“You’ve blown up all my labs, taken out or turned all our boys, Leary’s running one of your fucking crews.” Saliva filling her mouth, she swung an arm down to the body prone on the floor at her side, indicating a termination of her resources, the finality of which Valenzuela was sure not to have missed. “You don’t eliminate something that’s not a threat,” she reminded him.
Valenzuela settled in like he was about to tell a tale and spoke again.
“You see, Georgia, I have a rather tenacious adversary. I’ll need patience in dealing with them, and in the meantime, I need nothing further to take my attention. I also need not to damage relations with those who keep out of my way. I’m afraid, for you, it’s important for me to keep the Sebring brothers happy.”
“So you’re telling me, Nick playing my sister…what? He’s got some guilt and he wants me dead because pissing you off got her dead? So to make him happy you’re gonna take me out even though because of you I’ve got nothing?”
He shook his head. “Nick doesn’t want you dead. He wants you neutralized.”
So the invisible Nick Sebring was communicating his wishes.
Fucking fucker.
She should have taken care of him first. Unfortunately that had not been a viable option, considering at the time the House of Shade wasn’t strong enough to withstand the onslaught from Knight Sebring and Marcus Sloan if she had.
Then he played her sister and when shit got hot for him, he disappeared.
Months…nothing.
Now…
Fuck.
She leaned back slightly and crossed her arms on her chest, drawling acidly, “Congratulations. Job done.”
“It’s me who wants you dead,” Valenzuela stated.
Georgia Shade froze solid.
“You’ve cost me money. You’ve cost me time. You’ve cost me assets. All of that has value. I don’t like losing things I value, Georgia,” Valenzuela went on.
She stared at him, giving all she had to keeping her breathing even. She’d lost everything to this motherfucker. She was goddamned going to keep her dignity.
“But because he loves your sister, Sebring wants you neutralized, which means breathing,” Valenzuela continued.
She let out a heavy breath, saying, “He didn’t love my sister. He played my sister.”
“He seems to be going far out of his way for a woman he’s playing with.”
“Then he’s going in the wrong direction since, because of you, there’s no sister to love.”
Valenzuela’s knowing smile sliced through her sternum all the way up her gullet.
A knowing smile.
What did he know?
He loves your sister.
Loves.
Goddamned loves.
In her current situation, the only thing that could keep her alive was the wishes of Marcus Sloan.
Or a Sebring.
No. Not the wishes of a Sebring.
The wishes of Olivia who would never want her dead.
Fuck, Liv was alive.
This was Sebring.
She looked down at Gill and felt the dry sting her eyes.
It was all Sebring.
She looked back to Valenzuela to see his smile had died.
“Unfortunately,” he kept going, “that doesn’t work for me.”
One of his men started moving toward her. She felt another approaching from behind.
She opened her mouth to shout.
She got not a sound out.
Fifteen minutes later, beaten bloody and bullet-ridden, Georgia Shade bled out five feet away from Gill Harkin’s body.
She was found with the gun that murdered her man in her hand, powder residue on her fingers. His fingers were curled around the gun that had the clip that had been emptied into her body.
It looked like a lovers’ spat gone terribly wrong in a ratty twenty-dollar-a-night motel in the middle of nowhere between two criminals desperate and on the run.
And the House of Shade was no more.
* * * * *
Eric
Eric Turner prowled out of the motel room, phone to his ear.
He heard the connect and got the clipped greeting, “This number is only for emergencies. Please, fuck, do not tell me you’re calling with the score of the goddamned Broncos game like last time. I’m in Tennessee, not on the moon, and we got fuckin’ DIRECTV with Sunday Ticket. I get the scores same as you do.”
“I’m not callin’ ’cause a’ that. I’m callin’, askin’ you to please tell me that bloodbath is not you,” he clipped back.
There was a beat of silence before Nick asked, “What bloodbath?”
Turner gave him short, curt details.
“Fuck,” Nick muttered.
Turner relaxed.
It wasn’t Nick.
“Well, the good news is, Denver is gonna be a lot more quiet, Valenzuela won his war against the House of Shade. No more explosions. No more dead bodies,” Eric noted.
“No more war,” Nick concurred.
They were both silent.
Turner drew in breath.
“She’s resting easy now, man,” he said quietly.
For another beat, Nick didn’t answer.
And the one word was weighty with meaning when he finally said it.
“Yeah.”
Hettie was avenged. The bad guys got their due. Not how Turner would have played it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen all the same.
Moving them out of that heavy, he observed, “Now all we gotta do is sit and wait to see how Kane Allen and his Chaos crew deal with Valenzuela’s shit.”
“That MC is solid, Turner, so I hope there are no more bodies. Least not ones from the wrong side,” Nick replied.
“I hope that too. Though I’ll have to get it through the grapevine.” He glanced back at the open door to the motel room, now teeming with local cops and not-local Feds, feeling the twist of disgust pull at his mouth. “Done with this shit.”
Nick sounded stunned. “You retiring early?”
