by April Hunt
She glanced down at her sweat-dampened skin and grimaced. “That hasn’t happened in a long time—at least not that I know of.”
“It’s to be expected, though, right? Being here must bring back a lot of memories.”
“Yeah. That’s probably it.” She pulled away, and Cade felt the loss immediately.
He wouldn’t let his disappointment show and risk pushing her away even more. Instead, he followed her to the bathroom and leaned against the doorjamb as she splashed cold water on her face.
“I may have found a use for that key card Rhett gave us. I saw Winston and Rossbach use a similar one to slip through an unmarked door back at the PC, and I doubt it was to watch ESPN Zone.”
“Okay, let’s go.” She headed toward her boots.
“I love your work ethic, babe, but it’s not happening tonight.”
“There’s no time like the present.”
“Actually, there is, which would be when I’m on duty and can make sure that we’re not spotted.”
“There’s no way there’s anything good behind that door, Cade. Not with Rossbach and Todd involved. This may have started with getting Sarah Brandt back to her family, but we can’t ignore what’s happening here. This place is a powder keg waiting for the stroke of a match.”
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “I’m not arguing the point, but if whatever’s behind that door is as big as I think it’s going to be, we’re not going to want to sit on it. We’re going to want to move.”
Grace didn’t look convinced.
“Hey.” He slowly eased his arms around her waist and ducked his gaze to meet hers. “We both want the same things here—Sarah safe with her family and Rossbach unable to hurt another person. But I’m the tactics guy, remember? It’s my job to take our goal and figure out the best way to reach it. Waiting twenty-four hours before we tackle the door—and Sarah—is it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“If you think waiting until tomorrow night is really the best course of action, then we’ll wait.”
She met his gaze, but she didn’t see him. Her mind was somewhere else, and if he had to venture a guess he’d say it had something to do with whatever had been chasing her in her sleep.
When they’d been together the first time around, he’d been an expert at keeping away the demons, but after nine years apart, he was out of practice. If he tried to bring her back to him—and failed—he wasn’t sure what he’d do.
But he had to try.
“I know we promised that we’d take things between us one day at a time…that we’d see where things went and if they took us in the same direction. But I’m not gonna lie, Grace. I want to move forward, and I hope to God that you’re right there next to me. But that can only happen if you talk to me.” Cade swallowed the hard lump that was slowly forming in his throat. “Talk to me, Grace.”
“I…can’t.”
He’d barely heard her, but the words still sucker punched him in the gut. He stepped back, his arms dropping. “Okay then. I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“It’s too much too soon. I get it. You warned me, right? You told me that you couldn’t make any promises.”
“Cade—”
He held up his hand. “Grace, it’s okay. I’m a big boy. I can handle a little disappointment.”
Fuck. Knowing she still didn’t trust him and realizing that she might never wasn’t disappointing. It was an ice pick through his damn chest. He turned, unable to meet her eyes and risk her seeing how much it wasn’t okay.
“Stop walking away from me!” Grace cried, her voice cracking.
Cade whirled around.
Tears poured down her cheeks, dripping off her chin. “Why are you always walking away from me? Why does everyone always leave?”
The agony on her face tore him apart, and he couldn’t keep his distance.
Chapter
Twenty
Cade gave Grace ample time to run away, but her feet remained rooted to the spot. He pulled her into a hug, and her tears soaked through his shirt immediately. She couldn’t bring herself to stop, her emotions running high ever since she’d woken up from her dream.
Her nightmare—watching Cade walk away.
His cheek brushed the top of her head. “I’m right here, Grace. I’m right here next to you, and there’s no place on earth that I’d rather be.”
He meant what he said, and although she believed him, he couldn’t understand her fear. Hell, sometimes she didn’t understand it herself. She’d interviewed serial killers and didn’t flinch. She could go twelve rounds with Teague Rossbach and her mother and still have energy to spare.
