“You’ll be careful.” She wasn’t asking; she was telling him. He, King, and Black were heading out late tomorrow to Alaska. Nina Lassiter had to be brought in.
“Only way I can be when I know I have you to come home to,” he assured her.
Ella yawned as she settled into his body.
“My heart never gave up on you, El,” he whispered.
She kissed him right over the organ that had never let her go. “I know,” she replied sleepily.
He felt her breathing even out and her body settle into the pattern of sleep. But he had one more promise to make before sleep took him.
“Safe, baby,” he said so softly it was barely a breath. She was already out, and he didn’t want to wake her.
But Ella smiled, her lips curving against his skin, and he realized she wasn’t as asleep as he’d thought. She raised her hands from under the covers and rested six fingers on his chest. “I’ve got your six, Jude.”
Joy lit the last dark corner of his heart. She’d come back to him. Or maybe he’d chased her down. Either way, she was his, heart and body—and Jude would never take that for granted again.
“Always,” he said.
Epilogue
Nina was tired. It felt as if grains of sand had embedded themselves in her eyeballs and no amount of rubbing helped ease the discomfort. She’d been up for two days straight. Fear and adrenaline continuously punched through any attempt at rest, not allowing her a respite. She’d gone through Ranger training and not had this much difficulty staying on top of things.
And now the car she’d purloined in Anchorage, the Honda she’d thought would run for miles and miles and miles due to its Japanese engineering, had met its match—Alaska.
She groaned as she shoved the car door open and stepped out. Steam rose from the front of her vehicle, the ghostly tendrils of gray mist startling against the backdrop of a brilliant pink-orange sunset. The sight held her attention for a long moment. It really was pretty in a this-sucks-ass kind of way.
Somewhere, a tree limb cracked and fell to the snow-shrouded ground, disturbing the sudden silence. At least, she hoped that’s what the noise had been. She didn’t know if she could protect herself from anything other than a stick right now.
The car must have become motivated by the sound of the limb falling because it chose that moment to creak ominously, the engine coughing and hissing before the whole body shifted, sinking into an impressive gangster lean.
Then, right before her eyes, one of the wheels fell off and rolled down the road. “Well…damn,” she whispered.
She had driven the wheels off the car. Literally. Apparently not finished with its sighing and groaning, the Honda shuddered violently and gave up the ghost. The steam billowing out from under the hood stopped, and she was left once more with silence.
Losing the tire must have broken its heart.
She had no idea where the first laugh came from. It startled her, made her question her sanity. Because sure as hell, none of this was funny. Her gaze caught on the animal moving over the snow ahead of her. The cause of her current trouble trotted up a steep hillside as if it hadn’t a care in the world.
Stupid elk. The animal didn’t look any the worse for wear after meeting her borrowed Honda ass to fender. The Honda?
Yeah…it was hurt. It was hurt real bad.
With the rapidly falling snow and not a soul in sight she knew, real bad was a death sentence for the car. Probably for her too. She was so close to her destination. Even though she felt like she’d traveled to the end of the earth, she had to be close.
The frigid breeze reached under her knit top and sank fangs into her skin. She blew roughly on her hands as her toes curled inside her fur-lined hiking boots. She had to get moving. Too long out in this weather, and she’d die. She hadn’t survived hell to die frozen in Alaska. Contemplation made her angry, so she shoveled that energy into pulling on whatever she could find from the backseat of her car. Layers for warmth because it was damn cold here, and it appeared she had a long walk in her near future.
“You just couldn’t pick Tahiti, could you? Had to pick Alaska,” she grumbled aloud. “Who picks Alaska to set up their retirement home? You had to be crazy before Ricker got hold of you. That’s got to be it.”
She rubbed her chest because the pain that settled in her heart when she thought about Micah had the ability to take her to her knees. She breathed through it. He was gone. She was going to have to make peace with that eventually. But not before she destroyed the man who’d taken him from her.
After putting on every last bit of the clothing in her go bag, she decided she resembled a vagrant marshmallow woman. She shrugged. It was irrelevant. She gathered together as much of her stuff as she could, cramming her laptop, satellite phone, and a small notebook into her go bag before she punched the key fob lock. She shook her head, sighing loudly as the car alarm snort-wheezed and then let out a last mournful wail. Why she was attempting to lock it was a mystery.
The car she’d appropriated—okay, fine, the car she’d stolen in Anchorage—was over fifteen years old. The beating it endured during her cross-Alaska flight, followed by being smacked upside the head by that damned elk’s behind, had relegated it to toast status. It wasn’t salvageable and would probably be consumed by the forest surrounding her. The car mimicked her sigh and then deflated, the other front tire going flat with a pop and hiss.
If cars had a soul, this one’s had just crossed over. She stared at the
