by Lauren Esker
"It was mainly bribery, not revenge. Well ..." Debi's smile was impish. "Maybe a tiny bit of revenge."
Fletcher took her hand and smoothed his thumb across her knuckles. "I'll keep that in mind if I'm ever tempted to get between a lioness and her prey. All that aside, though, thank you for being willing to get along with Chloe. It can't be easy for you."
"It's not. But ..." She let out a long sigh. "I can't help feeling like I've been where she is now. The difference is that I knew what my family was doing."
"I don't believe that Chloe didn't know, at least a little bit."
"Be that as it may, people were willing to give me a second chance. She deserves one too. In general, I mean," she added quickly, leaning forward to kiss him. "Not a second chance with you."
"Trust me," he murmured against her lips. "She's not getting one."
Debi sat back with a satisfied smile, which faded after a moment to something gentler. "Believe it or not, I'm glad she's not going to prison. You and I both know what it's like to lose our parents. Olivia is a great kid. She needs both of hers."
"She does. And she is." Which reminded him of another child who might be in danger of losing a parent. "What's happening with Janice? I still can't believe she was laundering money through the company. I assume Casper put her up to it."
"You're exactly right. I don't know all the details, but Nia says Janice has been very cooperative and she's working on cutting a deal to testify against Casper. It looks like she'll get off without jail time."
It surprised him, a little, how sorry he felt for Janice, even though the betrayal still stung. He could imagine it easily, Casper offering her a series of fat payoffs in return for nothing more than signing a few false receipts. She could use the money to give her son the best possible medical care. What parent wouldn't have been tempted by the offer? The fact that she'd kept records of everything she'd done made him think she had been conflicted about it, though perhaps that was just wishful thinking. He was glad her son wouldn't be left without his mother, though.
"Anyway," Debi said, stretching. "On less gloomy topics, it's almost dinnertime, so I'm thinking about heading down to the hospital cafeteria for a bit."
Fletcher shook his head. "Why don't you get out of here for the evening? You don't need to live in that chair. They'll be bringing me jell-o soon, so I'll be busy anyway."
"Are you hungry?" Debi asked.
"Sort of. Guess I'll see what the doctor says. But seriously." He kissed her hand and nibbled along the edge of her fingers, drawing a smile out of her. "Go hunt down a nice steak or something. Sleep in an actual bed. My bed, if you want to. I'll call Mrs. Cox and have her meet you out front with my spare key."
"Oh, Fletcher." She leaned in to kiss him, and ended up with her arms around his neck, as much of her body pressed against him as she could get away with, short of actually climbing onto the bed. "You need to get better," she murmured, kissing him along the side of the jaw. "There are more things I want to do in that big bed of yours than sleep."
"With an incentive like that, how can I not heal up as fast as humanly possible?"
Chapter Seventeen
Fletcher's downstairs neighbor not only happily gave Debi the key to his condo, but remembered her from the cookie handout the previous weekend, and tried to invite her in for tea and a chat. "What happened to your leg, dear?"
"Oh, just careless. Clumsy me. Tripped on some stairs."
She really wasn't in the mood to socialize, particularly with a human stranger, so she extricated herself as politely as possible. The thought occurred to her as she took the elevator upstairs that she could have rudely shot the woman down and ruined any chances of being invited back. A few months ago, she probably would have.
But these people might be my neighbors soon. I ... I want them to like me. I think I kind of like them, too.
The fact that they were human didn't seem to matter so much anymore.
Pride—in the pack/family sense—was a funny thing, she mused as she unlocked Fletcher's door. She had always seen it as something tight and insular, because that was how it had been in Roger's pride. There was the pride, the family. And then there was everyone else, the outsiders.
But maybe it didn't have to be that way. Maybe the boundaries of a pride—a family—were nebulous and uncertain, a matter of degree rather than a clear dividing line between "in" and "out." Or maybe it was like overlapping circles: one circle for family, one for friends, one for neighbors and other people that you liked but maybe didn't quite trust enough to include them in the innermost circle.
