by April Hunt
“Both your decision and Hogan’s were made from the same place—fear, and love.” Grace bit her lip and prayed he’d understand. “Don’t they both deserve forgiveness and a second chance?”
Grace’s chest ached as she waited for his response. More than anything, she wanted him to say yes. Anger for her mother had once ruled her life and her every decision, and she didn’t want that for him—regardless if he felt the same about their future together or not.
“You’re right,” Cade murmured.
Grace’s heart beat so hard she wasn’t sure if she’d heard him correctly. “I am?”
“You sound surprised.” His mouth twitched into a small, slow smile. “The truth is, I’d started seeing a few blazingly obvious similarities between me and the old man a while ago, but I ignored it. And him. I should’ve known that you’d catch on, though.”
“Yeah, you should’ve.” Grace brushed her mouth over his, initially meaning the kiss to be sweet and quick. But on contact, Cade’s hand slid into her hair. She angled her head and deepened the embrace, gently nibbling on his bottom lip and making him groan.
Nothing tasted sweeter than his lips. Nothing made her body come alive more than his touch. Nothing made her feel more complete than him.
“You still need that rest we talked about,” Cade murmured against her mouth.
Temporarily abandoning her hair, he slid his hands beneath her oversized T-shirt, his knuckles running up her torso. Every additional inch of skin he exposed elicited a new wave of goose bumps.
“Uh huh.” Grace pulled the offending shirt off and tossed it aside, leaving herself sitting astride his lap, naked from the waist up. “But I also need you.”
They’d made love more times than she could count, but this time it was as if she were experiencing it for the first time.
He cradled her breasts in his palms, slowly bringing his mouth to each hardened tip. Grace tossed her head back on a moan, fingers clutching his shoulders for support. She rolled her hips, her panty-covered mound brushing against his hardening cock. It twitched at the contact and caused her to rub her body harder.
Cade supported her ass and with a growl, spun them around and pushed her back onto the mattress. “Fuck, baby. I need you now. I need you always.”
A quick shedding of the rest of their clothes, and Cade had her—all of her. While feasting on her lips, he slid effortlessly into the hot depths of her body. One slow, deep thrust turned into a second. They moved in sync, Grace unable to tell where one ended and the other began as they met thrust for thrust.
They kissed. They touched. They shouted their way through a massive—shared—release. And as they cried each other’s names, Grace knew this was more than a second chance.
This was more than overcoming their past.
This was their homecoming.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Grace flexed her stiff back and immediately felt the hard erection nestled against her backside. Behind her, Cade murmured something unintelligible, pulling her closer, and she eagerly went, melting against him. She smiled to herself as memories from the night seeped back into her consciousness.
“I think she’s having a sex dream, because that grin screams naked naughtiness,” a deep, familiar voice proclaimed from way too damn close.
Grace’s eyes snapped open.
Registering a looming shadow hovering over her head, she whipped out a defensive fist, her knuckles catching on the nearest object.
“Fucking A! Oh, shit.” That same familiar voice wheezed as if having difficulty breathing. “I can taste my testicles. That’s probably a bad thing, right?”
“I told you that you should’ve kept your distance. Maybe next time you’ll listen to me,” a feminine voice chided.
Grace’s brain slowly defuzzed, taking in the sight of Liam, hunched over, deep-breathing as if he were teaching a Lamaze class. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Watching any chance of little Liam juniors go down the drain. Fuck.”
Jaz leaned against the wall and rolled her eyes. “I wanted to call you on the sat phone when we parked—like a normal person. Brainiac here wanted to try his hand at old-school lock-picking.”
“And it was disappointingly easy. All I needed was a credit card.” Still grimacing, Liam reached for the nearest chair. “I need to sit down.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Cade asked, sitting up.
Thank God they’d gotten dressed at some point during the night, because as much as Grace loved her cousins, she didn’t love them that much.
“You called for the cavalry, and the cavalry came,” Liam explained with a tight smile.
