by Lexi Blake
He didn’t have to for the series Nell had recently been writing. She didn’t realize how close to the truth she was about him.
But that truth was in the past, so it didn’t matter. He was a man who built things now, and one of those things was a beautiful future with his wife.
And kid. He was going to be a dad. He felt a loopy grin cross his face. And then fade because it wasn’t the first time he’d been here.
She turned, keeping her floured hands down and away from him. “Don’t.”
He lowered his forehead to hers. “I’m just worried about you.”
He felt her head shake slightly, though because he was against her it felt like she was nuzzling him. That’s what Nell did for him. She took something that was naturally a negative and made it warm and fuzzy. “It’s not the same this time. We’re past the first six weeks. This one is going to be okay. I feel it deep inside. When I was picking herbs this morning, I felt the sun on my face, and I swear a butterfly landed right on me. My mother used to tell me that when a butterfly landed on me, it was the pixies telling me everything was all right.”
Her mother had deeply believed she’d come from another plane of existence. He’d only known Moira Finn briefly, but he’d heard Nell talk about her mother often and the challenges of growing up with a woman who perceived reality differently.
Once he would have simply called Moira Finn insane and thought the best way to deal with her was to force her to acknowledge reality. But he’d grown to learn reality could mean different things to different people if one was open minded. If thinking their unborn child was blessed by pixies made Nell more confident after two miscarriages, then he would thank the pixies.
Did they drink cream or something? Or was that brownies?
He knew too much about faery creatures, but then Nell had written a romance featuring a faery prince and a human woman, and it was his job to do all the research she needed. It was their secret—the fact that she wrote erotic romance.
And their baby was their secret. For now.
“I’m glad to hear it.” He glanced up and saw someone moving across the lawn. His first instinct was to wave at Logan Green and point him out to Nell. Logan was staying at that monstrosity of a cabin Seth Stark had built, along with Seth and Georgia Dawson. Watching those three work through their problems had been deeply entertaining for him and Nell. The last few days they’d sat on the front porch at night and listened in on the relationship drama.
Sometimes it was good to know his wife was human. Oh, she might have shaken her head and said they shouldn’t find someone else’s troubles entertaining, but she hadn’t gotten up from her chair. She’d let him rub her feet while Georgia proved she could yell really loud.
Yes, he would have pointed out to his wife that Logan was coming over, except Logan didn’t go for the front of the cabin. He moved toward the rear, and he stopped twice as though trying to ensure he hadn’t been followed.
Henry’s primary instincts took over, the ones he’d buried deep when he’d left his old life behind—the ones that told him trouble was coming.
Every instinct he had told him something was wrong.
He forced himself to move away from Nell and kept his expression as calm as possible. “I just think you do too much. Between all the housework, the writing, and everything you’ve done to help with the wedding, you need to rest more. And you haven’t been eating much.”
He walked out of the kitchen and into the small room at the back of the cabin where they did much of their work. They had two desks set up on one side. One for him and one for her. Her desk overlooked the backyard, with their vegetable garden and a view of the Rio Grande. Much of the money they’d made over the last couple of years had gone into their cabin and their property, though Nell had protested no one should own land.
He’d pointed out that if the land was for sale, who knew who could buy it? Potentially someone who would pollute or overfish or do something terrible with it. When she’d thought about the possibilities, she’d decided it was best to own the land she wanted to steward. Now they quietly owned one of the larger tracts in Bliss.
Logan moved across that land they’d purchased, and there was no mistaking the glint of metal in his right hand. Logan was dressed in the khakis that marked him as a deputy with the Bliss County Sheriff’s Department, though no one thought he would be working there for much longer. He’d been fighting the idea of being in a relationship with Georgia, of sharing her with his best friend, Seth, on a permanent basis, but there wasn’t a person in Bliss who thought Logan would win that fight.
However, it looked like there was another fight entirely playing out at that big cabin of Seth’s.
Henry watched as the door to the back of Seth’s cabin opened and a large man stepped out. He was muscular and packing. There was a gun in his shoulder holster.
A chill crept up Henry’s spine.
“I’m better.” Nell had gone back to her bread. “You worry too much, Henry. It’s perfectly normal. I’m actually quite hungry now.”
She hadn’t been for the first few weeks. It was one of the ways she’d known to take a pregnancy test.
He moved to the screen door, going light on his feet so Nell might think he was at his computer. She wanted her new hero to be a former Interpol officer, so Henry was busy pulling together all he could about the international agency. He could have simply sat her down and told her that he’d worked with them many times and they were difficult because they had all sorts of rules that tripped up an agent.
“I don’t know. I think you should see Caleb.” Logan was right in front of him now, and Henry put a finger to his lips, silently asking for quiet. If Logan had come running, he would have brought Nell into the conversation. He would have had Nell call the sheriff.
But he hadn’t. Logan had snuck up, and he clearly had his radio. So he didn’t need someone to call the sheriff. He’d likely already done it.
That meant he needed help, and not from Nell. Not from Henry either.
