by Tate James
Groaning, I put my mug down and rubbed my forehead. "Like... around the time I killed Brant Wilson, thinking he was no one special?"
He tipped his head, giving a small shrug. "Maybe? I'm taking major leaps here, and none of them are substantiated by much more than instinct. But remember how I said that the FBI had an inside man at the Lockhart estate?" My brows hitched, following his train of thought. "What if that was Brant? Or someone working for him? What if he was the one who saved Chase that night?"
My lips parted as that scenario swirled through my brain. We knew someone had saved Chase; there was no way he'd pulled himself free before the explosion.
"When I questioned my mother about Chase being an agent, she said something about him being Brant's protégé." Zed held my gaze steadily. "It's adding two and two to equal seven... but I dunno. It's just been running around my head, and that's what I've ended up with."
"I mean... it's not implausible," I agreed. "You think me killing Brant was what triggered Chase?"
Zed ran a hand over his head, grimacing. "Maybe. Maybe Brant was somehow keeping him on a leash, and with him gone there was just no one standing in Chase’s crazy-ass fucking way anymore."
I rubbed the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache building. The last thing I wanted to do was waste brain space to Chase Lockhart's motivations. But if I really wanted to beat him at his own game, any information could only be useful.
"What about Lucas?" I redirected. "How does he play into all of this? I don't for a second think he deliberately targeted me."
"No, neither do I," Zed agreed, making me sag with relief. "I have no clue. Other than his family being all tied up in the Guild and Brant being his bio-dad? Maybe he's not connected. Or maybe Brant was sniffing around because he was looking for Lucas."
That jolted another thought out of the depths of my brain. "Didn't Sandra imply that she had other children? Like actual children, not failed IVF cycles. She said something to Lucas about his Uncle Jack hurting her babies, plural."
Before Zed could answer, his phone rang again on the bench. I expected it to be Lucas calling back, but the caller ID showed a number I didn't know.
I slid it across to Zed, and he frowned, then answered the call without leaving the kitchen. He brought the phone to his ear but didn't say anything, which told me he also didn't recognize the number.
It only took a second for the tension to fade from his face, though, and he switched the call to speaker. "Yeah, Maria, she's right here."
He placed the phone back down on the counter in front of me, then went to get another croissant out of the warm oven.
"Hades?" Maria's voice filled the room. "Sorry to call from a burner phone. Gerry told me it was too dangerous to call, but I had to check in and make sure everything was going okay up there."
I smiled at the genuine concern in her voice. She was a lot like Nadia with all the motherly concern but balls of steel. "I'm fine, Maria. Been taking my meds and keeping the wounds dry."
She hummed a sound of approval. "Good. Have you been wearing that sling?"
"I have," I replied, only sort of lying. I wore it a lot, but I also left it off a lot. "It's feeling a lot better already, though."
She clicked her tongue. "Don't get cocky and damage it further. Gerry said he'll take a look when you're back in town and see if you can maybe get away with just physical therapy instead of surgery. It'll be easier to know once the wound heals up."
The phone beeped with another incoming call, and Demi's name flashed on the screen.
"Maria, I'm sorry; I have another call," I told her, eager to see what Demi was calling about. "Thank you for checking in, though."
"Take care, boss," she replied.
I answered Demi's call before it could drop, letting her know it was me, not Zed.
"Good," she barked back. "You weren't answering the other phone, and I have news."
I exchanged a look with Zed. "Good news?"
Demi gave a low chuckle. "You bet your ass. All charges against you have been dropped. You're good to come home, my little fugitive."
My jaw fell open in shock. I hadn't expected that so soon.
"That's great," Zed spoke up, filling the silence. "How?"
"Well, for one thing, all the evidence including the entire file on Hayden Timber disappeared from the FBI’s central database. Permanently. But better than that, a young lady by the name of Maxine Hazelford verified that it was a man who'd attacked her, not you."
Stunned disbelief washed through me. "Maxine? But... she's dead. Isn't she?"