Cade looked from Liam to Grace and back to Liam. He chuckled. “She nailed you in the ’nads, didn’t she?”
“Fuck, yeah.” Liam adjusted himself, wincing.
“Be thankful I made her tuck her gun in the drawer instead of under her pillow.”
“Don’t even joke, man.”
“Who’s joking?”
To demonstrate Cade’s point, Grace slipped Magdalena from the drawer and watched Liam’s face pale.
Chuckling, Jaz tossed Grace another pack, and she caught it midair. “Clothes that will actually fit you, unlike the gorilla-wear I’m sure Roman tucked in that bug-out bag.”
“You’re a life-saver, Jaz Curva.”
“And a sweetheart. Why does everybody always forget how sweet I am?” the former Marine sniper teased dryly.
“Maybe because you’re sweet like those Extreme Sour Heads.” Liam dodged her punch, laughing harder as he headed for the door. “The bus pulls away in ten, kids, so I suggest you put a little hustle in it.”
Grace didn’t need ten minutes. Eager to get out to Rhett’s cabin, she was dressed and sliding into the passenger seat of a thankfully rust-free sedan in five.
Jaz navigated the West Virginia roads like she did life—full of flair and without apology. Grace white-knuckled the corners and closed her eyes when the Marine flew by stragglers she claimed drove slowly enough for a turtle to pass.
“Bet you’re sorry you didn’t let me drive, aren’t you?” In the rear seat, Liam leaned back as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Grace recited more than a few prayers on their travel into Maryland, but they got to Rhett’s mountain in record time. As Cade gave Liam and Jaz the run-down on what to expect, Grace hopped out from the car, her eyes dropping to the snow-packed mud fifteen yards away.
Her stomach plummeted and twisted into giant-sized knot. “Someone was here.”
Cade followed her line of sight and pointed to a second set of tire marks. “Two sets of someones.”
He and Liam crouched by the tracks, faces grim.
“These are fresh.” Liam dipped his finger into what looked like a dark spot of oil. “And I’m talking within the last two days. Anything older would’ve been covered up by the snow this area got three days ago.”
“We have to get up there.” Grace spun, ready to charge up the mountain.
Cade snagged her elbow. “Whoa. Pause. Wait a sec.”
“Rhett may not have a second. I swear to God, Cade, if you tell me to stay with the car I’m going to—” Her threat died when he held out Magdalena.
He waited for her to take it, eyebrows raised expectantly. “I didn’t think you’d want to go anywhere without your trusty friend, and you left her in the bag.”
Grace took the Mag and tucking it at the small of her back, smiled apologetically. “Sorry. Guess I got hit with a little tunnel vision.”
“Happens to the best of us.” He smirked.
Liam grimaced. “Seeing you guys cozy in bed together was traumatic enough. Can you stop being so nice to each other? It’s freakin’ me out a little bit.”
Grace and Cade both shot him dubious looks.
“What? It’s true. Ask anyone. Ask Jaz.” He turned to the sniper, who was pulling out a vicious looking rifle from the trunk of the car.
At the mentio
n of her name, Jaz glanced up. “Personally, I like it. I may not act it, but I’m a big fan of happily-ever-afters. I don’t think there’s a rom-com movie that I haven’t seen.”
“I’m so glad that fifty percent of you approve,” Grace interjected, “but can we get the hell up that mountain now? It’s bad enough we had to wait to morning.”
Her words seemed to snap everyone into gear. They rebundled into heavier winter outerwear and loaded up on whatever weapons they’d be able to hike with easily. Knowing the mountain and Rhett’s security like the back of her hand, Grace took the lead.
Unlike the tire tracks, half the boot prints had already been filled by blowing snow, but the trail was definitely there. They hadn’t been the only ones to come up this way. The real question was how much of a head start did the others have?