Thinking of friends reminded her of Nia Veliz. Nia had taken her to a shifter doctor and sat with her, holding her hand, while they worked on her ankle under a spinal block. Right now it ached dully. She was almost due for a pain pill, so she set her purse in the middle of Fletcher's kitchen island to make sure she took it as soon as she got settled in.
It was strange to be in the condo without Fletcher there. She checked on his snake and made sure it had water, then watered the handful of plants scattered around the place. After that she took her painkiller and flopped on the couch to contemplate ordering food.
I can live here, if I want to.
She rolled onto her side and gazed at what little of the view through the kitchen windows was visible from her present location, a slice of sunset-purple sky. The weather had been brilliantly sunny today, as if to make up for the dreary weather of the past week, but she'd only seen it through the window of Fletcher's hospital room.
He was going to be okay. She held that to her heart, and slowly, slowly, some of the tension eased out of her.
—and then came flooding back when her phone vibrated in her purse.
"Ugh." She thought about ignoring it, but it could be something to do with Fletcher, so she pried herself off the couch and crutched over to the kitchen island.
There was a text from Nia: Can we meet up? SCB wants to talk to you.
Debi blew a strand of hair off her nose, annoyed. The SCB already talked to me, she texted back. I've told my story so many times I think everyone's heard it by now.
No, it's not that, Nia's reply came back. This is about the ankle monitor.
Oh.
Debi stared at her phone. If she was finally going to get the damn thing off ... An odd mix of hope and exhaustion warred inside her chest. Did it have to be now? She was so goddamn tired, and she'd just taken a pain pill. She had thought she'd be able to present herself at her best, to show up in front of a judge looking perfectly put together and make a case for herself as an honest citizen.
Right now she couldn't even muster the energy to go back out with the crutches, trying to navigate city streets and public transportation with only one good foot. Can you come to where I am? she asked Nia.
Sure, Nia texted back. Give me the address.
***
By the time Nia arrived, Debi had fixed her hair a little bit and poured a glass of white wine to steady her nerves. She'd left the bottle out on the coffee table, because going all the way across the room to put it back in Fletcher's refrigerator seemed like too much work, but she managed to pry herself off the couch to go open the door.
She had expected that Nia wouldn't be alone. What she hadn't expected was which agent would be with her.
"Ms. Fallon," Jack Ross said. His tone was firm, polite, and completely professional.
"Agent Ross," Debi said in what she hoped was the same tone.
Agent Jack Ross. Grizzly shifter. The man who had been hunted by her siblings a year ago, and nearly killed by them.
The man who had killed her brother Derek, and played a key role in Roger's death.
He was a big man, taller than Debi. Even as a human, he moved with a predator's easy grace. He was wearing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses which gave him an oddly professorial look: a hot professor, granted—the Indiana Jones type who might go running off to fight cultists and Nazis at any moment.
As she moved aside to let
them in, Debi suddenly wished she'd taken the effort to put away the bottle of wine on the coffee table. This is not how to go about proving I'm a responsible citizen ...
But Nia caught sight of it, smiled, and chirped, "Ooh, chardonnay! Where are the glasses?"
"Uh, cabinet beside the sink, I think?"
"Nice place," Ross said, shoving his hands in his pockets as Nia retrieved two more wine glasses. "This isn't the address you have on file with the SCB."
"No, this is Fletcher Briggs's apartment." She said it defiantly, inviting them to challenge her right to be here.
Nia spun around from the sink to throw her a thumbs up and a brilliant grin. "Nice! I'm glad you patched things up. I hope he did the appropriate amount of groveling first."
"Yes, well." Debi had to look away from the intent, curious way Ross was looking at her. "It's hard to go through mortal danger together without bonding at least a little bit."
"Something I can relate to," Ross said quietly. "As it happens."
