by Nicole Helm
Chapter Seventeen
Nina explained the guns she’d found to Cody, and he seemed to file the information away. Then she watched the security footage for a while. No more shadows or hints at anything out there.
It was worse, somehow, the nonthreat after a threat that had never materialized. Worse, with Brianna’s voice echoing around in her head from that too-brief phone call. She wanted to be back on the ranch, curled up with Brianna on the couch, reading a book or even watching one of the obnoxious kids shows she loved. Nina wanted her daughter.
And, if she was honest with herself, she wanted to know if anything that had happened with Cody was actually real. Or if it was just the dregs of the past and this whole awful situation.
She knew she loved him still. She had no doubts about her feelings... She frowned over that. If she didn’t doubt her own, was it fair to doubt his?
“It could have just been a scouting mission,” Cody said into the oppressive silence when still nothing appeared on the screen. They’d been whiling away hours.
“What would that entail?”
“See what we’ve got here and determine what they’d need to successfully breach and attack. Go back and plan, gather, attack later.”
It was an awful thought. He no doubt knew what he was talking about, but to wait here patiently while they planned an attack had her pulse hammering in her neck, panic and fear twining deep inside of her gut.
“The problem is,” Cody continued, his eyes cast toward his folded hands on the table. “I’m not sure about the endgame. These men who’ve come after us have been careless. As if they don’t care whether we live or die.”
“I’m sure they don’t.”
“That doesn’t read as Ace’s MO. He wants me alive, so I can suffer. He might want you dead, but it’d be in a way that would make me suffer the most.”
“I love being the pawn in some psycho’s mind game,” she muttered, that edgy feeling after adrenaline wore off making her particularly irritable.
The timer went off and she sent the all clear text to Jamison. It had been hours, so it was just rote now: Set alarm again. Text Jamison ‘AC’ for all clear, then sit and wait and wait and wait.
“I know this is hard,” Cody said after she hit Send. “Waiting is the hardest part. It’s a mental game. You have to be tougher than the wait.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“You are,” Cody returned. He held his hand out and she slid hers into it. He gave it a squeeze. “I think you’re tougher than anyone has ever given you credit for.”
She wanted to cry because she’d had to be tough for seven years without one person telling her she was doing a good job at it, and to have some kind of reassurance, someone believing in her, it mattered. But there was no time for more crying. There was only getting out of this. “How long do we wait?”
“Not much longer. It’s possible whoever you saw is already gone. That’d be the smart thing. But these men Ace has had after us... They haven’t acted in a way that denotes much intelligence.”
“You think he’s still out there.” The thought gave her a cold shudder.
“I think it’s possible there’s someone waiting. Setting a trap, maybe. If they have any inclination Brady might come back, or someone else is going to...well, they have a lot of options.”
Too many. Too many for them to sit around waiting, that she understood. But he was waiting, not acting. He wasn’t bringing his brothers into it, and it dawned on her now that it was because he was worried they’d be ambushed.
So, he was waiting. But for what? She studied him, his eyes unseeing, his hands folded so tightly together his knuckles were white. He didn’t want to wait. He had to wait. “What would you do if you could see?” she demanded.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
But it did. He was holding back because he couldn’t see, and because whatever he would do if he had his sight, he didn’t trust her to do. “Tell me.”
“I’ve been trained to neutralize threats, Nina. Take down crowds of men with lethal weapons. I have been trained to deal with all these kinds of situations, these kinds of men.”
“Yes, and while you were being trained, I actually dealt with these kinds of situations, these kinds of men. For our daughter. So, you will tell me. What would you do if you could see?”
His jaw worked, and when he spoke it was pained. “I can’t risk anything happening to you.”
She wanted to be touched, and she supposed somewhere under the fear and panic she was. But there was too much else going on to spend time on it. “We have to risk something. Or we’ll never get anywhere. We’ll sit here and wait for them to finally rub two brain cells together. If you don’t tell me what you would do in this situation with full sight, I will make my own plan, and enact it on my own.”
He stood abruptly, then seemed to remember he had nowhere to go without risking running into something or tripping and falling. He balled his hands into fists, but he breathed slow and calm.
“If I could see, I would put to use the many skills I’ve been taught and slip outside, sneak up to wherever he’s hiding—if he is in fact still out there—and I would either fight or threaten him into submission, then bring him in here and demand answers.”
Nina thought about it. She could maybe threaten, but she was no expert with a gun and surely the man out there would be. Cody could no doubt overpower someone. Her? Not so much.
So, maybe it was a mistake to expect she could think and act like Cody. She’d saved Brianna. Ace had sent someone to kill her and she’d fought him off. She’d survived.
So, what would she do if she was here, with Brianna? What steps would she have taken to keep her daughter safe?
“If we can’t fight them, we can run from them.”
“I’m blind. Both of us are banged up from the crash. Running isn’t an option, and it doesn’t solve anything.”