He needed John Bishop. There were only a few people in all the world who knew his secret, and one of them was Seth Stark. If Seth was in trouble, he would have sent Logan for him.
“I need some rest. That’s all,” Nell continued. “Caleb would try to prescribe things, and you know how I feel about big pharmaceutical companies.”
If he didn’t distract her, she would hear Logan, and then he would have to make decisions he wasn’t ready to make. He’d been able to deal with that man from Gemma’s past quietly, though he knew Caleb Burke had questions about the way the man had died.
Henry had split the man’s spine at the top of his neck. It was a neat and bloodless kill, one he’d perfected over the many years he’d worked for the CIA.
“They’re not all bad.” He said the words to get a specific reaction out of Nell, knowing she wasn’t even halfway through her kneading process.
“Not all bad? I recently read an article about this terrible company,” she began.
She would be at least five minutes. It gave him the opportunity to slip out on the deck. “What’s going on? I caught you running across the yard with a gun in hand about thirty seconds ago and then that big guy stepped out onto your porch. Have you called Nathan?”
His gut was in knots. Why now? Why was everything seeming to come to a breaking point right as he and Nell had managed to make it past that first awful six weeks of this pregnancy. He’d felt like someone was watching him, like something was bearing down on him.
Nell was going on about some pharmaceutical company with a German-sounding name as Logan leaned in. “Yeah, though I think this is your problem. You tell me something and you tell me now because my partner and my wife are being held by some sort of drug lord. Did you work for them before you came to Bliss?”
Now his gut took a deep dive and he felt bile at the back of his throat. And he knew why he’d felt eyes on him. The cartel. They’d found him? “They’re from a cartel?”
; It was his worst nightmare. The Agency finding out John Bishop wasn’t dead was only his second worst-case scenario. The cartel was the worst.
How the hell had they found him? How had they figured out he wasn’t dead?
Did they know about Nell? That was the real question that went through him. Was he about to cause the death of the most precious person in the world to him?
“I could be wrong. They could be mob. They could be a traveling circus. I don’t give a shit because they’re going to kill my people and I think they’re here for you. So I’m going to ask the question and you’re going to answer. Are you on the payroll?” Logan asked the question low, his tone hard. It was the tone of a man who thought he might be about to lose everything.
Henry knew the feeling. He forced his panic back down. There was no place for it here. If the cartel was at Seth’s place, then he needed to be cold as ice. He could make this work. After all, Seth had known who he was for years. Seth had kept his secrets. Logan could keep them too.
Or the time had come and he had decisions to make.
“No. The cartel was the target. If it’s who I think it is, they were mixed up with a terrorist cell. I was CIA and then I wasn’t. Damn it. They’re supposed to think I’m dead.” Telling Logan was all right. Especially since if the cartel had Seth, Logan was about to find out how good he was at killing.
It was odd because there was no anxiety about what he was about to do. He knew how to kill quickly and quietly, and cartel assholes were fairly easy to take down. They only tended to know how to shoot things, and he didn’t intend to even let them know he was there until it was far too late to pull the trigger.
“They seem to have caught on.” Logan’s gaze went back toward the cabin as though he could see it. He couldn’t. Not standing here. “Nate’s on his way, but I don’t have time to wait so I need you to get your freak on. You owe Seth. You owe him, Henry. And you damn well know it.”
He owed the whole town of Bliss, and that meant he couldn’t hesitate. He nodded Logan’s way and walked back into his cabin, into the place where he was happy and safe. It was the place where he lied to his wife so he could stay happy and safe.
Was it the place where he would lose her?
Henry moved to his desk. It didn’t have the view Nell’s had, but it did have a view of her, and that was all he needed. He loved to watch her while she typed away at a story about true love sprinkled in with lessons on recycling and tolerance. And anal sex. He rather thought that was why they truly sold. His wife had a deliciously filthy mind.
God, he loved her, and he would do anything to protect her. He opened the drawer to his desk and found the knife he kept there. His sweet wife thought he kept it around because he was learning to whittle. The only reason she thought that was because she’d likely never seen a knife that was meant exclusively for killing. He didn’t have time to go for the guns he kept stashed away. The knife would be quieter, and if he needed a gun, then he would take one off a dead cartel guy.
He could make this work. She didn’t have to know.
“Hey, baby, Logan’s here. He says there’s a problem with the plumbing. I’m going to check it out. You knead your bread, okay? I wouldn’t want to ruin it. And I’ll turn up the music. I know you love this aria.” He used his mouse to pump up the volume on the opera that was playing through the cabin. It might mask the sound of gunfire.
Might.
“I could come and help.” She was looking over at him with the most adorable Nell expression. He’d cataloged her expressions over the years. She had twenty different smiles and only two frowns. One of those frowns was on her face now. It was her slightly disgruntled frown.
“No, baby, you stay here. It’s just a little wet work. I’ll be back in ten minutes.” He took her in for a second. She was the light of his life. “I love you, Nell.”
He forced himself to go outside and prayed he could pull this off.