That's right—it hadn't just been Ross on that island a year ago, but his mate too. Debi darted a quick look at him as Nia put a wine glass in his hand. He didn't look angry, just thoughtful.
"I understand you went to see your brother and sister recently," Ross said, speaking to the wine more than to her. "How did that go?"
"About as well as it went the last time." The corners of Debi's mouth turned up in something that wasn't really a smile. "The difference is, this time it's mutual. I don't want to have anything to do with them either. And, if you don't mind, I'm going to sit down, because it's no fun standing for any length of time on one foot. Feel free to have a chair."
Nia plunked herself on the other end of the couch, but Ross remained standing, leaning against the kitchen island and twirling the stem of the wine glass between his fingers. "Dr. Lafitte said your injuries fit with the events as you described them—"
"You thought I was lying?" Debi snapped, as Nia said sharply, "Jack!"
Ross raised his free hand placatingly. "Hey. I'm examining the angles, that's all. Look, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't entertain the possibility that you set this up somehow. But it doesn't look that way, and we have you to thank for finally managing to bring in Casper Sperlin and prove that he's been using his venom to assassinate people."
"She's a hero," Nia said smugly over the top of her glass of wine.
"She's a criminal on a tracking monitor who is, we hope, in the process of being rehabilitated," Ross said. "Ms. Fallon, tell me something. If you got the monitor off tomorrow, where would you go? What would you do?"
Debi reached for her wine glass, topped off by Nia, to give herself a moment to think.
There was a time when the answer to that question would have been the most obvious thing in the world. First, she was going to get the hell out of Seattle. Second, start building up her family fortune again. And third (though this part had seemed a lot more appealing during the first month or two, when her loneliness was so thick she had to push through it, like wading through mud) she'd have gotten to work on breaking Mara and Rory out of prison.
Now, though ...
Rory and Mara belonged in prison. They might still be family, but she wasn't about to risk her hard-won freedom to break them out just so they could get back to doing everything that had gotten them locked up in the first place. They hadn't learned a thing. Couldn't learn a thing, she thought, because they had no idea they'd done anything wrong.
As for the rest of it, despite all her fantasies of penthouses and restaurants with thousand-dollar items on the menu—or just having the simple freedom to hop on a plane and fly anywhere but Seattle—she couldn't think of anything she wanted more than what she had right now.
"I don't know," she said at last. "Maybe that's a terrible answer, but it's the truth. I don't even care if you believe me. Everything I used to want are things I don't want anymore, and now, all I can think about is being able to wake up every morning with Fletcher, and play with his daughter, and have a home and a family again. I might start my own accounting firm, maybe. I think I'd like to be my own boss." She turned a cautious smile on Nia. "And I hope Nia might still want to get together for coffee every once in awhile. Even if it's not her job to keep an eye on me anymore."
"Oh, I think you're always going to need someone to keep an eye on you." Nia's smile glimmered mischievously in her eyes. "Of course I will."
Debi turned to look Agent Ross square in the face. She still couldn't read his expression. "So that's the only answer I have for you. What I want is to live here with Fletcher and Olivia, and be part of their family, and hopefully figure things out from there. Oh, and ..." She took a deep breath. She didn't know if this was the right or wrong thing to do. Reminding Agent Ross of her family's crimes in such a personal way might torpedo any hope of ever getting the monitor off. But it felt more wrong not to. "I don't think I've ever actually said this, but I'm sorry for what my family did to you. For what I did. I—I'm sorry for all of it. I can't make up for it, so I don't know if it makes any difference to say it, but I really am sorry."
Agent Ross gazed at her for a moment without speaking. Then he set his wine glass on the countertop. "I think I've heard what I need to hear today," he said, and took a key ring from his pocket.
Debi watched, holding her breath, as he knelt beside her feet and unlocked the replacement monitor. It came free with a little snap. She rotated her foot experimentally. She hadn't worn it on the right ankle long enough to get used to it, so having it off was oddly anticlimactic.
