by Nicole Helm
This small, helpless life was in her hands, and the only way to ensure his safety was to leave him in someone else’s.
They were capable hands, though. She looked up at Brady, whose face was way too close for comfort. She’d had a few drinks that night she’d kissed him. Still, she remembered the kiss far more clearly than she remembered the rest of the night. The impulse, the need.
That split second where shock had melted into response before he’d firmly taken her by the shoulders and pushed her a step back. He’d looked furious.
But there had been that moment. It had scared the life out of her. Just like all the things jangling in her chest right now, looking up at his hazel eyes and knowing he’d take all of what she put on his shoulders.
She stepped back and then turned and headed for the door. She couldn’t let herself look back, or even go back to the dryer and get her damp clothes. She had to keep moving forward until Mak was safe. For good.
Chapter Three
Cecilia was right. Felicity and Gage showed up not too long after she left and disappeared into the night. Brady opened the door, keeping the sleeping baby in his arm out of sight.
Gage and his fiancée stood on the threshold. It was still weird. His twin brother and Felicity. Engaged.
It wasn’t all that long ago Felicity had had a crush on him. Brady had never seen Felicity as more than a little sister. He respected Duke Knight too much to look at any of his foster daughters and see... Whatever it was people saw in each other that made them want to get married, apparently.
Gage had no such qualms. It hadn’t taken more than a few months for him to settle into being with Felicity, to propose marriage.
“We brought you dinner,” Felicity said, smiling as she held up the bag. They both stepped inside, carefully closing the door behind them.
Without hesitation, Felicity moved across the room to the counter that ran between his kitchen and his living room. She pulled things out of the bags.
“Diapers. Formula. Bottles. We’ve got some more stuff in a bag in the car. We’ll go down and get that later when I leave.”
“You mean, when you both leave.”
“Nah. I’m bunking,” Gage said, settling himself onto the couch easily. “You don’t expect to care for an infant on your own, do you?”
“I’m not sure I expect the two of us to do it either.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Gage said, all smiles. Gage liked to lighten a situation with a joke, but this smile was more than just that. It was aimed at Felicity. It was love. “Go on now,” he said to her.
“You should,” she replied, clasping her hands together.
Gage patted the seat beside him and Felicity went and sat there. They both looked up at him expectantly like he had any idea what they were doing.
“What is with you two?” Brady grumbled.
Gage slung his arm across Felicity’s shoulders. “We’re going to have a baby,” he announced, grinning. Not Gage’s typical grin meant to hide everything going on inside his head. No, this was a true smile. True happiness.
Brady blinked. It took a while to realize his brother had not spoken in a foreign language, but had in fact delivered a clear, concise sentence in English. “A baby.”
“Real as the one you’re holding.”
“But... You aren’t married yet.”
Gage snorted out a laugh and Felicity smiled indulgently.
“Did you need a lesson about the birds and the bees?” Gage asked, with a smirk.
“No. I... A baby. Congratulations.”
“I hope you’ll be able to say that and mean it at some point,” Felicity said gently.
Brady stepped toward them. Irritated with himself for not handling this the right way. “I am happy for you. I’m just shocked. It’s been a day,” he said, looking down at the baby he held. Who wasn’t his, but was now his responsibility.
Mak began to squirm, fuss, then cry. Felicity popped off the couch, holding out her arms.
“Can I?”
He handed off the fussing baby and rolled his shoulders, trying not to wince at the pain in his injured one. Felicity rocked and crooned to Mak and Brady looked at his twin brother. They’d shared everything, or close to it. Not everything. Not the separate ways their father had tortured them.
Not Elijah Jones.
“You’re going to be a father,” Brady offered helplessly.
“Not a word I’ve ever cared for, but I’ll make it mean something different.”
“I know you will.” It was a strange thing, since Brady wasn’t this infant’s father, but Gage’s news and words crystalized what Brady had to do.
He’d grown up in the Sons. Thanks to his oldest brother’s belief in right and good, Brady had come out believing in right and good, as well. Jamison had sacrificed a lot to get Brady and Gage out of the Sons together. He’d given them the gift of hope, and the gift of each other.
So, Brady believed in laws and rules—the following of them, the enforcing them. Believed in good. In doing the right thing. Always. Because of Jamison’s example. Because of Grandma Pauline and the privilege he’d had to escape from the Sons and grow up in a real home, with real love.
But if he truly believed in Jamison’s example, it couldn’t be just about upholding the law. It had to be about keeping this innocent life out of the Sons. Which meant accepting that he’d bend some rules to do it.
“Gage. I’ve been keeping a secret,” Brady announced.
Gage’s eyebrows went up. “What kind?”
“The Sons kind,” Brady said grimly.
* * *
CECILIA WAS BEING WATCHED. She could feel it, and see the signs of it. Still, she went about her workday. Answering calls. Patrolling the rez. She kept her body on alert, ready to fight off whatever was watching.
But she didn’t stop doing what she loved to do. Being a tribal police officer was everything to Cecilia, and even being watched wouldn’t stop her from handling her responsibilities.
She didn’t remember her early years here with her mother. Vaguely, in a misty kind of way, she remembered her mother. Mostly, she thought, because Aunt Eva had made sure of it.
But Aunt Eva had moved Cecilia off the rez and onto the Knight ranch after Mom had died. Cecilia had been loved, she’d had sisters, and the kind of stability her mother had never been able to give her. Aunt Eva had died a few years later, and that had been hard, but she’d had Duke and her sisters.
Still, she’d missed this feeling of community and belonging, of having a tie to her history. Maybe she spent an awful lot of time seeing the bad parts of the rez as a police officer, but she’d needed to figure herself out as an adult there. Right there.
She liked to think she had figured herself out, but this situation with Layla and Mak was testing everything she’d learned since joining the tribal police seven years ago.
No doubt she was being watched because Elijah knew she’d taken Mak. Which meant there was no hope of sneaking off to Brady’s tonight and visiting him.
She’d be able to call, though. Elijah wouldn’t be able to intercept that. So, she’d call and make sure Mak was okay and it would have to be enough for now.
It didn’t feel okay. She’d left that sweet little boy with a stranger, and no matter how she knew that stranger was one of the best men on earth, Mak didn’t.
Cecilia walked down the road toward her house. She waved at her elderly neighbor who liked to tell her stories about her mother. Cecilia wasn’t sure they were true, but she liked listening to them nonetheless.
But when she saw her front door open behind the screen door, Cecilia didn’t have time for neighborly chats. She hurried inside through the screen door, heart pounding in panic, hand on the butt of her weapon.
But it was no intruder. Cecilia’s hands fell to her sides. “Rach?”
; Rachel was in the kitchen, puttering around with making tea. She flashed a smile. “Hi. You’re home early.”
“What are you doing here?” It wasn’t unusual for her cousin to visit, or to spend nights with her. Rachel was a teacher on the rez, and she split her time between here and the Knight ranch so she could keep an eye on her father when she wasn’t teaching.
Normally, Cecilia loved having Rachel underfoot. She liked having company in this house. She loved her cousin, who’d been like a sister growing up.
But Rachel had been visually impaired since she was a toddler. Normally Cecilia didn’t even think of it. Rachel knew how to get around. She’d dealt with the impairment since she was a child, and now she was an adult who could take care of herself.
Today, with someone watching Cecilia’s every step, the last thing she wanted was Rachel here. She’d be vulnerable to whatever Cecilia had gotten herself wrapped up in, and more so because she wouldn’t necessarily see an attack coming.
“Rach. I...” Rachel was Aunt Eva and Uncle Duke’s only biological daughter. In some ways, Rachel and Cecilia had a closer connection because of that biology—cousins. Not because they didn’t think of Eva and Duke’s foster daughters as their sisters, but because the foster girls had always felt a certain kind of jealousy toward the biological relations.
It had never impacted their friendship, their love for one another. Cecilia would lay down her life for any of them, just as she knew they’d do the same for her. The four other Knight girls were her sisters. Luckily adulthood had smoothed over a lot if not all of those old resentments, but it didn’t erase the special bond she had with Rachel.
Rachel was like her baby sister. She wanted to protect her. “You shouldn’t be here today.”
“Why not?”
Cecilia couldn’t tell Rachel, no matter how much she wanted to. She’d already involved Gage, Felicity and Brady. Adding more people would be dangerous. For them.
The Wyatts and Knights had been through enough danger in the past few months.
And every time a Knight goes to a Wyatt man for help—what happens?
She shook that thought away. Liza had asked for Jamison’s help, yes, and they were getting married and raising Liza’s half sister. But they’d been together as teenagers.
Which was the same as Cody and Nina, who’d already eloped and were living in Bonesteel with their daughter after a teenage romance that had been broken up by the Sons, then rekindled again.
As for Felicity and Gage, well, that was a bit of a shock, and an odd pairing, but they made each other happy.
It was a parade of coincidences that had nothing to do with Cecilia and Brady.
“Cee, what’s going on?” Rachel asked.
Cecilia forced herself to smile. “It’s been a rough day.” Rachel was already here, so sending her away wouldn’t do any good.
“And you were hoping to be alone?”
“Yes. No. It’s fine.” Rachel was here. Whoever was watching Cecilia had seen her be dropped off and come inside. Cecilia just had to figure out a way to mitigate the situation.
She wanted to go to her room and cry. Or better yet, go home to the Knight ranch and hide from all of this.
But she wasn’t weak—couldn’t be, for Layla as much as for herself. She hadn’t become a police officer because it was easy. She didn’t want to help people only when it was comfortable.
Still, this was the biggest challenge of her career, of her life. Which meant doubts and fears and wanting to cry was normal. She just couldn’t give in to those things. And she couldn’t let on to Rachel that she felt them.
“You going to cook me dinner?” Cecilia asked, trying to infuse some levity into her tone.
“That’s my lot in life,” Rachel returned. “Cooking for a passel of helpless Knights.”
“Helpless seems harsh. And not a word Sarah would appreciate.” Sarah was the only one of the Knight girls who’d taken an interest in ranching, keeping her at home full-time. She was everything a ranching woman should be—tough, hardworking, and hardheaded.
“But it fits when she refuses to even learn how to make spaghetti. I won’t be around forever.”
A blip of panic bloomed in Cecilia’s chest, but she kept her tone light. “Going somewhere?”
Rachel shrugged restlessly. “You got off the ranch. You have a life.”
“You do too. You’re here every summer and—”
“And driven by my daddy. Or my sister, which is fine. The rez isn’t for me like it is for you. But maybe the ranch isn’t either. Felicity is getting married and having a baby and I... Well, I’m never going to meet anyone the way my life currently is.”
“Just get yourself into a life-threatening situation like Felicity did. Brady will follow in Gage’s footsteps of falling for the damsel in distress and bang.”
Rachel wrinkled her nose. “Felicity was hardly a damsel. Besides, Brady is so...stuffy.”
“He’s not—” Cecilia clamped her mouth shut. Defending Brady’s stuffiness was not what she needed to be doing right now. Luckily, a knock on the door made the subject easy to change. It was probably Mrs. Eldridge wanting to share another story. “Be right back,” Cecilia said, heading for the front door.
She opened it, expecting her elderly neighbor’s face and finding no one. She looked around. No kids giggling in the bushes playing ding-dong-ditch. Just...quiet.
She began to close the door before she noticed the small lump of fur on the porch. Cecilia stopped short as her stomach heaved.
There was an arrow sticking out of it, though the prairie dog clearly hadn’t been killed by an arrow. Cecilia swallowed, forced herself to look, to pay attention.
Worse than the fact it was a tiny dead prairie dog, there was a note attached to the arrow with three simple words written on it in capital letters.
See you soon.
She stared at the scrawled words until her vision blurred. She was only shaken out of her frozen state by Rachel’s voice.
“Who is it?” Rachel called.
“Just a prank,” Cecilia replied, swallowing down the bile in her throat as her fingers closed over the butt of her holstered gun. “I’ll be right back.” She stepped outside, closing the door behind her. She scanned the area—houses, a quiet street, no one skulking around.
Anymore.
She let her hand fall off her weapon. She’d dispose of the dead animal, and then get Rachel the hell back to the Knight ranch.
Then she’d play Elijah’s game, she decided grimly. It was the only way to keep him off Mak’s trail.
Chapter Four
Brady was bleary-eyed the next day. Since Mak had slept so much before Felicity had left, he’d spent most of the night up and fussy. Brady and Gage had a list of instructions on baby care, but it had still taken three tries and watching a how-to video online to get the diaper on right. Making bottles and feeding them to the kid was pretty easy, and Mak was mostly a happy baby. Still, Brady was glad Gage was here with him. He wouldn’t have survived the night without help—at least not with his sanity intact.
Brady had filled Gage in about Elijah...to an extent. There were things he hadn’t told his brothers. The reasons he’d had for keeping Elijah a secret still existed, so keeping some parts of his story to himself made sense. Giving them the truth didn’t mean giving them all the truths.
It bothered him that he hadn’t heard from Cecilia. Not even a text. Shouldn’t she want to check in on the baby? What was he supposed to do all day? Gage would go in to work, and Brady couldn’t keep having visitors. If someone was watching or looking into him, the trail of people would be suspect.
Not as suspect as it might be at another time in his life. People had been traipsing in and out of his apartment to help out for too long now. Maybe it wouldn’t send up any red flags, but there was no reason to chance it.
But he couldn’t bring himself to wake up the boy when he looked so peaceful, and Brady’s shoulder was currently throbbing too much to sleep through.
He went to the kitchen and made coffee, took some ibuprofen and the last of his antibiotics—praying they worked this time. He was tired of hospitals and doctors and being poked at and hmmed over.
Gage came out of the spare bedroom dressed in his uniform. It was the last week he’d be putting that particular uniform on. He was transferring from Valiant County to Rapid City PD to be closer to Felicity’s job at the National Park, and Brady still hadn’t fully grasped the reality of not working with his twin brother anymore.
“I know you miss it,” Gage said, either not understanding the pain Brady felt, or purposefully changing the topic to another painful one.
Brady gestured at his bum shoulder, tried to sound nonchalant. “Not much I can do with this.”
“It’s not permanent.”
“No.” It felt it, though. He was supposed to be back at work by now, not sidelined by an infection. He was supposed to go back to work knowing Gage would be there, but Gage only had three shifts left before his life changed.
He’d marry Felicity, have a kid, be a cop somewhere else.
If Brady looked too closely at all that, he might find the source of the low feelings he’d been having before he’d been shot.
So he decided not to look closely. “Coffee?”
“I’ll just grab some at the station. I want to check on Felicity before my shift starts. She’s feeling a little off in the mornings.”
“It fits, you know, you two. I wouldn’t have predicted it. But it works.” Brady didn’t know what possessed him to say it, but there it was.
Gage grinned. “Yeah, I know.” His smile dimmed. “This Elijah...” Gage sighed. “What do I tell the others?”