“I’m sorry.” Sincerity laced her words. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s okay.” He’d healed from that wound a long time ago. “Lilly and I both knew what we were getting ourselves into, and we’d both accepted the possibility that we might not be able to make it work. We agreed what’d happened between us was a mistake, but I can’t say I regret what came out of it. I wouldn’t have Owen or Olivia if it wasn’t for her.” He twisted toward Olivia. “What about you? Got someone waiting for you when you head back to Knoxville?”
The idea she’d found happiness with another man—someone other than him—built pressure behind his sternum, which didn’t make sense. She’d been the one to drive the wedge between them. What she did with her life after that shouldn’t have even crossed his mind, but there she’d been, always emerging when he failed to distract himself or had a few minutes alone.
“No. The cases I work, the things I’ve seen...” Ana shifted in her seat, flinched against an invisible pain he couldn’t see. She slowed the SUV on approach to one of the side roads off the highway up ahead. She turned that hazel gaze onto him for a moment as she maneuvered the vehicle up the long, winding drive to a cabin set a little less than an eighth of a mile back on the property. In an instant he was the man completely smitten with the rookie fresh from Quantico who’d been working her first missing persons case in Sevierville. “It’s impossible to find the light when I have to spend all my time walking through the dark.”
Chapter Three
Trees surrounded the property from every side, cutting them off from civilization. Ana climbed the short set of stairs leading up to a covered porch, old wood protesting under her boots. Nobody would be able to find them out here, and with the Smokey Mountains interfering with cell signals and transmitters, she, Benning and Olivia would be completely on their own.
Using the key she’d been given by Director Pembrook before leaving Knoxville, she pushed her way inside. Met with a spacious living room, pale stone and open ceilings, she dropped her duffel at her feet. The alarm panel to her right screamed for attention. She keyed in the code, also provided by the director, and moved to shed her coat. Pain registered as she pulled the heavy fabric from her shoulders, her T-shirt crusted to the wound. Securing the property—that was all that mattered right now. Then she could worry about digging the bullet from her side and recovering the evidence Benning had removed off that construction site. Heat brushed across her arms and neck as Benning carried his still-sedated daughter and her IV through the door. “You can put Olivia in one of the bedrooms over here. The fridge is fully stocked if you’re hungry. I’ll have someone on my team check in with her doctor about the head trauma protocol.”
The girl had lost a lot of color in her face, her elvish features more gray now. Abducted, hospitalized, shot at. Ana could only imagine the nightmares coming when Olivia drifted off to sleep, and her heart lurched in her chest. To go through so much pain, at such a young age... It’d stay with her the rest of her life. Just as it’d stayed with Ana since she was that age.
But she had the chance to make sure that pain didn’t tear Benning’s family apart as it had her own.
“Thanks.” He moved past her, the muscles along his neck and back flexing with every step as he headed around the short wall separating the entryway from the hallway. Smells of cinnamon and apples filled the space, but it would take a lot more than a few air fresheners to clear Benning’s naturally intoxicating scent from her lungs. She’d been wrapped in a protective bubble with him for the past two hours inside the SUV. She wasn’t sure if she could ever get him out from under her skin, but she’d keep her distance. His son’s life depended on it.
Infierno. She forced herself to focus on the injury, peeling back the thin fabric of her T-shirt. To prove he didn’t have this gripping hold over her. The bleeding had slowed, but the risk of infection out here was high. They were miles from any hospital, and with the bullet still inside, every move on her part only caused more damage. She had to secure the perimeter before arming the alarm system, then she could worry about the hole in her side. Sliding one arm back into her coat, she hissed as the pain increased.
“Where are you going?” That voice. His voice. Even after all these years, it hiked her pulse higher and heated her insides. How was that possible? She’d buried her feelings for him a long time ago. She’d moved on, healed. Four words out of his mouth shouldn’t leave her wanting more.
“I need to make sure the security measures are up and running.” A wide expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows revealed miles of wilderness, mountains and snow. If anyone had tracked them here, those trees would be the perfect cover, but safeguards had been put in place once the FBI had seized the cabin from its last owner. Cameras, motion-activated lights, heat sensors. All of it could’ve been compromised over the past few weeks of heavy snowfall. She’d check every single one of them before leaving Benning and Olivia on their own. They would be safe here, but the tension tightening the tendons between her neck and shoulders hadn’t lessened. It was one thing to come back to Sevierville to find a missing boy. It was another to hole up in a safe house with a former fling for as long as it took to find that boy. More than that, she needed distance, needed to clear her head—of