"That's it?" she asked. "No testimony? No paperwork?"
"Oh, there'll be plenty of paperwork, but I've got that end covered. You might need to come in and sign something. And we're going to need you to stay in town while we work on the Casper Sperlin case. No going anywhere for a month or so. Can I count on you to do that?"
Debi nodded. "Yes," she said fervently. "Yes, of course. Besides, I can't go anywhere with Fletcher still convalescing. It wouldn't be right."
Jack looked at Nia, who grinned. "Told you," she said.
"Huh." Jack twirled the ankle monitor around his finger. "Pretty solid little piece of hardware here. You shifted wearing this, huh?"
Debi raised her casted leg pointedly. "I wouldn't recommend it."
"Ha. Good point." He tossed the monitor in the air and caught it. "Well, I guess that's all we need to do here. Like I said, check with us before you leave town for the next month or so, and be prepared to stop by the office when we file the paperwork. But that's it. You're a free woman now." He nodded to Nia. "Ready to go?"
"Actually ..." Nia pointed at her glass of wine. "I think I'll stay for a bit. I mean, I can't leave a good chardonnay undrunk, right?"
"Hmm. Fair enough."
"Agent Ross." Debi hesitated, but he was looking at her now, and she'd committed herself to this probably-unwise course of action. "If you'd like to stick around and have a drink—you don't have to, but you'd be welcome."
Nia stuck out her foot and poked him with her toe. "Come on, Jack, stay a bit. Have a drink and join us for our 'yay, no more parole' celebration. You can't pass up a free drink, right?"
"I'm not really a wine guy," Ross demurred. After a pause, during which Nia continued to ply him with puppy-dog eyes, he sighed and smiled slightly. "On the other hand, if you happen to have any whiskey around ..."
"Search me. I'm not familiar with everything that's in Fletcher's cabinets yet." Debi started to heave herself off the couch, but Nia hopped up first.
"I'll get it. Uh, if you don't mind me poking around in Fletcher's kitchen."
Would he mind? Debi decided he probably wouldn't. If he was serious about having her move in with him, this was going to be her house soon enough; she might as well start making herself at home. "Go ahead."
"If we're having a drink together," Ross told Debi, taking a chair at the end of the kitchen island, "you ought to call me Jack. Strictly Agent Ross in the office, though."
&nb
sp; "Aha!" Nia crowed, straightening up from her rummaging. "One bottle of well-aged Scotch. Ice or no?"
"Ice is a terrible thing to do to a perfectly good Scotch."
Debi lifted her legs up onto the couch—one in a cast, the other anklet-free—and listened to their playful banter.
She was having a drink with two SCB agents, and she was enjoying it.
Rory, Mara, if you could see me now ...
But they wouldn't understand. And she could find space in her heart to make peace with that.
Some people grew away from their family as they grew up. She'd never expected she would be one of those people, or could be one of those people. Pride was everything. Or at least it had been.
But sometimes you have to make your own pride.
Her phone buzzed on the counter. "Text for you," Nia said, leaning over to look at it. "Ooh. It's from Fletcher."
"Throw me that! Stop reading my texts!"
Nia grinned and tossed the phone to the couch. Fletcher's text said only: Thinking about you.
Wish you were here, she texted back.
In my own apartment? Soon, he texted. Settling in okay?
"Where's the bottle opener?" Nia asked.
Debi looked up. "Drawer under the sink. Are you opening another bottle of wine? What's wrong with the chardonnay?"
"Nothing's wrong with the chardonnay, but I just realized there's muscato."
Nia's here, Debi typed. My caseworker. Apparently we're having a party because I just got my ankle monitor off.
!!!! Congrats!
Do you mind if we drink your booze?
Of course not. Go for it.
She hesitated, her thumbs hovering over the phone keyboard, not quite sure how to sign off. As she was debating with herself, another text came in: Love you.
Love you too, she typed, and in that moment, all was right with the world.
Epilogue
