Chapter 40
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Remi’s hand froze inches from the door.
For one terrible second, she couldn’t breathe. She had been careful. Slow steps. Quiet latch. No wasted movement. She’d made it all the way across the room without a sound, only to get caught with her fingers stretched toward freedom like an amateur.
The voice behind her carried authority, deep and far too controlled.
Her pulse slammed hard enough to blur the edge of the door in front of her. She kept her hand where it was and forced herself to think. Running would be stupid. She’d be caught in minutes. No, likely seconds. It was futile for her to try.
Remi took one slow breath, then another, buying herself time she didn’t have. She pivoted, bracing for the wrath she didn’t need or want.
Everett stood ten feet away, his shoulder resting against the wall.
He crossed his arms slowly, pulling the dark T-shirt tight across his chest and biceps.
Tactical pants sat low on his hips. His gray eyes danced with amusement, his posture was loose, and the sexiest damn smirk she had ever seen curved his mouth like he’d been waiting for this exact moment.
Relief hit first.
Then fury.
Remi pressed her back against the door because if she moved too quickly, she might either throw herself at him or try to strangle him. At the moment, both felt equally possible.
“To turn myself in,” she said, then held up a hand before he could protest. “And don’t try to talk me out of it. You shouldn’t have brought me back here. It was reckless, foolish, and put a target on your back.”
Everett’s eyebrow rose. “The cops don’t know who did it.”
“Are you kidding me?” She pushed away from the door, rage flushing hot through her veins. “How long do you think it’s going to take Desmond Francois to put the pieces together and figure out only you and Stingray Security could’ve pulled this off?”
“By the time he connects those dots, I’ll have proof of your innocence and enough lawyers to keep both of us out of jail.”
“This isn’t a joke.” Her voice rose before she could stop it. “You made me a fugitive, Everett. You committed a major crime.”
“I’d do it again.”
“No.” She jabbed a finger toward him. “Do not say that.”
His jaw flexed.
“You don’t get to make this sound noble.” Her voice sharpened. “The last thing I remember is a cop bringing me a snack before they planned to move me to St. Basil.” Her eyes narrowed. “And since I woke up here instead of in a jail cell, I’m guessing that snack came with extra seasoning.”
“It was a very mild sedative.”
Her eyes widened. “You drugged me.”
“Harmless as a sleeping pill.”
“You roofied me.”
“You hadn’t been sleeping for days.” He shrugged. “And look at you now. You woke up this morning with enough energy to sneak out without saying goodbye.” A thread of hurt moved through his words.
Guilt slid in under the anger, which only made it burn hotter. “I was trying to stop you from ending up in the cell next to mine.”
“You were trying to run.”
“I was trying to protect you.” Frustration clawed at her chest. She couldn’t let this happen again.
They were too close to having everything they both wanted, and she would not be the reason history tore them apart twice.
“If I turn myself in, I can convince the cops I got out on my own and take the heat off you and the guys.”
Everett’s expression sharpened. “How? You don’t know what we did.”
“I would tell them …” She stopped, hating that he was right.
All she knew was what came after. Waking with golden sunlight warming her face, the hush of the Breaklands outside the windows, and the familiar curve of old stone overhead. For one disoriented second, she’d thought her mind had invented the room because she needed somewhere safe to go.
Then she saw the arched window, the deep ledge beneath it, the carved doorway leading into the hall.
The guardhouse.
The Love Shack.
Everett had brought her back to the one place they’d claimed as their own as teenagers.
The room was more beautiful than she remembered, softened with fresh linens and quiet touches that hadn’t been there when they were young, but the bones were the same. A hidden little palace tucked into the Breaklands.
She’d wanted to find Everett and pull him into that bed with her.
Instead, she’d gotten dressed and headed for the door.
There was too much at stake to stay.
She looked back at him. “How did you do it?”
“Exploited weaknesses in the bureaucracy,” Everett said. “St. Felipe had custody, St. Basil had jurisdiction, and Tiverton was expecting a transfer.”
Remi’s arms tightened across her chest.
“Sebastian only needed to make three different agencies believe three different things for it to work.”
“How long did you have to break me out?”
“Eight minutes and forty-two seconds before the station cameras, dispatch logs, and transport timeline started contradicting each other. We had to get you out and here to the guard house before that happened.”
The precision made her stomach tighten.
“You planned this down to the second.”
“We had to.” Everett’s voice stayed even.
“Kane got in first, who knows how, and got close enough to dose your snack. Then he planted the relay that allowed us to loop the corridor feeds.” Everett spoke with the practiced precision of a special agent debriefing a superior.
“Hunter staged a disturbance to pull officers away from holding. Sebastian drove the transport vehicle. Adonis followed behind us and erased anything we touched, stood near, or left behind.”
Remi pictured it despite herself. The station running on routine. Officers trusting paperwork. Cameras showing empty halls that weren’t empty. Everett and the other guys from Stingray moving through blind spots, turning procedure into a weapon.
“There’s no way you could’ve gotten me out and driven to the Breaklands in eight minutes. That’s impossible.”
“I didn’t say we drove the whole way.” Everett looked like the mere suggestion of an inefficient plan offended him. “Lachlan was waiting with the King Family helicopter after we switched vehicles twice. He flew us here to the guard house.”
The sheer nerve of it stole her next breath.
“So the team passed me around like a rag doll until we got to the Breaklands.”
“I carried you.” Everett’s voice dropped.
Flutters rippled through her.
Everett stepped closer. “Do you think I’d let another man touch you?”
The room warmed by several degrees.
He stopped a few feet away, his gray eyes locked on hers. “I made that mistake three years ago. I won’t make it again.”
Butterflies rose so fast she almost hated him for it.
This was serious. She was furious. They were fugitives in an old stone guard house, with the police tearing the islands apart for her. Yet, one possessive sentence from Everett had her body behaving like logic was optional.
“And I suppose you changed me out of the getaway gear and into the lingerie I woke up in this morning?” she asked.
His eyes made a slow, heated trip down her body, as if he was imagining what she’d looked like last night. By the time they returned to her face, her anger had far too much competition.
“Yes.”
Her pulse flickered.
“That was fun,” he said. “And frustrating.”
“Frustrating?”
“There were a lot of things I wanted to do to you.” His voice went rougher. “I couldn’t, considering you were unconscious and I’m not a monster.”
“Glad we cleared that up.”
“But you’re awake now.” He took one slow step toward her. “And you can make it up to me.”
“Stop right there.” The seriousness in her voice wiped the heat from his expression.
“You’re upset,” he said.
“Yes, I’m upset.” She dragged both hands down her face, then forced herself to meet his eyes. “Everett, you broke the law last night. The cops can charge you with a dozen crimes, and it’s my fault. That is what I didn’t want.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
“When I let Francois put handcuffs on me at the beach, I did it because I wanted you free.” Her throat tightened. “I knew it would buy you time to find the evidence we needed to prove I didn’t kill Bobby or Lois. I could handle jail for a few days. Even weeks.”
“They weren’t taking you to jail, Remington.”
She stared at him.
“Francois was pissed off that you evaded him for over a week,” