Chapter 5 — My Twenty-Fourth Birthday—Again

"Make a wish, Evie."

Natalie stood beside me, alive, free, and smiling.

For one wild second, I smelled the warehouse instead of vanilla frosting. Pain flashed through fingers that were suddenly whole. My lungs remembered filling with seawater.

I looked down.

No missing nails. No scars. No blood.

Twenty-four gold candles flickered across the cake in my father’s living room.

I had returned to the night that began my first life’s destruction.

"Come on," Natalie said, squeezing my shoulders. "Everyone’s waiting."

I closed my eyes.

The first time, I wished for my father’s health, Adrian’s safety, and the courage to confess that I loved him. Natalie poured me champagne, pushed me toward him, and promised rejection was the worst thing that could happen.

She had already been studying my life like a house she intended to occupy.

This time, I made one wish.

Let me save them without losing myself.

I blew out the candles.

Applause filled the room.

Across the crowd, Adrian stood frozen with a glass tilted in his hand. Wine spilled over his knuckles, but he did not notice.

His eyes were red.

Not with confusion. With recognition.

He took one step toward me.

I turned away and cut the cake.

He found me alone on the back porch twenty minutes later.

"Evie."

I looked toward the yard instead of at him. "You should clean your hand."

He glanced at the wine drying across his skin as though he had forgotten it was there.

"Were you going to tell me something tonight?"

The first time, he had known about my planned confession because Natalie warned him. She wanted an audience ready when he rejected me.

"No. Why would you think that?"

Adrian’s throat worked.

"I don’t know. You used to tell me everything."

"Not everything."

I took the small brass compass I had bought that afternoon from my pocket. In my first life, I would give it to him after the party.

"Come home safe," I said. "Someone might be waiting."

His eyes dropped to the engraving visible through the box’s clear lid.

He went perfectly still.

Those words had rested against my headstone seven years in the future. He could not know them yet.

"Evie," he whispered.

I closed the box and walked inside.

One look at his face had given me the second answer I needed.

Natalie waited until our academy friends surrounded the dining table. Then she leaned close.

"Aren’t you going to tell him?"

"Tell who what?"

"Adrian. You said tonight was the night."

Her excitement was too bright.

"I changed my mind."

"But you’ve loved him for years."

"Love doesn’t require me to humiliate myself at my own birthday party."

Her smile faltered.

The front door opened.

My father stepped inside wearing his dress uniform. In my first life, he arrived after my confession and struck me in front of everyone. Tonight, he was nearly an hour early.

He saw me and stopped.

His hand remained on the doorknob. His face crumpled before he forced it still.

"Dad?"

He crossed the room and touched my hair with trembling fingers.

"Happy birthday, sweetheart."

My father had not called me sweetheart since my mother died.

Natalie laughed uncertainly. "Captain Mercer, are you crying?"

"Long shift."

There were no tears during long shifts. There had been tears in the morgue.

I looked from Owen to Adrian.

Two men watched me as if I had climbed out of a grave.

I needed proof.

After the guests left, I found my father alone in the kitchen.

"Did they ever recover the rest of her hands?" I asked.

The dish in his grip struck the sink.

He turned slowly.

"What did you say?"

"You heard me."

His face went gray.

"Evie."

I had my answer.

"You remember."

He reached for me, but I stepped back.

Pain crossed his face. I could not comfort him yet. I was still carrying the memory of his signature on my warrant.

"Does Adrian remember too?"

"I think so. We woke this morning, seven years in the past. Neither of us knew whether you had come back with us."

"Natalie?"

"She doesn’t remember."

"Then don’t warn her."

"You mean arrest her."

"Not until we know how she reached Kane. If we take her now, she hires a lawyer, denies everything, and his network stays untouched."

"She killed you."

"And if you treat this like a grieving father instead of an investigation, she may do it again."

The words hurt him. They hurt me too.

But he nodded, decades of police work overcoming one terrible instinct to lock me in the house and keep me breathing.

"What do you need?"

"Access logs for her analyst account. A copy of every file she can see. And silence."

"You’ll have them."

My father stared at me. For the first time that night, he saw more than the daughter he had recovered. He saw a detective making a decision.

"What are you planning?"

"What we should have done the first time."

The next morning, I entered Port Alder Police Headquarters and found Daniel Ruiz arguing with a vending machine.

He slapped the coffee button twice.

"Robbery in broad daylight."

"Daniel."

He turned, alive and solid, with sleep lines beneath his eyes.

"Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?"

I threw my arms around him.

He nearly dropped his empty cup.

"Happy to see you too, rookie. Should I be worried?"

"No."

I released him before my tears fell.

"But I’m buying you lunch."

"Now I’m definitely worried."

I laughed for the first time since waking.

Daniel studied me more closely.

"Seriously, Mercer. What happened?"

I wanted to tell him he had died with his hand around mine, trusting me when no one else did. Instead, I straightened the crooked badge on his belt.

"I realized I never thanked you for being a good teacher."

"You can thank me by doing your paperwork before I retire."

"Deal."

He walked away muttering about emotional rookies.

I watched until he disappeared around the corner.

In the first life, his photograph had hung beneath a black mourning band. Now he was complaining about coffee and unfinished reports.

Time had returned more than my life.

It had returned every person I had failed to save.

Then I went upstairs to Deputy Chief Helen Ward’s office.

Adrian was already inside.

On the desk between them lay the classified recruitment file for Operation Breakwater—the mission that had killed Daniel, twelve officers, and me.

Ward looked up. "Detective Mercer. What can I do for you?"

I shut the door behind me.

"I want a place on the undercover team."