But reliving the pain of watching him walk away brought her to her knees.
“You have no idea how hard it is to be the one waiting. Always waiting.” Grace took a deep breath and hesitantly met his worried gaze. “I waited for my mother to just once choose me over a cult. Too afraid of all the unknowns, I waited until something horrible nearly happened before I cut ties with the Order. I waited to embrace a family who loved me because I wasn’t sure if I could be the person that they expected me to be. And after I finally let someone inside, I waited at home while you put your life on the line for your country.”
Grace’s head told her to shut up while she was ahead, but she couldn’t. She’d spent a lifetime keeping her mouth closed, of letting things—the important things—fester inside of her.
If she wanted to break the cycle, she needed to shatter it to a million pieces so she could never put it back together and fall back on old habits.
She needed to break it to move forward.
“I waited for you so we could start our lives together…and when you showed up the weekend of my graduation, and I saw that look on your face, I knew. Somehow I knew that you were going to tell me that I needed to wait even longer.” The tears in her eyes made Cade’s face fuzzy. “I couldn’t wait anymore, Cade. I just…couldn’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that’s how you felt?” His voice dropped a few octaves, heavy with the same emotion that made it difficult for her to speak too.
“Because I’m me. My first instinct is to react first and deal with the fallout afterward—Gracie the Lion, remember? Except when I finally talked myself through all of my own nonsense, it was too late. The plane was already up in the air.”
Cade searched her face for answers. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I got tired of just waiting. That day you left my apartment, I summoned my inner Andretti and got pulled over no less than four times, but when I got to the base, your Boeing was already wheels up. You were gone.”
His hand slid up her bare arm and over her shoulder before cupping her cheek. His thumb brushed over her bottom lip, drawing her eyes closed. “You followed me.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
The words stuck in her throat, unwilling to come out. Saying them made her more vulnerable than she’d ever been with New Dawn.
“Why, Gracie?”
“Because I knew that for you, I’d wait forever.” Grace’s heart stumbled over itself as she waited for his reaction.
At thirty years old, she’d never once been this honest. With anyone. It was freeing and terrifying all at the same time, and yet her chest felt a little lighter. No matter the outcome, she’d laid it on the line…taken the next step entirely out of her hands and placed it in Cade’s.
He opened his mouth a split second before a trilling alarm pierced their eardrums, the tense moment broken.
Grace winced. “What the hell is that? A tornado siren in the mountains?”
Cade peeked out the heavy curtains and cursed. He was already half shrugged into his coat when Grace slid into hers, following him onto the porch.
People slowly poured out of their residences, all flocking to where five tall shadows accepted the barrage of hugs being thrown their way. A pajama-wearing Sarah flew out
of the Rec and into the arms of one of the new arrivals.
“Looks like Rossbach’s Elite Squad just returned home,” Cade murmured what she had just realized.
“Grace!” Sarah Brandt waved in their direction, a tall broad-shouldered man at her side. She grabbed his hand and dragged him toward her. “This is Simon. Simon, this is Cade and Grace. Mother Rebecca’s daughter.”
Reynolds’s dark eyes gave Grace a critical assessment that left her a little on edge.
Sarah, oblivious to the tension, squeezed his hand like he was her lifeline. “Mother Rebecca signed Grace to help out at the Rec, so that means I may have a little extra time on my hands. We could start our hikes back up again, and I could—”
“No.”
The vice president’s daughter blinked. “But—”
“I said no.” Reynolds shot his girlfriend a glare. “I’m not back for long. Winston brought us in for a quick breather, and then we’re headed back Outside. We’ve talked about this before, Sarah. Duty comes before anything else. Even us.”
Tears welled in the young woman’s eyes, but she blinked them away. “I know. I…I’m sorry.”
Simon Reynolds was awfully lucky Magdalena wasn’t sitting on Grace’s hip.