"Not as recently as an hour ago," Demi replied. "According to my source, her parents pulled her from life support two weeks ago, but she didn't die like expected. Then this morning, she woke up."
Holy. Shit. Maxine was alive? I guess miracles did happen.
17
Due to the high wind and intermittent thunderstorms, it was another three full days before Zed and I could leave Foxglove Manor. The bridge at the base of the mountain had been totally washed out and the river had broken its banks, so there was no access until a helicopter could get in.
It was okay, though. I despised the idea of arriving back into Shadow Grove looking weak. So I spent a good majority of that time running on the treadmill or in the barn testing my accuracy shooting with my arm in a sling.
Ultimately, though, I would need to ditch the sling before we got back. Chase would be watching my every move from the second I stepped back into the game. Worse, my competitors would be watching—all of them like hungry wolves searching for any sign of weakness they could exploit.
Most of those three days, I avoided contact with Zed. I wasn't still holding a grudge or trying to punish him. We'd moved past that, and knowing I wouldn't have done anything differently went a long way toward healing the wounds between us.
But those moments we shared over coffee or in the shower, when I let my tightly wound cage of functioning anxiety soften? They scared the hell out of me. I'd had enough of being scared to last me seven lifetimes, so I took the mature approach and just avoided the crap out of him when I could.
On the morning of the fourth day, when Zed announced he'd received confirmation of our transport coming within a few hours, I was relieved to see the worst of my cuts and bruises had healed. With a bit of makeup, and not moving my left shoulder, no one would be the wiser.
"Help me peel this off?" I asked him absentmindedly, wincing as I tried to reach the dressing on my ribs. The sticky edges had lost their stick, and the cuts were itching like crazy. During a quick chat with Doc over the phone, he'd told me it'd be okay to remove the dressing and let it breathe.
Zed came further into the room, taking over where I couldn't quite reach, mainly because it was on my right side ribs and my left shoulder wasn't cooperating to get my arm into that position.
He peeled the dressing off gently, then made a disgusted sound in his throat.
"What?" I asked, frowning. "Is it infected?"
"No," he hurried to say, shaking his head as he stepped back. "No, it's healing up well. Just... have a look."
He had me worried, so I made my way over to the mirror in the bathroom to see what he was talking about. On my ribs there were a couple of long, sharp slashes that had healed to a dark scab and one curved cut.
"I don't get it," I admitted, dropping my T-shirt into place and coming back out of the bathroom.
Zed grabbed a pen from beside the bed and flipped over one of the printed obituaries I'd been doodling on the night before. Thinking for a moment, he then sketched out a design similar to the Darling logo inked on his chest. And on Lucas's too.
"He had me make one for him, too, when I got yours tattooed. He was going to ask you to get it done." He handed me the paper, and I scowled at it.
Now that I knew what it was, I went back to the mirror and inspected the cuts in my side. "That motherfucker was trying to cut his name into me," I murmured. I vaguely recalled he'd been interrupted, so he hadn't fin
ished the pattern.
"Cass can cover it up with something," Zed suggested.
I sighed and let my T-shirt drop again. "Yeah. Doesn't matter, anyway. It's just skin."
"Bullshit," he growled. "It's your skin. It fucking matters."
He stormed out of my bedroom, leaving me staring after him in confusion.
Shaking it off, I set about packing up my meagre bag of belongings, mostly medications and spare dressings, then headed downstairs. As much as I'd been avoiding Zed the last few days, I wanted his opinion on one of the pressing matters I would be dealing with back in Shadow Grove.
I found him out in the barn packing up all the guns we'd been playing with in our boredom. He looked a whole lot like he'd rather be shooting them, with how aggressively he was moving things around.
"You said the helicopter is still a few hours away, didn't you?" I called out, jerking his attention away from what he was doing.
He scowled. "Yeah. So?"