Less than a mile from the cabin, their surroundings transformed from luscious fauna to charred earth. Trees not blown to bits stood like petrified statues, and the punji pit on Grace’s left had been disturbed from the explosion.
Liam whistled. “Damn. I thought my neighbor hated visitors—and she threatened to electrify her welcome mat the next time I knocked on her door.”
“Rhett definitely likes his personal space.” Despite Grace knowing what surprises her friend had for unexpected guests, she was still left a little speechless—and worried. Especially when she located the trail again outside the blast radius. “Whoever came up here really wanted to get to Rhett’s cabin, and they weren’t letting a little fireworks stop them.”
Cade’s hand landed on her shoulder.
Once upon a time she would have immediately shrugged it off, but she covered it with her own hand and squeezed, thankful for the silent support. “He knows how to take care of himself.”
“He sure as hell does. He may have been way out here alone, but he was no sitting duck,” Cade reminded her.
Grace mentally reminded herself of that fact as they hiked the rest of the way, but what little comfort the words gave her died the second the cabin came into view. The left half of the porch and the front of the house had suffered the same fate as the trees.
A faint stench of smoke and ash still hung in the air, but no secondary fires or glowing embers meant they’d missed the action by at least twelve hours. Probably more.
“Careful,” Cade warned as they approached the stairs. “There could be additional devices that could still go off.”
“He only put one on the steps, and as you can tell, it was triggered already. The rest of the cabin’s clear.” Not waiting for him, Grace held her breath and slowly tightrope-walked what was left of the steps’ framework. The wood creaked ominously, flakes of timber breaking off beneath her weight. Once at the top, she took a breath and turned back to Cade. “Your turn.”
“Yeah, I’m not feeling that lucky today.” He gripped the edge of the undisturbed side of the porch and tugged his oversized body up and over. “Jaz, Liam. You guys go around back. See if you catch sight of anything.”
“On it.” Jaz nodded and turned the corner.
Grace was torn with wanting to see Rhett and afraid at what she’d find if she did. It was hard to tell if the busted furniture and destroyed computers were because of the explosion or because of a fight—until she found the large pool of dried blood in the kitchen.
Blood—but no body.
Liam’s whistle pierced the air. “You guys may want to come out and see this!”
Grace and Cade stepped out of the undisturbed rear of the cabin and looked to where Liam pointed into the snow. “There’s an old blood trail leading from the cabin to right here and then it stops, which means that whoever was bleeding either miraculously healed themselves, or—”
“He was carried out,” Grace finished.
Her cousin gave her an apologetic look. “You sure your EG friends didn’t bring a souvenir back to Sanctuary? You said they were having a celebration when they got back…”
Grace’s gut instinct told her that wasn’t the case. “No, Sarah admitted that their assignment didn’t go as planned—on two separate occasions. At the time, she had no reason to lie.”
For FBI field investigators, lack of a body was good news, and while she was more than thankful they didn’t find Rhett among the rubble, she couldn’t help but wonder where the hell he was…and what he was preparing to do.
* * *
Grace had been hired to do a job—work with her cousins to return Sarah Brandt to her father—and technically, she’d completed her assignment. Mission accomplished. Father and daughter reunited. As soon as Director Vance signed off on her report, nothing stopped her from jumping on the first available flight back to New York.
Nothing except Cade Wright—and her about-to-explode head.
In the bottom dregs of Steele Ops’s operation center, a modern-day, testosterone-fueled showdown was in full swing. Knox and Roman squared off with the VP’s security detail, and then Brandt himself glared accusingly at Director Vance. Growled warnings and ultimatums were hurled back and forth from both sides, but not a single person heeded them.
Grace’s body ached from physical exertion of hiking up and down two damn mountains. Add in her worry over Rhett and all the shouting around her, and she was done.
Grace slipped her fingers into the corner of her mouth and whistled—loud. Everyone came to an instant stop and looked her way. Finally. “Oh, good, I have everyone’s attention.”
