Chapter Ninety-Three
Blade
F or four fucking days, I questioned every goddamn move I’d made.
I watched the snow.
I stared at my cell.
I stared at a bag of fucking groceries on the counter.
The fifth day, I took the bottled coffees and chips out of the bag and tossed the moldy bagels. I was thinking about a second run when the security system alerted with a perimeter breach.
Palming my Sig, I went to the panel by the front door to check the feeds, but I didn’t have to. I already saw what was coming at me.
A 1998 green Jeep Cherokee pulled down my driveway.
I fucking stared as a five-foot-nothing lioness, with her mane of dark hair and pink boots, got out of her SUV and spun in a circle with a smile on her face. Then she turned her back on me as she looked up at the sky.
I stepped out of the cabin.
Oblivious to my presence, she held her arms out wide and tipped her head back.
I cleared the porch, my boots hit the snow, but she still didn’t notice me.
Closing the distance between us, I warned her on my approach. “Hey.”
Startled, she dropped her arms and turned.
The look in her eyes hit me first. Lost as hell and tired as fuck. She was still goddamn beautiful.
Then she threw me a shy smile. “Hi.”
Ignoring my Mach ten heart rate, I tipped my chin. “What’s going on?”
Her expression fell, and she glanced back at the river. “Nice view.”
Right now, I didn’t give a fuck about the view. “You good?”
“Yep.”
No eye contact, snapping the P at the end of her response, she crossed her arms. She wasn’t fucking good.
“Try that again,” I demanded.
“I’m fine.”
Bullshit. “Only two reasons you came here, woman, and I don’t see a dumpster fire behind you.” I put that shit out.
“I have to be on fire to come here?”
No. But I didn’t tell her that. “You in danger?”
“Asks the man who disconnected his cell phone.”
“You knew how to get a hold of me.” She had AES’s number.
“Did I?”
“You’re standing on my land.”
She glanced around. “I guess I am.”
“What do you want?”
“Want?”
Jesus fucking Christ , this woman. I was both too old for this shit and hanging on to her every word like a fucking pussy-whipped teenager. “Not a good look on you. Tell me why the fuck you’re here.”
“Now you care how I look?”
“I meant attitude. Yours took a hike. What’s up?”
With that lost fucking look in her eyes, she nodded. “That’s my least favorite question ever. You know what someone is asking when they say what’s up ?” She met my gaze. “Nothing. They’re asking absolutely nothing because they don’t want to know anything. It’s a platitude, an empty question, and a fuck off all rolled into one.”
I rephrased. “What do you need, Georgia?”
She sucked air into her lungs and held it. Then all the shit in her head came out with one of her signature intel dumps. “You know, I don’t think anyone has ever called me that before. Georgia Lynn, Georgie, Lynn, Lynnie, girl, child… Lioness .” Dropping her raspy voice, she rushed through another list. “Slut, whore, bitch, fat pig.” She shook her head and fake smiled. “And, of course, Juni or Juniper.” She patted her SUV again. “But never just Georgia.” She met my stare. “Until you.” Her smile dropped. “Is that weird?”
I reminded her who the fuck I was. “You’re talking to a man with a call sign.”
Her face flushed. “Oh yeah. Right, of course. Sorry.” She waved her hand absently toward the river. “It looks more full today, or something else. Faster, maybe?”
Fuck this.
I crossed the gravel driveway, hit the porch steps, unlocked the front door, and pushed it open. Then I held it. “You coming?”
She glanced around nervously.
“Get in the house, woman.”
Crossing her arms against the cold, she hustled over.
I watched her ass as she walked into the cabin and went to the river-facing windows.
“Everything looks the same, but it feels like a lifetime ago that I was here.” She spun in a circle as she looked at the ceiling. “Well, it kind of was a lifetime ago, or a different life.” She turned back toward the view. “I sold my house. So I guess that’s different. But now I’m homeless again, so that’s the same.” She whipped around. “But not that I’m squatting or came here to couch surf or anything. I have money now. I mean, not like how you have money. It’s nothing like that, but it’s more than I ever had. So yeah, I’m not, like, using you or anything. And not that you asked, but I never saw Reena—if it was her. She was gone by the time I got to Del Cielo’s, so I didn’t get a chance to ask her if her Charlie was your Charlie. Not that you’re chasing ghosts anymore, but just relaying that information.” She inhaled. “In case you wanted to know.” She exhaled, and her voice quieted. “Because I like to know things, so I thought… you know.”
“You drive straight through from Miami?” November, that fuck, hadn’t given me a sitrep on any of this when I’d told him to keep an eye on her.
She laughed nervously. “Ah, no. That would’ve been, like, literally forty hours of straight driving. I stopped places.”
My anger ramped up. “Places.”
“Yeah. Some cheap motels, a few drive-thrus, some coffee places. Lots of truck stops. And two diners.”
Alone. “Don’t fucking drive cross-country by yourself again.” I’d seen the way she drove. Worse than any SEAL I’d served with.
“It wasn’t across the country. It was like, twenty-seven hundred miles… ish.”
Twenty-seven hundred miles to see me after I’d told her to go live her life because I thought I was doing the right goddamn thing by her.
I stole her line. “This is a fucking first.”
“What is?”
“A woman chasing me down.”
She frowned. “Women don’t chase you?”
“No.” But she had. And she didn’t know it yet, but I’d made myself a goddamn promise that if she ever showed up here or at AES that I was free to make a move.
“Why not? You’re….” She glanced from my biceps to my cock. “You’re you.”
“I don’t give them a reason to chase me.” There was only one insane chick I wanted.
“Huh.”
“Why are you here?”
Her head dropped, and she stood silent long enough that it fucking bothered me.
Then she looked up. “You know danger? The kind where you don’t think it’s dangerous because you’ve been there before?”
I stared at a young-as-hell woman who summarized the entirety of being a SEAL in two fucking sentences. “Yeah.”
“This is that.”
The woman knew how to hit harder than a targeted JTAC airstrike.
Me.
I was her danger.
Not that fucking piece-of-shit drug dealer, not the grandfather who signed her goddamn marriage certificate, not the assholes who tried to gun her down, but me.
She was fucking afraid of me.
No choice, watching my promise disappear as fast as it’d shown up, I did the right goddamn thing. Again.
I nodded. “Where’re you going next?”
“I don’t know.” Her whisper hit a new level of defeat, but her expression didn’t fucking change, and that’s when I saw it.
She knew how I’d react.
This woman expected me to cut and run. After all the shit that’d happened, after everything I’d said to her, she still expected the worst of me.
I didn’t fucking blame her.
Fishing keys out of my pocket, I tossed them on the kitchen counter. “Stay the month. Figure it out.” I turned toward the door.
“Blade.”
“Road washes out when the snow melts or in heavy rain.” I hadn’t fixed that yet. “You need to exfil in any kind of weather, drive across the southern pasture.” It was the only flat parcel on my land. Her Jeep could handle it.
“ Blade .”
I fucked with the security panel on the entryway wall that had limited access to my air-gapped system. “New alarm code is your birthday.” I didn’t tell her I knew the date because I’d spent five fucking days obsessively reading every piece of intel I’d dug up on her. Or that I’d been staring at the goddamn pics of her I’d taken in that coffee joint, especially the one with her lips wrapped around that straw. “Six digits, then enter. Sets and disables the system. Use it.” Grabbing a shotgun from the entryway closet, I double-checked to make sure it was loaded. “Don’t go near the river, and don’t hike the land without protection.” I stood the Winchester Model 70 up in the corner, then reached for the front door.
Shattering glass sounded behind me.