As her eyes welled up, he stepped forward and captured a single, crystal tear on the pad of his thumb. “Don’t cry. I’ve been a dead man walking since I bolted. This is nothing more than what would come to me eventually. And at least I can know you’re safe.”

“Take it back . . . undo it . . . you can—”

He just shook his head.There was no undoing anything—and he was realizing that fully now.

Destiny was a machine built over time, each choice that you made in life adding another gear, another conveyor belt, another assemblyman. Where you ended up was the product that was spit out at the end—and there was no going back for a redo. You couldn’t take a peek at what you’d manufactured and decide, Oh, wait, I wanted to make sewing machines instead of machine guns; let me go back to the beginning and start again.

One shot. That was all you got.

Grier stumbled back and hit the edge of her bed, sinking down like her knees had gone out. “What happens now?”

Her voice was so quiet, he had to strain to catch the words. In contrast, he spoke loud and clear. “They’ll be in touch with me. The device is a transmitter that sends a signal and it will receive their call. When they hit me back, I arrange for a place to turn myself in.”

“So you could fake them out. Leave now—”

“It has a GPS in it so they know where I am every second.”

So they knew he was here now.

But he didn’t think they would kill him in her house—too much exposure. And Grier didn’t know it, but as long as he turned himself in, she was going to be okay because her brother’s death was going to keep her alive. Matthias was the ultimate chessman and he was going to want control over her father, given what the guy knew. Having already offed the son, it went without saying that XOps could do the same to the daughter—and as long as that threat was out there, the elder Childe was neutralized.

The man would do anything to keep from burying a second kid.

Grier’s life was her own.

“My advice to you,” he said, “is stay here. Work things out with your father—”

“How could you do that? How could you turn yourself over to—”