I shrugged. "So, what's the rush? You look like you could shoot some shit to deal with whatever has your panties in a twist, and I could use the opportunity to redeem myself." To demonstrate my point, I grabbed a handful of glass soda bottles from the pile we'd brought out of the house and carried them down to the far end of the barn where we'd set up our various household shooting targets.
I laid out the three bottles, then went back for three more and placed them in a line as well before returning to Zed.
He arched a brow at me. "How is this going to redeem you? Those are the easiest targets in the world. We will both hit all three, and no one will win."
Grinning, I waved a hand at the stack of gun cases that he'd just packed up. "Choose your weapon, Zeddy Bear." I took a basic Glock that he hadn't packed yet from the table, and unstrapped my sling so I could load the gun properly.
Zed huffed an impatient sound but took a Glock for himself too—not because that was his weapon of choice but because he was all about keeping an even playing field when we bet on shit.
"What's at stake when I win again?"
I scoffed. "You won't; you sabotaged me last time."
A sly grin spread over his face. "Sore loser. You want me to do the strip routine this time?"
"I was going to ask for something else," I admitted with a short laugh, "but yeah, that would be even better. If you lose, you've got to do the same routine in the same costume, including the high heels."
Zed cringed. "Fair enough. And if you lose—"
"Which I won't," I muttered, giving him a smirk.
"—then I want..." He trailed off, tapping his lips like he was thinking. Then the teasing humor slipped from his expression and his eyes turned serious. "I want you to stop shutting me out."
I stiffened. This was growing heavier than I'd planned.
"I'm not asking for you to forgive and forget, Dare," he continued in a low, husky voice. "I would never ask that of you. I just want a chance to prove to you how sorry I am, how much I still fucking love you. Can I have that chance if I win?"
Finding myself tongue-tied, I just nodded and picked up a spare sweatshirt he'd dropped a couple of days ago.
"Three shots," I announced after clearing my throat, then held up the sweatshirt. "Blindfolded."
Zed's brow hitched, and a grin curled his lips. "What if we both hit all three?"
I pondered a moment. "Then we do it again, but left-handed."
He shot a frown at my near-useless left arm, then gave me a nod. "You're on." He swept out an arm, indicating for me to go. "Ladies first."
I snorted a laugh. I knew full fucking well he would deliberately lose just to spare me from using my left arm. "I don't think so. You won the last bet; you go first." I indicated for him to spin around, then carefully tied the arms of the rolled-up sweatshirt over his eyes. It was a crappy blindfold tied badly. But it only needed to cover his eyes long enough for three shots.
"Go for it," I told him when I was done. "I'll start planning out your pole dance schedule with Maxine when we get back."
Zed muttered some shit to himself under the sweatshirt-blindfold, then brought the gun up in the vague direction of the bottles. For a second, he aimed way off target, and I really thought he was going to miss entirely.
But then he squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession, and three corresponding pops of shattering glass answered him.
"Oh hey," he commented, tugging the blindfold off. "What luck, huh?"
Grinning at his smug sarcasm, I switched places with him and waited while he tied the blindfold for me. The fabric covering half my face spiked my anxiety, but I forced myself to take some long, slow breaths to remain calm. The familiar weight of a gun in my hand went a long way to helping that.
"Are you okay?" Zed murmured, his hands lightly brushing over my shoulders.
Far from it. But I let the tension ease with my next exhale, drawing strength from those feather-light touches of Zed's fingers. I'd expected his touch to make my skin crawl and panic to rip through me like a tsunami after the dirty tricks Chase had pulled. But so far, it hadn't happened. The strongest emotion Zed's touch conjured was safety.
"Yeah," I replied. "I'm okay."
His warmth radiated against my back like he was only an inch away from hugging me. I didn't move away from him as I raised my gun, steadying it with my left hand and biting back a wince.
Picturing the targets in my mind, I let muscle memory take over as I squeezed the trigger three times. The recoil on my weakened arms made me rock backward, but Zed was right there to balance me. Just like he'd always been.