Tucking her hands casually behind her back, Grace restrained herself from going for a nose shot that would make her cousins proud. But, damn, it was hard. “I have to round the team up for a briefing.” Without another word, Simon left, leaving behind awkward silence.
Sarah broke it, shifting uneasily on her feet. “It’s been a long few weeks for him. Being part of the EG is a pretty high-stress job.”
“I’m sure,” Grace agreed with a nod. But it didn’t give him the right to be an ass.
“I have a few things to finish up before I can call today’s to-do list completed.” Sarah’s smile came back albeit a little hesitantly as she headed back to the Rec with a wave. “You guys enjoy the rest of your night.”
When she was out of earshot, Cade grunted. “That was real hearts-and-flowers shit. I can totally see how she fell for him.”
“Asshole or not, him popping up in Sanctuary just made our job that much harder.”
Rossbach and her mother stepped through the cheering horde of people, but where Rossbach’s attention drifted toward the return of his trained henchmen, Rebecca Steele’s locked on her daughter.
A chill immediately ripped through Grace’s body. But it had nothing to do with the quickly plummeting temperature and everything with the calculating expression on her mother’s face.
It was a good thing Grace and Cade were in their final New Dawn hours…because that was the look of a woman about to blow shit up, and Grace didn’t want to be within fifty miles of the blast zone.
Chapter
Twenty-One
The celebration the night before had lasted about an hour. Glorified superheroes to the flock, Rossbach’s Elite Guards had strutted around the grounds shaking hands and puffing their chests out like peacocks. And then there had been Rossbach’s grand speech with Mother Rebecca standing dutifully by his side.
Duty and honor. Yadda, yadda, yadda. A proud New Dawn.
What the fuck ever.
The longer the man had droned on and on, the more Cade realized this not only changed their plan, but it moved up their timeline. They needed to make sure everyone was on the same path, and that had meant another trip out to Roman and Tank’s campsite.
It also meant no time alone to discuss what Rossbach’s Elite’s had so rudely interrupted. For now, he’d hold on to the fact that even though Grace hadn’t spouted off about love sonnets and happily-ever-afters, they were definitely leaning in that direction. At least more than they had been one short week ago.
Roman—the observant bastard—watched Cade like a hawk the moment he and Grace stepped into their tent, and he hadn’t let up in the last hour.
“If you have a problem with my plan, speak up.” Cade finally dared his friend to disagree.
None of their options gave him the warm fuzzies, which meant they had to pick a tactic that sucked less than the others.
Roman wasn’t convinced they were picking the right one. “I’m just worried your idea’s a little too ambitious. We can focus on Sarah Brandt’s extraction and then send in a second team to do a sweep of Rossbach’s basement haven.”
Grace was already shaking her head. “That’s not going to work and for a multitude of reasons. For one, Sarah’s going to be missed. She runs the Rec, for God’s sake. And second, Rossbach and my mother aren’t stupid. When it’s realized that Cade and I are MIA too, the dots are going to be connected pretty quickly, and the moment that happens, whatever information’s lying around in that basement is gone. We have one chance at this, and I’m not about to waste it.”
Cade nodded. “Plus, I have a feeling that we won’t want to sit on whatever intelligence is down there. Rossbach messed with these people’s heads more than we originally thought. There’s no telling what kind of twisted shit he has happening down there.”
“Exactly. Don’t make me pull rank on you, Roman. Remember which one of us has the shiny gold badge.” Grace locked her cousin in a hard stare. “I want whatever Rossbach thinks he needs to hide behind a hidden door, because whatever it is isn’t good.”
Neither one of them blinked for nearly thirty seconds.
“Fine.” Roman sighed. “But if you can’t reach that basement without detection, you have to bail, treasure trove of evidence or not. You can’t extract shit if one of those EG bastards catches the two of you.”
Grace dropped a noisy kiss on Roman’s cheek. “See. Things go so smoothly when you guys just agree with me. You should do it more often.”
