Barnes dips his chin in agreement, so she pushes one step further. “And I want every test known to man run on Sebastian. I want to know every single potentially toxic thing he’s touched in his entire lifetime.”

“Why?” I question, fear blooming fresh. “Did he give you something?”

“Not me. Yvette,” Zoey answers, looking into the car at the sobbing woman. She drops her voice, kindly adding quietly, “He was poisoning them both for the money. It was all Sebastian, not Yvette. He was manipulating her, playing on her confusion from the metals.”

With that, she sinks into the car, pulling Yvette into her arms and pressing her cheek to the woman’s blonde hair. Barnes shuts the back door, climbing into the front seat, but I can’t . . . not yet.

“Zoey?” I plead.

She sighs. “Not now, Mr. Hale.”

A hot knife slips into my gut, spilling my blood at her feet. Are we back to this, so far gone that she won’t even call me by my name anymore?

If so, I will fucking work to get her back the way I worked to get her the first time, step by step, brick by brick, taking down those walls until I’m back inside her. Because she’s it for me. Zoey Walker is my love, my life, my till death do us part, even if some stupid curse I don’t believe in means my death is imminent.

If it is, I’ll haunt her fucking ass until she joins me in the afterlife because I’m not nearly close to done with her. Her eyes cut my way, and I see the barest sparkle there, the tiniest lift of her lips, and I realize . . . she’s fucking messing with me.

After being terrified she was going to die tonight, after she probably thought the same thing, still in the aftermath with blood pooling and the smell of gunpowder in the air, she’s kidding . . . about us.

About love.

About death.

About forever.

I love her so fucking much.

“Fine, I’ll wait, Miss Walker. But soon . . . we’re going to have a little chat, you and me.” I give her my patented eyebrow lift and am rewarded as I watch the questions melt from her, shoulders dropping and a happy sigh escaping.

She’s with me.

We do need to talk about this morning, but she’s with me.

“One more thing, Zo.” I reach in my back pocket and pull out the coaster I grabbed from the courtroom floor this morning and hold it out as an offering. “Thought you might want to hold onto this for luck.”

She looks at the coaster then back to me. “I’m already feeling pretty lucky,” she says with a small smile, “but I guess you can never have too much luck.”