“So what the fuck do I do?”

“Fix it,” Brick said and stomped past him into the house.

“Remi?” he bellowed from the foyer. Mega raced toward him, barking. When the dog reached him, he stopped, licked Brick’s hand, and then trotted into the dining room to collapse in a sunbeam.

“She’s in the studio,” Kimber called back from the bowels of the house.

He stuck his head in the living room. Kimber had taken over the round pedestal table next to the bookcases. She was frowning at her laptop, printouts and folders covering the tabletop.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

“A little project I’m working on,” she said, looking up from the screen. Her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You look like something’s wrong.”

“I just ran into your husband on the porch.”

She shrugged. “Who knew all I needed to do to get him to take a day off was ask for a divorce?” she said grimly.

“Are you sure Remi’s in the studio?”

On cue, the music changed, and they heard Remi belt out a few Missy Elliott verses.

“Yeah. Pretty sure,” Kimber said. “What did she do now?”

“Nothing. Everything is fine. Why do you ask?”

“Usually it’s only my sister that can put that half pissed-off, half panicked look on your face.”

“Everything is fine,” he repeated.

She raised an eyebrow. “You know, you can trust us to worry with you. You don’t have to carry it alone. She’s my sister.”

He still itched to see her, to poke his head in the doorway of the studio and make sure she was there. Safe. His.

“I know,” he said finally. “It’s under control.”

She pinned him with a mom look. “Are you forgetting who my mother is? My sister and I don’t need to be protected from the truth.”

In the past, he’d found that giving Remi the least amount of information possible had helped keep her in line. It’s when she knew what dangers lay ahead that she made some of her worst choices.

But Kimber was another story.

“The plan is to stop him before he ever comes near Mackinac, let alone this house,” he told her.

“Judging from the look on your face, it’s not going well,” she guessed.

The song in the studio changed to something with a thrumming beat. It tugged at him, pulling him toward Remi.

“It’s a slower process than I’d like it to be.” It was as much as he was willing to give her.

“Keep me posted,” she told him. “You might be used to dealing with Remi, but unlike her, I only use information for good. I want to know when I need to start worrying.”

He nodded.

It felt wrong to have to keep the people he cared about updated on a threat he hadn’t yet mitigated for them. Like he was failing them. When the stakes were this high, he couldn’t afford not to do things exactly right.

“That’s all I ask,” Kimber said. She picked up her reading glasses and, with a wink, turned her attention back to her laptop.