Chapter 34

Lincoln

I guide the newest member of the Foxx family into her new home. Lark and Lily are going to freak out when they get back from school and see her over here. “You’re sure Maggie doesn’t mind that we board Dottie here?”

Faye slips her hands inside the back pocket of her tight blue jeans. She looks around the renovated barn and smiles as she says, “It was her idea, and I technically own half this place, so it’s as much her decision as it is mine.” She looks around the stalls and beams overhead. “I don’t understand why she would pour money into it and not have at least a few animals to enjoy it.”

When we leased the cornfields for Foxx, she had gotten a nice bonus. There needed storage built for harvesting to be stored.

Dottie moos as I brush along her body. “I’m going to have a schedule for all of us to make sure she’s taken care of properly. Just because she’s here doesn’t mean she’s your obligation. I have YouTube videos queued up to figure out how the heck to have a pet cow.”

Faye nods. “Oh I know.” She tries to bite back a smile, and I give her a double take.

“Why is that funny?” I ask, eyebrow quirking at the somewhat guilty look on her face.

“This can go either way here...” She closes her eyes and says, “I know you’ve been watching a decent amount of videos about grooming and raising a highland cow because I may have put a hidden mirroring app on yours and Ace’s phones.”

Out of all the things she could have said, I wasn’t expecting that. With a small laugh, I ask, “And did you find anything interesting?”

She opens one eye and apprehensively admits, “Ace is very organized.”

“That’s not news. I was hoping you’d tell me he sends nudes regularly to someone or belongs to a knitting circle that meets on Saturday nights.”

She barks out a laugh. “That’s specific.” Seeming a bit nervous, she pets along Dottie’s shaggy coat. “Are you mad?”

I toss the brush and move closer to her. “Look at me, Peach.”

She moves her focus from the cow to me, eyes locking right onto mine.

“I’ve got nothing to hide from you,” I tell her. “And I’m not mad. I do want to know exactly what you found on my brother’s phone, though.”

She shifts closer. “I needed more details about what you and Ace were doing and if your ties to Blackstone?—”

I cut her off, wrapping my hand around her forearm and pulling her against me. “I still have nothing to hide.” I swallow down the emotion surfacing for what I’m going to say next. “You can trust me.”

Her nod against my chest is enough of a confirmation for now. Truthfully, I’m not surprised—the woman is an investigator.

She grows quiet for a few minutes as she holds me right back. Any time my girls get quiet, I know something isn’t right. Before I can ask, she looks up and says, “Blackstone is dead.”

That isn’t what I was expecting. I put down the brush and move closer to her. “What happened to him?” I ask.

She cuffs a piece of hair behind her ear, taking a deep breath. “That’s the problem. It was exactly what killed him that has me...” Looking up at me, she shakes her head. “His neck was sliced in two places. He bled out and—” She clears her throat. “It was the same wounds that Tullis had.”

I search her face for what she’s trying to tell me. Because, according to her, it was her mother who had killed Tullis and left Faye to clean up her mess. “But your mom–” I start to say, but she cuts me off.

“Maggie was there. She heard everything before I walked into that kitchen. It was never my mother.” A tear escapes the edge of her eye, but she bats it away, trying not to let herself crack.

“When did she tell you this?” I ask, trying to make sense of how she would just be finding this out.

“At the rodeo.” She shifts a glance around the barn, giving herself a second to elaborate. “My mother didn’t kill him.” When she meets my gaze this time, she looks so dejected, it makes my chest ache. “Waz did.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

“He threatened her. Told her to keep her mouth shut about what Finch & King had been doing, which is still unclear the extent of what that meant. And then he told her he’d come back for me and Maggie if she said anything. I suppose killing Tullis was his insurance policy. Kept her looking like the guilty party if he needed one and made room for him to take on a bigger part of Finch & Kings.”

A sob breaks from her chest as she punches the side of the horse stall. She’s pissed off and upset. I don’t blame her.

My adrenaline pumps just thinking about the level of danger she’s been thrust into. And now Blackstone ends up dead the same way as Tullis? It’s too specific to be any type of coincidence.

“Maggie never said anything. My mother couldn’t. And I went ahead and assumed the worst and buried it,” she says, blowing out a breath.

I wrap my arms around her. Her shoulders shake, and I let her stain my shirt with tears.

Once her breathing calms, I move my hand to her face, tilting her chin up to look at me. “Listen to me,” I tell her softly. She keeps herself wrapped around me like she can’t bear to move away right now. “None of that is something you could have known or stopped. You protected your family based on what you knew back then. It’s as simple as that.”

Like she’s physically pained, she closes her eyes. “I should have paid attention. Noticed the details better, and then maybe?—”

“Don’t,” I cut her off. “What-ifs and maybes aren’t reality. They’re ideas. And if we’re not careful and focus too heavily on them, they’ll make us spiral.” I lean down and kiss her forehead before I wrap my arms around her again. “I did it for too long and it got me nowhere. Except therapy.”

She steps away just enough to wipe her tears and let out a small laugh at my lame attempt to lighten this. “I promise you that I won’t let any of this any closer to your family than it already is.”