“If we get far enough away, the injuries don’t matter. They will keep watching the cabin, hatching their plans, and we’ll be long gone.”
“And then what?”
Then what? When it had been just her and Brianna, the “then what” had been disappearing and rebuilding a new life. But there was no rebuilding now. There was only keeping Ace behind bars.
And she had help. Regardless of sight, she had Cody. All the Wyatt boys. Her sisters. Duke. She had everyone.
“We get out of here, and then we set the trap.”
* * *
NINA OUTLINED HER PLAN. It clashed with his, which was to wait until dark and then do a little explosives work. But with his sight issues that would be even trickier than he and Nina sneaking out of here.
Cody was starting to see shadows more clearly. He still couldn’t see, but he was almost certain he could tell where light was shining from. He hoped it was a positive sign, but since he didn’t know for sure, he didn’t tell Nina.
“It’s a better plan,” Nina said as she finished.
“Define better.”
“Four against one instead of two against one.”
“You’re assuming there’s only one, Nina. That’s a dangerous assumption.”
“Everything we do is a dangerous assumption, Cody,” she returned, irritation straining her voice. “And your plan, if you could see, would be to go out there assuming there’s only one you could somehow capture.”
“Not necessarily.”
Though he couldn’t see her roll her eyes, he got the distinct impression that’s just what she did.
“Set aside the fact you want to do this on your own. Set aside the fact you want to be in control. Think of my plan from all your angles, and then, if you still don’t agree, come up with a better one.”
If she hadn’t pegged him so dead-on, he might have smiled at the demand in her voice. But the way she picked apart all his trepidati
on over her plan, made it about his own stupid feelings that didn’t matter... Well, it scraped.
And it was exactly what he had to do.
Truth was, if he had a better plan he would have thought of it by now. Waiting was dangerous. It gave whoever was after them too much time to plan, and with time and planning came preparation—which led to an alarming lack of mistakes.
These men after them had made a lot of mistakes so far. Cody had to keep the momentum going in his and Nina’s favor.
“We can’t head toward the ranch. It opens up Duke and the others too much, and despite my precautions, puts Brianna in the crosshairs.”
“Does North Star have some other kind of place like this?”
“Not for me to use.” He could probably finagle it, but he’d likely get Shay kicked out once and for all, and that wasn’t his place.
“Let me see that map we used to get here.”
He got out his phone and walked her through finding it. There weren’t the normal map markers, and her explanation of directions and the markers on the map weren’t exactly clear. It took longer than it should have to give him an idea of where they were.
“We’re close to the National Park,” he said, mulling it over and hoping he’d understood her verbal explanations. “Felicity knows the park better than anyone.”
“I don’t want to drag her into this.”
“She’s already dragged, Nina.”
“No, she isn’t. The only time I’ve seen Felicity since I’ve been back was our one whole-families meeting. She didn’t even speak to me.”
“That doesn’t mean Ace won’t eventually go after what’s yours. His focus is on me, but if you piss him off enough, it could be on you. Which would then extend beyond just Brianna and yourself to Duke and the girls.”
For once, he was glad he couldn’t see. He didn’t want to have to witness what he could already imagine—the color draining from her face, maybe a little horror. She’d never fully understood what getting herself mixed up with him meant.
He supposed none of them had—always thinking they could stay one step ahead. Even after Dev’s run-in, Cody had been sure he only needed the means to take down Ace. And that was what North Star had been for.
And still he was here. Right here in this awful situation that felt harder and harder to win.
“So, we, what? Hike to the Badlands?”
“More or less. Felicity can give us a clue where to go, and she can either get help to us or be the help to us without drawing much attention. Even if they’re following Duke or the girls, they’ll get bored real quick trying to traipse around the Badlands after Felicity when it will look like she’s just doing her job as a ranger. She’s our best bet for help without detection.”
“You should be the one to call her. She won’t speak with me.”
“You underestimate what Felicity would do to help you, Nina. No matter what kind of hurts are running through, they all have your back. They came and took care of our little girl.”
He heard her suck in a shuddery breath, but the one she blew out after it was even. “I still think you should call her. You understand the map better. I’ll...pack us up with whatever I can find.”
“We’ll need dark, so you’ve got time, but we can get a good start. I’ll call, you pack. You’ll have to carry some guns, supplies. You’ll have to study the map and know where you’re going. Everything is up to you leading a blind man.”
“Not all that different than carrying around a baby, Cody.”
“I’m heavier.”
“So make sure I don’t need to carry you.”
She was trying to make light of the situation, feel in control of it, and it fully dawned on him how often she’d been in this exact spot—but alone and with their daughter depending on her.
It awed him—she awed him—and some of the anxiety at letting her lead smoothed out. Because she’d kept their daughter safe and alive for years.
And what had he done but fail at getting rid of Ace completely?
