Chapter 18 · Tango Before the Storm

His thumb dug in. Hard. Right over the black thread of his stitches.

"Dominic." My breath hitched. "That's your wound."

"I know whose wound it is." He didn't budge. My knuckles were pinned flat against his ribs, right where his skin was burning hot through the fresh gauze. I could feel his pulse hammering against my fingers. Hard and vicious. "What did you find, Mara?"

"Nothing."

"You tapped the pencil twice."

I looked down. My left hand was still gripping the yellow stub. Still tapping. Tap, tap.

Damn it.

"Everyone's got a tell," he murmured. His jaw set. "Yours is loud."

The dehumidifier rattled in the corner. The cheap desk lamp threw a dirty circle of yellow light across page thirty-one, across my dad's tight, cramped handwriting, and the grid of numbers I'd spent three hours cracking. I'd flipped the notebook face-down the second I heard his boots on the stairs. Not quick enough.

"Numbers," I said, staring straight into his eyes. "A string of them. Forty-two, forty-one, then a trailing set of decimals. Looks like GPS coordinates."

His expression didn't shift. But his grip loosened by a fraction.