An hour later he’d taken a shower and changed into some of Logan’s clothes, tossing his own in the trash because they’d gotten covered in blood. Luckily his clothes were interchangeable, and Nell rarely noticed what he was wearing so long as it was sustainable and organic.
He forced himself to move across the grass, feeling almost like he was outside his body, like he was a robot moving only because he had the programming that forced the action.
Like he used to feel every single day of his life.
Seth was going to live. Georgia had been spared the worst of it. Seth had taken the pain for her, and he’d even had a smile on his face at the end because he’d known he’d gone through the fire and come out of it with everything he could have wanted.
Henry feared his fire was about to begin.
Henry, I respect a man’s privacy. You know I do, but if something’s heading into my town, I need to know.
Thirty minutes ago, Nate had asked him about the possibility of the cartel returning to look for Henry as they’d stood in Seth’s living room surrounded by dead bodies.
Hell, sheriff. Hell is coming to Bliss, and I invited it in.
It had been explained to him that the man who’d shown up hadn’t been sure Henry was in town. He hadn’t reported back to his boss, and wouldn’t because everyone was dead. Still, he had to figure that at some point the cartel would catch on to where he was.
Should he leave?
Nell rushed out onto the porch, only stopping when she saw him walking up. She put a hand over her mouth and then ran to him, throwing herself into his arms. “What happened? I got a call from Laura. She said there was trouble at Seth’s.”
He wrapped his arms around her. God, he couldn’t leave this woman. “It was okay. Logan took care of it. I’m sorry. I didn’t take my phone with me and I had to help with the cleanup. I had to change. I got…I got some blood on my clothes.” At least he didn’t have to lie about that. “Seth is all right.”
Nell’s face turned up and there were tears in her eyes. “They were coming after Seth because of all that money he has. I’ve told him it would be better to donate it.”
Nate was giving him some time, but the sheriff wouldn’t keep quiet forever. For now Nate was allowing the idea that they weren’t sure why the cartel had shown up. They were going on the theory that they were after Seth for either money or data. Seth Stark was a tech billionaire. He was a good target for any one criminal organization that wanted money or tech. It was a believable story.
But the truth would have to come out. He’d begged Nate to give him until after the wedding. By then they should truly be past the most dangerous time in her pregnancy, and Nell had been so looking forward to the wedding. He wanted a few more weeks before he had to tell his wife everything she knew about him was a lie.
“You’re all right?” Nell clutched him close.
He kissed her forehead. “I’m fine now.”
He held his wife close because he was on borrowed time. He needed to figure a way out of the trap he was in and fast.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” Nell asked, her gaze filled with uncertainty.
“I’m fine. Just a little shaken up,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get you back inside. Are you feeling okay? No cramps?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine. What happened? How close did you get?”
He kissed her again. He wasn’t sure what he would do if she lost the baby. He wasn’t sure he could survive that because she would blame him, and she would be right to.
How had he ever thought he could get away with it? How had he thought his past wouldn’t find him again? After all the blood on his hands, why had he thought he could be clean again?
“Too close,” he said, holding her again. “I’m upset, Nell. Would you mind if we sat together for a while?”
“Of course.” She gave him a squeeze. “Come on. I’ve started dinner and I’ll pour you some Scotch and we can sit and watch the river.”
It was his favorite place to be if he wasn’t in bed with her wrapped around
him. He loved to sit and watch the sunset with her. “That would be nice.”
He followed his wife and prayed he could use these days to find a way to tell her he was a lie.
* * * *
“I heard it was a drug cartel.” Holly frowned as she poured a cup of chamomile tea and set it in front of Nell. “But I heard that from Marie, and she seems to think Seth has invested heavily in drug rehab centers and that’s why they came after him. I don’t think that was it.”
Laura patted her infant daughter as she rocked back and forth in the rocking chair that used to be Nell’s mother’s. “Yeah, I don’t think so either. Somehow I don’t see a cartel targeting investors in rehabs. Cam hasn’t come home yet, so I haven’t been able to grill him. I’m so tempted to go to the big house and see if I can pick up any clues. You’re sure Henry didn’t tell you anything at all?”
Nell took the tea and settled back into her place on the sofa. Laura had shown up with Holly shortly after Nate had knocked and asked Henry to come down to the station house. Nate had explained that they needed to take a more thorough report on what he’d seen now that Seth was in surgery and expected to make a full recovery. Nell had tried to go with her husband, but Henry had insisted that she rest. And Nate had insisted they go to the station rather than taking his statement here. It had been an odd exchange, with some weird tension running between the sheriff and Henry. She’d been glad when her friends had shown up on her doorstep offering to sit with her for a while.
“He told me what he knew,” Nell replied. “He was there. He went over to help Logan with a plumbing problem.” Except he hadn’t taken his tool kit. Had he? He hadn’t come back with it. She supposed he could have gone out to his shop, picked it up, and then left it behind in the chaos. He’d seemed so dazed when he’d come home. She looked to Laura. “Why would Nate need Henry to come down to the station? According to Henry, he didn’t see much. He was in the bathroom, and he hid there until the shooting was over.”