Roman yanked on his ear, wincing. “Shit, that was loud.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have taught me how to do it.”
She glanced around the room, not sparing anyone her death-ray glare, including a red-faced Vice President Brandt. Jake Corelli opened his mouth to say something—again—and she took a move from Aunt Cindy’s playbook and simply lifted one dark eyebrow.
The Secret Service agent’s mouth snapped closed. Cute and smart.
“It seems to me that there’s a whole lot of talking—and shouting—happening from both sides of the ring here, and the only one who has any right to talk right now is me.”
“Now wait a minute—” Pierce Brandt interjected.
“Sht.” Grace pinched her fingers by her mouth, another Aunt Cindy favorite.
If Director Vance hadn’t been within Grace’s peripheral vision, she would have missed her boss’s slight twitch of the lips. Thank God. Because she’d just mimed for the vice president of the United States to zip his damn lips.
She’d spent the last hour detailing their findings about Rossbach’s hit list. She’d bullet-pointed the many ways New Dawn and its members posed a threat to the public. Then she’d gone into explicit detail on how Rossbach and her mother rewired people’s brains to not only accept their views on revenge and lethal retribution, but to condone their actions, no matter how violent they may be.
It still wasn’t sinking into Pierce Brandt’s head.
Grace barely contained her usual go-to method of knocking sense into her cousins—a kick to the solar plexus—and remained a respectable three feet distance from the vice president. “Sir, I’m not sure how to rephrase this so you understand the severity of the situation—and your daughter’s mind-set.”
“I understand perfectly well, Special Agent Steele. I called in a favor to have you handle my daughter’s extraction, and you performed your job. Thank you.”
“You called me in because I know how cults like the OND work. Throwing Sarah back into your world as if she’d never been part of them is dangerous.”
Brandt got to his feet as if prepping to leave. “In danger with the world’s finest security guarding her? That’s absolutely ridiculous. She’ll be the safest she could possibly be. New Dawn will never get to her again.”
“They already have, sir.” Grace glanced at the director and took her boss’s slight nod as a green light to take off the kid gloves. “I didn’t say she was in danger. I meant she is dangerous. To herself. Especially to you. Sarah’s physical body may look the same to you, sir, but I a
ssure you, her mind isn’t.”
Brandt’s mouth tightened, his expression darkening. “That’s absurd.”
“No. It’s not. What’s absurd is you thinking that she’s suddenly going to jump back into her old life after months of being brainwashed by those people!”
A pin could have dropped in the room and sounded like an explosion.
All eyes froze on her. Cade shifted at her back, and even though he didn’t touch her or say a word, his strength fueled her own. Something had changed back in that motel, and suddenly she didn’t want to withhold anything—not her thoughts or her feelings, and definitely not her words.
“I know, sir, because it was expected of me.” Grace sent an apologetic look to her cousins. They all watched her with various degrees of guilt. “It’s not your fault. None of you.” Her gaze drifted toward Cade, looping him into the group. “This is something I should’ve come clean about seventeen years ago, but for Sarah Brandt’s future, I’m doing it now.”
Cade wrapped his fingers around hers and squeezed. “Better late than never, babe.”
Pierce Brandt sighed impatiently. “While this is all very touching, and I do appreciate the sentiment behind it, I don’t see what this has to do with Sarah.”
“I wasn’t miraculously saved the night I Defected from New Dawn. Or when I walked into the Steeles’ house. As great as my family is, their love didn’t suddenly cure me. The first psychiatrist didn’t get me. Neither did the second. No one understands unless you’ve lived in the life, and I’m telling you, Mr. Brandt, what Sarah needs more than anything right now, including you, is Dr. Preston. Her expertise with cult victims is the only chance you have of getting your daughter back.”
“My daughter wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Brandt lifted his chin defiantly, but his voice no longer sounded so sure.
“Your daughter wouldn’t. Rossbach’s loyal follower would. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do in the name of New Dawn.”
