals who didn’t think it was particularly heroic to save the world, because it was simply their job, in and out of active military service—Isaac had long since accepted that monitoring ongoing situations came with the territory. His cabin in Fool’s Cove, a remote and hard-to-reach