He wanted to fix that, and maybe he’d get the chance yet, but for now he was still blind and he had to rely on her. Hopefully, he’d get the chance to return the favor.
He held out his phone in the direction he figured she was. “Dial Felicity for me?”
She didn’t take it from him immediately, and he got the sense—both in listening to her move and the shadows he seemed to be picking up—she was moving toward him, phone ignored.
She pressed her lips to his, featherlight and sweet, but with a heft to it. “Cody. When this is over—”
He didn’t know where she was going with that, had a bad feeling it was something like letting him down easy. Sleeping together had been a one-off, born of panic and fear. She didn’t want him to get ideas. “One step at a time.”
“When this is over,” she repeated, more forcefully. “I need to know Brianna and I have a place in your life. I know she does. I know she does. But I need a place there too.”
The thing about being blind in a dangerous situation that threatened the life of his daughter and the one woman he’d ever loved was that it stripped all the mental gymnastics he would have done otherwise. He couldn’t sit here and worry about if they were the same people, if he could forgive her keeping Brianna from him, if any good thing in life would ever last for him with Ace Wyatt’s blood running through his veins—because in the here and now it mattered not at all. Only life mattered. “There’s no place for you two, Nina. You’re both my life.”
The phone slipped out of his hand, then back in. “There,” she said, her voice oddly calm and solid. “I’ll go pack.”
Chapter Eighteen
They waited for dark like Cody had suggested. Cody wore the biggest pack, but since she was the one who could see, she needed to be the one with easy access to light and weapons. She had a smaller pack strapped onto her back, a gun holstered to her side and a headband with a light on it on her forehead.
Cody had taken her through how to use the gun, but there’d been no place or opportunity to actually practice. She prayed to God she wouldn’t have to use it. Maybe she’d been able to take out the last guy, but that had been in broad daylight.
They had a plan to sneak out the side window—betting that even if there was more than one person out here, they were looking at the exits—not including windows.
They’d had an argument about who would go first. Cody couldn’t seem to get it through his head that not being able to see meant he couldn’t be the first into danger anymore.
But what impressed her, once she got past her irritation, was that he was trying. He had to be reminded he wasn’t Mr. Call-the-Shots, but he’d swallow down that silly pride or whatever it was that made him determined to be in charge, and try to give her room to lead.
Try being the operative word, but not all men would. Especially men like Cody—trained in this kind of thing. He’d spent years with some mysterious group trying to take down one of the most notorious biker gangs in North America. He knew what he was doing—he just couldn’t enact it.
Meanwhile she was nobody. She could remind herself all she wanted that she’d kept Brianna safe for almost seven years, but as she slid out of the window, doing everything in her power to be stealthy and quiet, the backpack caught on the window and then she banged her knee on the side of the cabin. She held still, half hanging out of the window, holding her breath and listening for sounds of someone coming.
She could hear the sound of an engine, maybe even the faint strains of music. She looked up at the window where Cody was standing. “Are they...listening to music?” she whispered.
“Probably trying to stay awake. Which makes me think there’s only one, and he’s watching the door. Keep moving.”
Nina nodded and took the short jump to the ground. Even without his sight, Cody managed to make climbing out of a window l
ook graceful and easy.
They moved straight back, as they’d planned. They needed to get far enough away that turning on a flashlight didn’t give them away. Nina had to admit the moron with the running engine and music playing didn’t strike her as the type who’d notice a light behind the cabin.
Still, she stuck to the plan. Move forward in a straight line. Wait for Cody, who claimed he had some inner sense of how far they’d gone, to give her the signal.
So she walked, picking her way through the dark as she led Cody. She heard the night go strangely still and Nina paused.
“He cut the engine. Keep moving,” Cody whispered. “No lights.”
She did so, but something in the air changed and she looked back over her shoulder and stopped dead.
“What is it?” Cody demanded, his body tense and ready to fight no matter that he couldn’t see.
“The lights in the cabin just went on,” Nina whispered, watching the glow spread—one window, then two, then the window they’d crawled out of.
“It’s okay. Keep moving. It’ll take him time.”
Not enough time, Nina thought, but she swallowed at the panic in her throat and wrenched her gaze away from the light and back to the dark. She needed a minute for her eyes to readjust to the complete dark before she could move forward again.
They walked, on and on. She tried to avoid it, but every once in a while she looked back. The cabin’s lights were almost completely gone now, but a new light had joined them. Headlights pointed in the exact direction they’d gone.
“Keep going. Just keep going,” Cody urged.
Then she saw a new swath of light moving. A flashlight.
“He’s following us.”
“Let him.”
“We could double back. Leave him to get lost. If he’s stupid, he’d get lost out here, surely.”
“If he’s following us, he won’t get lost. He’ll just double back too and we’re where we started. He might be alone now, but if he’s following, he’s not acting alone. We have to stick to the plan.”
