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)
Agents move around with purpose as radios chatter, and someone reads off detainee counts. Someone else confirms cartel representatives are in custody, product and weapons are secured, and documents were seized from Turner’s command structure.
Novak is standing beside the folding table with his headset pushed off one ear, and his face set like a man who’s already thinking about warrants, evidence chains, prosecutions, and all the ways today still has to be made airtight for convictions.
Wren’s beside him, and the second she sees me, the discipline leaves her face. Her eyes go wet, and her mouth trembles, and I cross the remaining distance faster than I should with federal agents watching, but I don’t care.
She meets me halfway, flattening her hands on my vest first, like she needs proof I’m alive. Then she grips the front of me and holds on hard enough to strain the fabric. “You intercepted him,” she says.
“Yes.”
“You absolute bastard.”
I laugh, but it’s rough and nearly soundless. “Good to see you, too.”
Her eyes flash up to mine, furious and terrified and so full of love, it breaks my chest wide open.
I cup the back of her neck and pull her in, and for half a second, she resists because she doesn’t like falling apart in front of strangers, but then she rests her forehead against my chest, and her body sags against me in relief.
I hold her, but not long enough, because over her shoulder, I see Boone approaching with a DEA medic beside him. His left sleeve is soaked dark from shoulder to bicep, and his face is pale beneath the dirt, but he’s upright.
Cade is right behind him, blood running down one cheek from a shallow cut, and his left forearm wrapped in field dressing.
Wren turns and makes a small sound as she pulls away from me to go to them. She makes them sit and fusses over them until they manage to assure her they’re okay. She touches them carefully and kisses them, then turns back to me like she’s counting.
One, two, three. All present and breathing. All hers.
Eventually, Novak approaches, tactfully, like a man who’s seen his share of family reunions after violence. “Dr. Hollis,” he says, “your terrain analysis was instrumental. Without it, we’d have taken heavier casualties, and Turner might have slipped containment.”
Wren wipes under her eye with the heel of her hand as she straightens. “Did you get the cartel representatives?”
Novak nods. “The primary contacts on site are in custody, and Turner’s records are being processed. The operation won’t be restarting under new guide service.”
Even with her eyes still full of worry for my brothers, Wren’s relief is visible.
Boone is loaded into the waiting ambulance, despite protesting that he can still walk. Cade agrees to go along in an SUV after a medic insists the shrapnel needs proper imaging before anyone agrees it’s only superficial.
Novak steps beside me. “I need your statement before you go, Rhett.”
Wren looks at me, torn.
“Go with them,” I tell her. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She nods once, then stretches to kiss me hard enough to make a promise of her own before she climbs into the SUV behind Cade. I watch both vehicles pull onto the logging road and disappear through the trees.
The fight is over. Now comes the part that has to hold up in court.
CHAPTER 43
WREN
Three days after the firefight, life at the cabin finally settles into somewhat of a pattern, though most of the pattern consists of me reminding Boone and Cade not to overexert themselves.
Cade insists his shrapnel wounds barely qualify as injuries, even though I have orders from the doctor to change his dressings daily. Boone seems to have made a game out of pushing the limits the doctor set out for him.
“Carrying a log with my good arm doesn’t count as lifting,” he tells me as I wash dishes and he stands by with a towel.
“It absolutely counts.”
“It only weighs—”
I hand him a mug. “I don’t care if the log is made out of marshmallow.”
Boone turns toward Cade, as though appealing to a judge. “She’s becoming unreasonable.”
Cade doesn’t even glance up from the knife he’s sharpening at the table. “You got shot.”
“Grazed,” Boone says.
“By a bullet.”
“It barely—”
Now Cade’s the one to cut off his argument. “You got shot.”
Boone sighs dramatically. “I liked you better before you started agreeing with her.”
I’m laughing as Rhett walks in carrying a basket of laundry.
“Finally,” he says, looking at me.
“What?”
“You’re laughing,” he says. “It’s been days.”
I hadn’t realized, but he’s probably right. Days have been filled with discharge instructions, prescriptions, federal interviews, statements, and endless cups of coffee. Though I’ve been relieved, the worry hasn’t fully burned away yet.
But the men I love are home. They may be bruised and bandaged, but they’re alive, and we’re all together, and when I get done laughing, I keep smiling for quite a while.