I didn't even hear whether my shots landed or not. I didn't fucking care, because bet or not, Zed deserved that chance to mend things between us. Hell, we both deserved it. Our bond was too tight, our roots too deep to walk away now.
Zed tugged the blindfold off my head as I turned around to face him.
"You don't want to see who won?" he asked in a quiet voice as I tipped my head back to meet his gaze from just inches away. His jaw was dusted in dark stubble, and his eyes were tired. His two perfectly intact eyes.
I gave a small headshake, lightly bringing my free hand to his waist. If I had better range of motion in that arm, I'd have looped it around his neck.
"You did, Zed," I replied, softly. "I love you too." Before I could lose the shred of courage I'd grasped onto, I rose up on my toes and pressed my lips to his.
It was a chaste sort of kiss, but when he kissed me back with a small moan, I felt it all the way in my soul.
"We should get these guns up to the house," he whispered, his voice husky and his hand still holding my waist like he didn't want to let go.
I dropped back onto my heels, biting my lip. A huge part of me had wanted to take that kiss further, but even as long as it had lasted, all the fresh trauma of Chase was screaming around my head like a tornado siren.
"Dare," he started as I packed up the Glock into its case, "I want to ask something before we leave here."
I arched a brow at him over my shoulder. "What?"
He hesitated, looking uncertain. "I know Lucas has been playing Hades this week. But when we get back... where do we stand? You and me, I mean."
It was a topic that had been on my mind since the moment Demi had told me it was safe to return to Shadow Grove, and I knew I needed to trust my gut.
"You and me?" I repeated, and he jerked a nod. "We're Hades and Zed. Dynamic Duo." I offered a sly grin. "Same as always, Zeddy Bear. We're the tightest team in crime since Bonnie and Clyde."
A slow smile spread over his face, and relief sagged his shoulders. "Without their tragic ending, please."
"Agreed." I gave a small laugh.
We worked together in silence as we transported all the guns back up to the main house and locked them away in the impressive gun safe, but it was a deeply comfortable silence.
Then, because we had some time to kill, we went to work cleaning the kitchen. Based on the dust in the unused rooms, I was willing to gue
ss Cass shared Zed's distrust of staff. And it just wasn't polite to leave our mess when we had no plans to return any time soon.
"Actually," I said while wiping down the counters. Zed was headfirst in the oven, wiping it all out with some fancy eco-cleaning products. "Now that we're back on the same team, there's an item of business we should strategize. Sooner rather than later."
"Oh yeah?" he replied, his voice echoing inside the oven.
I rinsed my cloth in the sink and squeezed it out. "Cass. Or more specifically, how we're bringing him back to life. We can't keep up the cloak-and-dagger shit much longer, and to be honest, I don't want to. We've got enough to worry about without adding that into the mix."
Zed popped out of the oven, sitting back on his heels to look up at me. "Agreed. What was your plan when you 'killed' him?"
I wrinkled my nose. "Uh, we hadn't planned that far ahead. It was just a loose backup plan at best."
Zed gave me a slow grin, shaking his head. "Fucking hell, Dare. This is why you should have run it past me first; I could have mapped it out."
I gave a one-shouldered shrug, lifting a brow. "Yeah, well, I had a sneaking suspicion you were hiding something from me, and it made me paranoid. Turns out I was right."
He winced. "Fair call."
"Anyway, I'll tell you what I'm thinking, and you can poke holes in it until we come up with something better. Yes?" I tossed my cleaning cloth aside, focusing on Zed.
He gazed up at me with a wide smile, his blue eyes glittering. "Just like always."
18
Somehow, Zed had thought of everything. I'd told Cass to stay in Seattle to finish his task because I wanted him back in Shadow Grove as soon as possible. So our helicopter pick up was done by a friend of Zed's who simply screamed military. I was no fool, though. This was an unsanctioned favor, so I didn't ask unnecessary questions. Even when the grizzled, tattoo-covered old guy handed me a bag on his arrival.
"We can spare twenty minutes," Zed told me, checking his watch. "Hopefully, that's long enough."