“Job offer. Better money. And what I’m gonna be doing, likely not gonna end up in some tatty motel miles from home starin’ at a man with no face.”
“Christ,” Nick muttered.
“Not to mention, I got unfinished business I can’t take care of inside. That snake’s still in the garden, Nick, and I gotta get hold of the resources I need to deal with it. Those resources not bein’ in the FBI. One of my team got dead because of that. Nearly two. She’s avenged. But the job isn’t done.”
Even with Tucker and Sylvie Creed’s best efforts, they still didn’t know who’d turned on his team.
Eric Turner intended to find out.
“You need anything, you obviously got my number,” Nick offered.
In the new world where he’d be dwelling, that would be a number Eric could use for a variety of reasons.
And he would.
“Headed to LA,” Turner shared.
There was another beat of silence before he heard Nick Sebring bust a gut laughing.
That pissed Eric off.
So he said not a word and hung up.
Half an hour later, free to do it now, Nick called him back from his old cell.
And the asshole was still laughing.
* * * * *
Olivia
Hands to the deck railing, I stared at the trees.
“That wasn’t what I wanted to happen, Livvie,” Nick whispered in my ear, his front to my back, his hands at the railing beside mine moving to cover them, instantly warming them against the cold.
“I know,” I replied to the trees.
“Valenzuela dismantled her operations. She was expanding too fast. Getting cocky. Making deals. She owed people money. She was screwing with Valenzuela every chance she could get. They were on the run. I communicated I wanted her shut down. Way the scene read, Harkin turned on her. Witnesses say—”
I shifted a hand and laced my fingers through his.
Nick qu
it talking.
“Valenzuela would have eventually made his moves. He was stronger. She had no chance.” I was still talking to the trees.
“What I pulled expedited—”
I twisted my neck to look at him. He lifted his head and caught my eyes.
“She made her decisions,” I said, soft but firm. “You made yours. I made mine. I knew precisely what would happen if I got on that plane, Nick. I knew. It came faster than I expected, but I knew. I made my decision and got on that plane. It still doesn’t make what happened my fault. It also isn’t yours. It’s the life she chose. Neither of us should feel guilt because my sister decided to resurrect the family business not with sound investments but by building drug labs.”
“You make a lot of sense, baby,” he replied, but he did it watching me carefully, and I knew he thought I was making sense just to make him feel better.
So I decided to give him what he needed actually to make him feel better.
“Do I miss the sister I thought I had?” I asked. “Yes, but I’d been missing her a lot longer than this.” I turned in his arms, curled my lips slightly and put my hands on either side of his neck. “I missed her even longer than it’s been since you faked my death.”
At my words, his lips quirked and he took his hands from the railing to wrap his arms around me. Closing in, he pinned me against the deck and held me tight and warm in the cold mountain evening air.
“Have I told you you have a flair for drama, body bags, burning mansions?” I teased in a further effort to lighten the mood.
He bent his head closer to me but said nothing.
“One day,” I murmured, “you’ll have to explain how you pulled that off.”
“Coroner owed me a favor so the ID swung our way. And Baldy has certain access and assured me that particular…specimen would, in the end, do a single good deed in her life, making you safe in yours,” he explained immediately.
My eyes slid away. “Okay. Maybe I didn’t want to know.”
“Though, he was so willing to help, I wasn’t likin’ that much,” Nick stated and my eyes slid back.
“Dr. Baldwin has a soft spot for me.”
He gave me a squeeze. “Yeah, caught that. That’d be the part I wasn’t likin’ that much.”
“I wouldn’t allow a man to fake my death and then get on a plane, leaving everything behind, knowing my shoes and handbags were all going up in smoke, if that man was Dr. Baldwin.” I squeezed him back. “I did it for the man I love. I did it for you.”
Again, Nick said nothing.
Weirdly, he did this for a long time. So long, it concerned me.
“Nick?” I called on another squeeze.
Finally, he spoke.
“The man you love.”
“Yes,” I confirmed rather unnecessarily.
“The man you love,” he repeated.
“Yes,” I repeated as well, getting annoyed because I was getting confused.
He stared at me again.
When I was about to open my mouth, he gave me a shake and declared, “Babe, you’ve never said that to me.”
I stilled.
Hadn’t I?
Months in the mountains with my man and I hadn’t told him I loved him?
“I…well…” I stammered as it hit me.
I actually hadn’t.
How on earth had I not done that?
“Well, I allowed you to fake my death,” I pointed out lamely.
Nick stared at me yet again.
Then he scowled at me.
“That’s it?” he asked.
“Nick, I allowed you to fake my death,” I repeated with emphasis.
In normal people world, that would be a big thing.
In our world, it was lame.
Totally lame.
And he so totally knew it.
“Liv,” he growled.
I shifted my hands from his neck to his stubbled cheeks and rolled up on my toes.
When I got close, I pressed my fingers in and whispered fiercely, “I love you, Nicky. You’ve made me safe. You’ve made me free. You’ve made me happy. But I don’t love you because you did all that. I love you because you’re Nicky.”