Roman snorted and stood, nodding to Tank, who was already packing up their campsite. “We’ll finish tidying things up here and meet up with you at the rendezvous point. With any luck we’ll all be sleeping in our own damn beds by morning.”
Across the tent, Tank chuckled. “Thank God, because you have one hell of a deviated septum, my friend. I don’t think a grizzly growls louder than you snore.”
They all laughed except for Roman. “Glad you all find this funny, but let’s not lose focus, okay? You guys need not only to get into that basement, but to get Brandt away from the boyfriend.”
“Sometimes you worry too much, Ro.” Grace stood and tugged on her coat. “That’s why Cade and I make the perfect team. He can Ranger us into that basement, and I’ll mind-lure Sarah away from Asshole Simon. If only all assignments were so easy.”
Cade and Grace said their goodbyes and left Roman and Tank to prepare for every possible kind of extraction.
“Easy, huh?” Cade slid her a coy look, smirking.
She shrugged. “You think I was going to admit that we’re putting way too much trust into Rhett’s key card getting us through that door? Hell no.”
They trekked back to Sanctuary in silence, Cade’s new position with the PC making it easy to slip through the perimeter and into their cabin undetected. He’d barely shrugged out of his black camo and into PC tan when someone knocked on the door.
Grace caught his eye. “They wouldn’t be knocking if they’d seen us sneak back onto the compound. Right?”
“You tell me, Special Agent Steele.” He nodded for her to step out of the line of sight and opened the door to a vaguely familiar Order member. The older man thrust a slip of paper into his hands and walked away without a word. “This place keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
“What is it?” Grace hovered over his shoulder, and when he opened the note, she grabbed it out of his hand and read it herself. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed to read it,” Cade joked dryly.
“Here. For your literary enjoyment.” She shoved the note back at him and stomped her way to the bathroom.
He glanced down at the handwritten note. “Mother and Father Mind-Bender are inviting us to a nightcap? What the fresh hell is this?”
“Damned if I know. What could the witch possibly have to say to me that she hasn’t already?”
Twenty-five minutes later, they stood outside Rossbach’s personal quarters, a cabin that from the outside looked a lot like their own except on a larger scale.
Cade gave Grace’s fingers a firm squeeze. “We’re here to have a little nip, and then we’re gone. How long can that last? An hour?”
“If you seriously think that we’re here for drinks and chitchat I don’t know how you ever got your Ranger tab. Isn’t the 75th Regiment supposed to be the elite of the elite?” Grace looked at the door as if a tiger lay in wait behind it. “She has a motive. I just don’t know what the hell it is yet.”
“Then I guess we’re about to find out.” He kissed her temple.
She’d barely rapped on the door when it opened underneath her fist.
Rebecca Steele stood in front of them, looking like an older version of her daughter except for the scowl on her face. She stepped aside and gestured for them to come inside. “And here I thought you’d found a better use of your time this evening.”
Grace opened her mouth, but Cade settled a hand on her shoulder. “Not at all, Mother Rebecca. Last night’s excitement ran into today. We were about to turn in for the night when we got your invitation.”
“Cade! Grace!” Rossbach stepped out from a back room, smarmy smile on his face. Either the man had a closet full of gold robes or he just wore the same one over and over.
Both options skeeved Cade out.
“Please. Sit with us.” Rossbach gestured to a small table where a small plate of desserts and four empty wineglasses sat. “I’m sorry we haven’t been able to do this sooner, but as you could probably tell, there’s a record number of our flock nearly ready to search out their New Dawns. It’s exciting times, but a great responsibility.”
“We’re eager to make that transition ourselves, aren’t we, sweetheart?” Cade pulled out Grace’s chair, and they all sat.
Grace nodded. “Definitely. I’ve wanted this for a long time.”
“It takes more than a desire for it,” Rossbach added, taking time to fill up everyone’s glasses. “It takes a strong will, determination, and a willingness to do whatever needs to be done.”