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I was still in Harold's arms when I heard the door open and looked up to see my father enter the suite. I saw right away that he no longer had his coat and that his shirt was torn, but the most gut-wrenching sight was his face, one side of which was covered in blood.

I looked at Harold, trying to get my bearings. "What happened, Mr. Reese?" His voice was reassuringly matter-of-fact.

"I had a disagreement with some of Elias's operatives," he said shortly, his voice not rising above its usual near-whisper. I watched him walk into the bathroom, feeling a little bit sick to my stomach.

When he came out after a few minutes, I could see that his injury wasn't as bad as I'd thought. A cut lip had been the source of the bleeding, but beyond that, he seemed mostly intact.

"I'm sorry if I scared you," he said, meeting my eyes before looking at Harold, who had resumed his usual seat. "We were wrong, Finch. We made a mistake."

"We?" questioned Harold drily. "You mean me, of course, the source of the information."

My dad looked genuinely annoyed. "It doesn't matter. The point is, Elias isn't after me; he's after you."

"What?" Mr. H looked genuinely shocked for a moment, but he quickly forced himself back to his usual appearance of calm.

"I got it out of one of them after some intense discussion," said Dad, pointing wryly to his lip.

"Are you sure, Mr. Reese?" asked Harold, and I could hear in his voice that he was still shaken, though he was trying not to seem like it.

"Totally sure. He meant to make you more vulnerable by using Katherine to take me out."

Harold stood up quickly. "We'll have to leave here, then. We have to split up and go into deeper hiding.

"Split up?" I hadn't said anything up to that point because I was smart enough to know when I should keep my mouth shut and let adults talk, but the thought of the three of us separating made an unexpectedly intense wave of apprehension shoot through me.

"I'm sorry," said Harold, stopping in the middle of frantically gathering his belongings. "You'll be the safest with your father. As long as we're together, we're all sitting targets."

"I'm not going to leave you alone to deal with this, Harold," said my dad, standing dead still in the middle of the room, the opposite of Mr. H's frenetic activity.

"No one said that, Mr. Reese," the other man responded, shutting his laptop into a padded case. "We'll just have to be more discreet about our association for the time being."

I was glad to hear Harold sounding like himself.

Before I had time to collect my thoughts, I found myself, my dad, and as many of the things Harold had bought me as we could carry, in a taxi bound for a house in the most expensive part of Manhattan. I didn't know where Harold was going. He wouldn't even tell my dad.

I wanted to know how they would get in touch with each other, but my dad wouldn't tell me. He was quiet, even more than usual, and his hand was constantly on the gun in his waistband in case anything went wrong on the taxi ride. I was afraid to say anything; his tenseness was like something I could taste in the air around me. I didn't want to make him angry; above all, I didn't want that.

Finally, after an uncomfortable forty-five minute ride through traffic, we found ourselves in a neighborhood like you see on tv in reality shows about rich people who never work. The taxi driver pulled up in front of a big white house and stopped, and I just stared. I couldn't believe it was where we were meant to stay.

My dad was used to it, I guess. He jumped out of the taxi right away and paid the driver before helping me with the bags, then took out a set of keys and walked up to the front door, just as if we owned the place. I tried to follow his example and look unsurprised, but I don't think I did a very good job.

Once inside, I just stood at the entrance to the house and stared. I had never seen anything like it. Uncle Robert and Aunt Judy had been lucky if they made rent; a few times they hadn't, and the threat of homelessness had been all too real (a threat Aunt Judy never failed to attribute to the cost of raising me). This house, though, was everything I had read about in books with lords and ladies and mansions that I'd never been able to visualize. It had a large curved staircase, an upper balcony, a giant kitchen with gleaming marble countertops, and the squishiest carpet I'd ever felt. Those were just the things I found at first glance.

I looked around for my dad after a little while, and I realized that he had gone into a large living room to the right of the house's entryway, a comfortable-looking room with a sofa and two overstuffed chairs. He was sprawled out on the couch, not asleep, but resting completely inert, bone-tired from whatever he'd been through with Elias's associates. Seeing him that way scared me even more than the blood. I sat down in one of the chairs and tried not to look at him, but my eyes kept being drawn back to his tired, worried face.

"Come here."

His voice was so quiet I hardly heard him, but I went over to the sofa obediently and stood in front of him. He sat up halfway and made room, and I sat down next to him.

"Don't be scared," he said. "I won't let anything happen to you. I promise." I still felt afraid, but I tried to smile. "Go pick a room," he continued. "There're tons to choose from."

"Can I—" I looked down at my hands—"Could I have one next to yours?"

"Of course. Just pick me a good one."