I might have said more.
I didn’t get the chance because Nick was kissing me.
He was also done with the cold mountain evening and I knew this because he picked me up and took us inside. Right through the big living room with its stone fireplace, the picture I gave him hanging over the mantel. Right down the narrow hall. Right to our warm bed.
And there I was safe.
There I was free, complete, happy.
Because I was with Nicky.
* * * * *
Nick
Late that night, he held Liv’s naked body close to his under the warm covers in the dark.
She was restful, her weight pressing in to him, and he thought she was asleep.
He would find she wasn’t when she whispered, “Tell me about her.”
Nick felt his body get tight.
She slid a hand up his chest to his neck where she used her thumb to stroke his jaw soothingly. Otherwise, she didn’t move.
“You’ve let her go,” she noted softly. “In that way, you’ve let her go. I know you have with the way you are with me. But now it’s done, sweetheart. It’s time to get her back. She was a part of your life. You’re all of my life. If you want to do it, I want you to know you can give her to me.”
In the drama they’d had, he often forgot how fucking wise she was.
And she was wise because, that day, when he could finally lay Hettie to rest, he needed to give her to somebody. Keep her alive. Even in the dark in the mountains in Tennessee, Nick with the woman he found who was not Hettie, but who was beyond a dream.
He turned into Olivia’s arms.
She tucked herself closer.
Safe in her hold in the dark in their bed, Nick Sebring gave his Livvie the last thing of his he had to give.
He gave her Hettie.
“Her name was Hettie and she couldn’t fry an egg to save her life.”
She relaxed against him and rubbed her nose along his throat.
Nick kept talking.
Liv kept listening.
He ended with, “She’d like you for me.”
Liv emitted a dubious sound before she said, “That’s sweet, honey, but it’s hard to believe.”
“She would.”
“Right.”
She didn’t believe him.
“She would, Liv,” he asserted on a squeeze of his arms.
“Okay, Nick.”
She totally didn’t believe him.
He lifted a hand and hooked a finger under her chin, forcing it up.
He caught her eyes in the moonlight.
“She would, Livvie, because you make me happy.”
She melted into him.
“Now that,” she said in that voice of hers, “I can believe.”
He bent his head and kissed her soft.
When he released her mouth, she snuggled close.
He was nearly asleep when her drowsy voice came again to him.
“You’re good at what you do.”
He had no clue where that came from.
“What?” he asked, sounding just as drowsy because he was.
“Taking care of us, the women you love, making us free in all the ways we can be.”
Suddenly, Nick was wide awake.
Just as suddenly, Liv was sleeping.
Nick held her close and turned his eyes to the paned window where moonlight shone in.
“I hope you’re free, Hettie,” he murmured to the quiet night.
Hettie did not reply.
For Hettie had long since been free.
* * * * *
Two Days Later
She was in the kitchen making dinner, an alarming prospect, when the commotion that was him and what he’d picked up in town came through the door to the garage.
She whirled and st
ared down at the floor in horror as the commotion swept through the room, headed straight her way, taking the braided rugs strewn around with it.
But Nick stared at her face.
Fuck.
He thought she’d freak at his surprise, but in a good way.
“You don’t like dogs?” he asked.
With visible effort, she tore her eyes away from the puppy now attempting to climb up her leg. Her hands were held up in the air, covered in something that looked slimy, a quick glance at the counter telling him she was doing something with hamburger.
If she had the time, she could use hamburger to wipe out an entire army in a way they did not mind dying.
Fuck again.
“What’s that?” she asked, unmoving, her eyes didn’t even drop down to the dog.
He walked into the room. Crouching close to her, he swept up the puppy.
It started licking his jaw at the same time trying to chew his ear and climb on his shoulders.
“Pet store next to the hardware store. It’s adoption day. I went in,” he explained, watching her closely. “I couldn’t leave without taking him with me.”
“What’s that?” she repeated.
Nick didn’t reply as he tried to read her.
“What is that?” she enunciated each word clearly as he continued to try to contain the pup at the same time figure out what was going on behind her blank green eyes. “The breed,” she finished.
“Mutt, but they say mostly Labrador.”
He watched her green eyes instantly round huge.
Then they squeezed tightly shut as she burst out laughing.
He stared stunned as she clapped her slimy hands, catching the pup’s attention, his ears flying out as he looked to Liv, and she stumbled—actually fucking stumbled—gracelessly to the sink.
She did a shit job washing her hands and they were still half-wet when she came back to him, still laughing, eyes on the puppy, hands up.
She tore the dog right from his grip, cooing, “Come to Momma, baby. That’s it,” she stretched her neck as the dog bathed it with her tongue, “give Momma kisses.”
Nick stood still as she wandered away, a princess with shining black hair in designer jeans and high heeled boots in a rustic, old house in the mountains of Tennessee being lavished by dog spit, still cooing and doing it nonsensically as she walked out of the kitchen into the living room
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