I cross my arms and pick up what she’s not saying. “Then you have a plan?”

“The FBI has to play by the rules. There are layers here that are much deeper than I realized, but while they build a case...” She closes her eyes, steadying herself. “Maggie is their only source. And she’s fed them all she can without Finch or King realizing it. At least, I hope. I know Waz is suspicious, and then you throw me into the mix, and what’s happened with Blackstone.”

I don’t like any part of it. She’s important to me in ways I never expected or planned. And I damn well won’t let anything happen to her.

“It puts a lot of people in danger, Foxx. I can’t just sit and wait for something bad to happen.”

I feel exactly the same way. But what I’ve come to know about this woman is that she’s not going to ride this out.

“You’re smart and capable. And I know the worst possible thing I can do is to tell you to let them handle it.” I run my hand along my jaw and choose my words carefully. “Tell me what you need from me.”

Speechless for a moment, she only blinks at me. “Just like that?”

I give a nod when I answer, “Just like that.”

“I need to talk to Maggie first.”

Same. I hold out my hand and she takes it so I can wrap my arms around her. “Just don’t expect me to leave your side.”

“Okay,” she says, nodding as she gives Dottie a few more pets.

“How would you feel about coming over for kitchen sink dinner tonight?” I ask. I like the idea of her being at my table and being a part of something that the girls and I do a couple of times a month together.

She smiles curiously. “What’s kitchen sink dinner?”

I turn on the hose and make sure the trough is filled. “You’ll have to come over to find out.”

“This is my favorite mix right now—it’s a bunch of mashups from these DJs on TikTok. They pull together classics from the 70s, like ABBA or Hall & Oates, and then pair it with a solo diva artist like Celine or Mariah,” Lark says as she and Faye share the EarPods and hover over her iPad.

“My mom used to play this Mariah Carey album every Saturday morning. It was our cleaning day. And that meant two things: nobody was sleeping in and the music was going to be loud. Maggie and I grumbled the entire time.”

Lark adds, “I would have too.”

I turn around, grabbing the pot to boil water. Most of what we have in the refrigerator will go best over rice or pasta. “Girls, are we doing a rice, pasta, or a salad base tonight?”

Faye listens to the split vote between all three options. “Do we get to know what else is going with it?”

Lily opens the refrigerator doors and starts rattling off the half-used items and leftovers. “Two tomato halves, diced onion, some leftover chicken and dad’s shrimp scampi leftovers. There's half of a container of strawberries.” She turns toward me. “Dad, is that parsley or cilantro?”

“Cilantro,” I answer.

“Rice,” Faye calls out. “I have an idea. Am I allowed to help?”

I shift a glance to Lark, and then to Lily. “Can she help?”

They both give their happy yeses in unison, and I hold my arm out, ushering Faye to take the reins. “Kitchen sink dinner is all yours, Peach.”

Just under an hour later, I rinse off the last dish and add it to the dishwasher. “This one definitely means vivid energy,” Faye says as she points to the gemstone bracelet on Lily’s arm. “Here, let's figure out if you wear that during a new moon phase, if it will have healing capabilities that morph into something else.”

Lily laughs out, “Do you think that’s how it works? Like, everything is connected like that?”

Faye shrugs her shoulders. “Everything is connected in some way or another—gems and stalagmites seem like they might take some charge from the moon, don’t you think?”

“Or the sun,” Lily says with interest.

“Dad,” Lark whispers next to me. When I look at her, she keeps her eyes trained on Lily and Faye.

“Yeah, sweetheart, what’s up?”

She keeps whispering, “That was, like, really good. It was better than the usual kitchen sink dinner. I’ve never had strawberries in a taco bowl, but it worked. And I kind of want it again another night.”

I lean into her space and ask something I’m hoping she’ll be on board with. “Should we ask her to come to dinner again, then?”

She’s watching what I am: Lily and Faye getting excited about the fact that it’s a waxing gibbous moon and Lily has a natural cluster of citrine.

“Yeah, I think it would be nice to have her here,” she says with a smile as she grabs her iPad and moves to the living room.

“Lark, you’re not allowed to watch an episode without me,” Lily calls out, storming into the living room after her sister.

Faye looks at the glass I slid in front of her after she takes a sip. “Why do I love this? What is this?”

It’s not hard to feel pride at hearing her say that. “It’s the bourbon I’m testing out.”

“I like it,” she hums with a relaxed grin.

“You’re looking a little more carefree than earlier today,” I tell her as she moves into the kitchen. Coming up behind me, she cages me in, wrapping her arms around my waist as I finish rinsing the last pan. She rests her head on my back, and I can’t move fast enough to dry my hands and turn around to hold her. I don’t know when it started feeling comfortable—this sense of ease when I’m around her, but on a night like tonight, I feel it. I feel how easy it would be to have more nights just like it.

As I settle into the weight of her leaning into me and my arms wrapped tight, my nerves kick in. In my gut, I know this could fall apart in a minute, and I plan to do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen.