by Nicole Snow
It takes both of us and a large loading cart to haul everything into the back of my station wagon.
It’s so heavy it leaves my arms straining, and actually dips the rear of the car.
Once we’re done and heading back inside to lock up, though, I catch her arm, looking down at her, biting my lip.
“I need to get in touch with that woman you know,” I say. “Fuchsia.”
“Oh, God...what?” Ember tenses. “You can’t tell me you’re not in trouble. No one goes to her unless they’re in a hell of a bind.”
I smile faintly. “I guess Doc didn’t tell you, huh? She’s, um, kinda been tracking someone down for me.”
She pauses with a deer-in-the-headlights look.
“No, he didn’t, and...I’ll be having words with him about keeping things from me.” Her mouth tightens. “But you can’t say Fuchsia’s finding someone for you and expect me to believe you’re not in trouble. What’s going on—”
“Don’t. He’s trying to protect you.” I squeeze her arm gently. “And so am I. All the guys know; they’re helping me. Let us take care of this.”
“You don’t protect family from yourself.” Her voice trembles, a dark whisper, the look in her eyes so sweet, so caring—and it’s just that loving lightness about her that I want to protect so badly. “You fight by their side to save what matters. And you matter, Fel. Even if some idiots in this town say you don’t.”
I don’t have words to describe how this is killing me.
So I just shake my head and offer her a pained smile.
“If I fill you in later, will you feel better? I’m short on time. Tonight, just help me, please. Don’t ask. Don’t get involved. Go back to your kids and Doc and let me deal with it.”
Ember eyes me skeptically. I can tell what she’s thinking. I’m thinking it, too.
I’m about to unintentionally commit suicide.
But it is what it is.
Que sera sera—even if whatever will be will be in this instance means having my throat flayed open by a screaming banshee who’ll probably turn my skin into a new designer purse for fun.
Ugh.
Ember makes an exasperated sound and turns away.
“Just...give me a minute, okay?”
She stalks over to the small desk in the corner of the room, flips open the laptop, and rattles something off with her face bright-lit by the screen, washed out in pastel colors. Then she jots something sharply down on a sticky note in a furious scribble and tears the little blue square off the pad before circling the desk and heading over to the still-open safe.
Stretching up on her little toes, she rummages inside, one tooth stabbing down into her lower lip before she drops back down with a small, cheap-looking cell phone.
Oh.
A burner phone.
I hadn’t even thought about that.
Guess Ember’s learned a lot about these little spy games from her husband. She’s probably better equipped to face down Paisley than I am, but it’s my job, and mine alone.
She turns, thrusting the note and the phone at me, staring almost defiantly, her eyes wet.
“Never call Fuchsia from a traceable number. As soon as you’ve got what you want, you burn that Post-it, you hear?”
“Absolutely. I will.” I nod quickly, my breaths coming wet and painful, and pull her into a tight hug, clutching the phone and crumpled bit of paper against my palm the entire time. “I’m sorry, Ember. I hate this.”
I hate that it feels like goodbye.
She goes stiff, then grabs me just as tight, hugging me like she knows.
I don’t give her the chance to ask again, to say anything.
I just pull away, offering her a rueful smile.
“C’mon. I’ll drop you at home.”
We close everything up and file out to my station wagon.
As I pull out onto the road, I do one last selfish thing.
I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to call Fuchsia on my own, so with Ember there in the car with me and one eye on the road, I punch the number on the Post-it in with my thumb and lift the burner phone to my ear.
I’m almost not expecting an answer, as late as it is, but I remember Holt said something about her being holed up under a new identity, living off the grid.
I don’t know much about this strange woman, but if she’s done the kinds of things where you need a fake ID to retire...she’s probably pretty dangerous.
It makes me feel a little better to have a scary person on my side, for once.
But I jump a little when the line picks up with a sharp click, a little static, and then a voice like razors and silk.
“This is either someone with a death wish, or someone looking to buy a death wish. Choose wisely and identify yourself.”
“Um.” My tongue knots for a second. “My name’s Felicity Randall and I’m looking for a Fuch—”
“Shhh. Don’t. If you say that name out loud again, I will hang up right now and you’ll be left on your own, coffee girl,” that voice says crisply, irritably. “I know who you are. Your rather oversized paramour explained everything quite thoroughly. I assume you’re calling for the results of my hard work.”
I fight a blush and fail.
No point in protesting about Alaska anymore when we’ve been playing the part so well—even if I think it’s over now, one way or the other.
Even if I survive, even if I don’t wind up disabled or in prison, I can’t imagine him wanting anything to do with me.
“Yeah,” I say faintly. “And it’s kinda critical.”
“If you must know,” she informs me, talking to me like I’m a misbehaving schoolgirl, “I’ve managed to gain access to the phone of none other than one Paisley Lockwood of Vancouver, and really, that girl gets around. Her GPS signal jumps all over the map, but her primary residence is a luxury home on the outskirts of the city. She’s been quite deep in shady transactions, too.” Fuchsia clucks her tongue disapprovingly. “Like a rather well-known member of Canadian Parliament who keeps her supplied with a private jet in exchange for a not insignificant sum of cocaine. Now.” Her voice turns smug, baiting. “Ask me where she’s flying tomorrow.”
I glance at Ember, tense and watchful in the passenger seat, and sigh.
“I’ll bite. Where?”
“Spokane. And then she’s chartered a private plane. The type a person flies out to Podunk towns with a single nearly defunct airstrip installed just on the outskirts.”
The only reason I don’t close my eyes against the feeling bottoming out my entire chest is because I’m driving.
She’s coming here.
Probably to hold those kids for ransom, and demand everything she can out of me, including my neck laid bare for her latest toy.
Before I can say anything else, though, Fuchsia continues. “You’re lucky I found it when I did, earlier tonight. I tried to tell Leo and Gray, but neither of them were answering their phones. Don’t they know it’s rude to keep a lady waiting?”
“They’re...a little busy,” I croak. “Trying to find Alaska’s missing son, and Ward’s missing niece.”
There’s a long pause.
When she speaks again, that mocking tone fades from Fuchsia’s voice, suddenly much more somber. “Well, that puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it? And you believe this is related to your Miss Lockwood?”
“I’m sure of it,” I rasp.
“Then I can only wish you the best of luck. Do you need her contact? I have it. As well as access to extensive psychological records. She’s been in therapy with very unconventional psychiatrists for a while—and it sounds like Little Miss Dollface is off her antipsychotics.”
I could’ve told her that.
Off her antipsychotics is basically the sum total of Paisley’s existence.
“I’m good,” I say. “We’re regular texting buddies, you know. Loves to send me photos with my mom.”
“Miss Randall?”
“Yeah?”
“You have pressing issues to handle,” Fuchsia says coolly. “So why are we still talking?”
I almost smile.
I can take a hint.
“Thanks for your help, ma’am,” I reply, careful not to use her name.
She scoffs loudly.
“I’ll be a ma’am when I’m dead. Do tell the boys bye for me.”
Then, before I can get another word in, the phone goes dead in my hand.
I drop it in the cupholder and take the turn toward Ember and Doc’s house. But Ember’s been watching me this whole time, her stare practically boring through the side of my head, and now she makes a huffy sound.
“Turn the car around,” she snaps. “I’m not letting you do this alone. Wherever we’re going, whoever this doll-person is, take me with you.”
“Not happening,” I say firmly as I white-knuckle the wheel, refusing to point the car anywhere except onto the next side street in their quiet neighborhood. “What are you going to do? Trip someone because you’re so short they miss you—ow!”
Bad joke. I deserved that.
For such a tiny woman, that little jab from her fist hurts, throbbing against my upper arm. But she’s not angry.
She’s upset, hurt, tears bristling in her voice.
“You can’t tell me you aren’t about to get hurt,” she bites off. “How am I supposed to just let you go?”
“By remembering that you have a family to come home to, and you already had your little brush with doom,” I remind her—just as I pull up outside that home, my headlights spilling over their cozy house and the toys in the yard.
And the silhouette of the man pacing in the front window, dark against the glow of the living room lights. Doc’s familiar muscular shape pauses now and then to look through the filmy curtains.
“Look at him,” I say softly. “You really want to make him worry?”
“Like it’s okay for you to make me worry?”
“Honestly, I think you’re the only one who’d miss me,” I choke out, throat suddenly tight, before I swallow and force a smile. “Worst thing that happens is, I’ll go to jail, and then you can come bail me out and tell me what a big idiot I am. I need you to go home now. I need to not worry about you, Ember.”
“I can’t stop worrying about you.” She breathes in slowly, the air trembling in her every word. “But you’re really not going to listen, are you?”
“I can’t afford to. Not this time.”
“Then you’d better promise I’ll see you again. Promise me, Fel, so I can yell at you for whatever dumb, dangerous thing you’re about to do.”
I can’t promise that.
All I can do is pull her into a ferocious hug, ignoring the emergency brake poking my ribs between us to squeeze her so close.
My cousin.
My friend.
Whatever happens next, she’ll make sure my other friends—Libby, Clarissa, Haley, even the guys—understand.
“I have to come back for Shrub, right? Can you check on him the next day or two for me?” I ask, fighting a smile as I throw my thumb back to point at the drowsy pup in the back.
Slowly, she nods and gives me a pinky. Just like when we were little, I take it with mine, making the holy, unbreakable pinky swear promise.
It doesn’t change the tears in my eyes as I let her go and give her a gentle shove out of the car.
Once I watch her moving, tumbling into her husband’s arms, I reverse the station wagon and back out of the driveway quickly, pointing my little car at the highway.
The long, slow road eventually leads off the paved blacktop and into the valley, where the shapes of construction equipment and buildings in progress hulk against the dark. It nearly obscures the worn dirt track leading to the airstrip that used to be my father’s favorite place to spend his mornings.
Just a dusty mess now.
There’s not even a proper tower anymore, and the dry red earth has blown over the cracked tarmac until it’s barely visible. Part of me thinks of the bumpy landing Paisley’s going to have, and I can’t help a flash of vicious pleasure.
But I’ve got to focus.
I have work to do.
After concealing one of the gold bars in the tufts of dry grass growing all along the edge of the tarmac, I get back in the station wagon and send a single text with a pic attached.
The gold gleams bright like fire in my phone’s camera flash.
Want the rest? I text. Let’s play scavenger hunt. Find this piece and then find me.
Not that she’ll have to look hard.
My phone lights up in minutes with a response that I can hear in her lisping, cruel tones, Well, well, well. Well, well, WELL, you magnificent, two-faced, lying little bitch!
I’m speeding to The Nest with every ounce of blood in my veins icing over.
For the first time in my life, I won’t be happy to go to work today in those lovely walls.
The place that’s always come first in my life hits different today.
Unless a miracle happens—and when do they ever?—my quaint little café is about to become my last stand.
22
Lead Into Gold (Alaska)
When I wake up, I can’t remember where the hell I am.
Trying to focus through blinding pain feels harder than pushing a truck through solid mud.
The last thing I remember is looking for Eli—Eli—and then passing out in such brutal tension and exhaustion that it’s a fight to get my bearings. High-key adrenaline fools my body into thinking I’m waking up somewhere I haven’t been in a long time.
An active combat zone.
Sand in the air, in my nose, in my lungs, the bright sun beating down and baking me inside my gear. Hard-charging across a line anyone else would’ve abandoned a long time ago to push, push, and push again because there’s no option but to go home victorious or return in a body bag.
Fuck.
I almost roll out of bed and dive for a weapon I haven’t held in years.
Before I realize I’m in the cabin at Charming Inn. In Heart’s Edge. In Montana.
Far away from any mission, far from any battle solved by good marksmanship and cold resolve.
That doesn’t mean I don’t feel like I haven’t been fighting all night.
Fighting for my son.
Clawing at my soul.
It’s morning now, harsh light flooding in to accuse me as it pours through the tall windows, demanding to know why I’m still in bed when Eli’s still out there somewhere.
Practically alone. Afraid. Waiting. Suffering.
I’m up in one swift, groaning jerk that makes me wince.
Everything hurts, especially the bruises and scrapes from fumbling around in the dark out there, but I don’t care. Rubbing the back of my sore neck, I stand, only to realize something else.
I woke up alone.
No Felicity curled up next to me, clinging close in that way she has where she hooks a leg over mine in her sleep like she’s afraid I’ll slip away if she doesn’t hold on.
Frowning, I stride into the hall, then the living room.
“Fliss?” I call.
Nothing.
Not even a sign of rumpled blankets on the sofa in case she decided to sleep there to give me space. And when I look outside, it’s empty too.
Her station wagon’s gone.
Not good.
Then there’s the dead giveaway that tells me something’s fucked in no uncertain terms.
Shrub. Also gone.
The Pekingese’s carrier disappeared, along with his fuzzy dog bed, his toys, his food and water dishes. That, more than even the absence of the little carry bag she keeps her clothing and personal effects in, tells me all I need to know.
She’s gone.
Not just for the day.
I don’t know if I blame her, not after how cold and withdrawn and thrashed I was last night. I could pin it on shock, but I know the truth.
Some of it was my own conflicted feel
ings.
I don’t know if Eli’s lost in the woods thanks to bad luck and a flash bad decision by a young mind.
Is he innocently lost, or is he another casualty of Fliss’ demon chickens coming home to roost?
Is he paying the price for my dumbass sticking my nose where it didn’t belong?
I thought I could. Safely.
I thought I was ready for anything, from random acts of fate to facing whatever hellish drug syndicate is chasing her down.
I shouldn’t punish Fliss for my own overconfidence.
But I goddamned well can’t let go of this simmering, brewing feeling, either, and it’s confusing the hell out of me.
Part of me aches for the way she can calm me down, soothe my inner beast, make everything seem so simple, so easy—even when she’s what’s got me agitated.
Hell.
I’ll call her, make sure she’s okay, get that worry off my mind before I hit the trail to have as much daylight as possible for the search.
While I chug another glass of water, I hit her contact on my cell and wait for the pickup.
Nothing.
Just her cheerful sounding voicemail, then dead air.
I try again.
Again.
And again with an increasing anger that builds up inside me till I’m stabbing at the phone like I want the screen to break. I can’t even make myself say a damned word to that sweet recording when my voice chokes up in this hot ball of fury inside my throat.
“Dammit, where are you?” I snarl to the universe.
My gut throbs like it’s just taken a knife.
I’m not angry at her.
I don’t blame her for this torture.
Right now, I’m angry at the entire fucking world. For putting her in front of me like the most tempting delicacy ever made, then yanking her out of my reach at the worst moment.
I can’t deal with Fate and its shit right now.
I can’t hold together under the crushing avalanche of worrying about Felicity and Eli simultaneously.
The world’s never cared what I can take, and I’m gonna have to hold.
Because here’s the thing I didn’t tell Fliss about SEAL training and ringing that bell when you’re ready to quit.
Real life doesn’t come with a training bell.