Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
While I’m kissing Cade, another hand settles on my back. When Cade pulls back, Rhett turns me toward him.
“I love you,” he says plainly. Then he strokes my cheek with his thumb. “Permanently.”
That word hits harder than the first three he said, and my throat closes.
Not until the threat passes, not until the novelty wears off, not until reality becomes inconvenient. Permanently.
“You don’t have to sound so serious,” I whisper, because I might cry if I don’t lighten the moment.
Rhett’s brow lifts. “I am serious.”
“I didn’t need a guarantee,” I say. “Your actions have been showing me how you feel. All of you. Every day, in all the ways you care for me.” The words come easier now that the biggest part is out. “I said it because I wanted to make sure you know how I feel.”
Boone no longer looks eager to go out to his guard shift. “You’re killing me,” he mumbles as he leans in to nuzzle my neck.
“Former Ranger taken out by emotional honesty,” Cade says.
Boone blindly reaches out and shoves at him without taking his mouth off of me. Cade catches his wrist, and for a second, they’re like boys under the men. Brothers tangled around the woman they love, grief and fear and danger momentarily pushed away by something older and stronger than all of it.
Then Rhett covers their hands with his and brings the whole group of them to my waist, and the playfulness quiets. I look around at the three of them, their faces all the same, and all so different. Three men who’ve spent their lives together, and who’ve decided I’m not a wedge between them, but a missing piece. The three of them look back at me like I’m both precious and powerful.
Rhett presses a kiss to my forehead. “This is your home now.”
“Good,” I say, “because I’m not leaving.”
“Damn right,” Rhett says, and I don’t argue with that, either.
CHAPTER 34
CADE
Three days alone used to be nothing.
It used to be relief. I used to crave the breathing room and the peace, and even the space from Boone, who gets restless when a room stays quiet too long, and Rhett, who’s always three steps ahead and sometimes annoyed when the rest of the world hasn’t caught up.
Now, because of Wren, there’s a part of being alone that feels like an open wound.
But I’m alone for a purpose, and it’s critical. Novak needs eyes on the staging valley before warrants and tactical routes are finalized, and I’ll do anything I can to speed the process.
I confirm the three cache points and find two more tucked into deadfall off game trails. I observe Turner’s security rotations and note the way they watch the road more than the ridgeline.
I photograph license plates and mark down coordinates and approach angles. I locate the makeshift command post Turner uses when he’s here. I photograph the shipping containers they’ve painted dull green and brown to blend into the landscape from a distance.
On the third day, when I’m belly-down beneath a shelf of rock, I listen through Sentinel’s equipment while cold seeps through my jacket and into my bones.
Turner’s radio discipline is better than I expected, but not perfect. It takes hours of static, clipped movement checks, and coded references before I catch enough pieces to form a picture.
There’ll be a larger run the first week of July with cartel oversight. Representatives coming in person.
This is it. The reason for all of it. An end date, little more than a week away.
I stay in position until my muscles ache, then I withdraw, leaving nothing behind except bent grass and one scuffed patch of dirt I cover with a flat stone.
Dawn is breaking when I crest the last ridge above our land. The cabin sits below me in the clearing, solid and familiar, with smoke rising from the chimney in a thin column of gray.
The men Sentinel sent over to cover my absence are where they should be, one near the north treeline, the other positioned with a view of the access road.
I let them see me coming. One of them lifts two fingers, and I return the signal and keep walking.
Rhett opens the back door as I come up the steps, and Boone appears behind him a second later, both of them scanning past me, then zeroing in on me after I close the door.
“Look what the mountain dragged in,” Boone says.
“You whole?” Rhett asks.
I grunt because my throat is dry and my body aches.
Boone steps aside. “That’s Cade for yes.”
Wren appears wearing leggings, one of my old thermal shirts, and a look on her face that knocks all the air out of my chest.
Her hair is braided over one shoulder, with loose pieces escaping around her face. She looks tired, but so beautiful, it almost makes me angry because I don’t know what to do with the way she makes me feel.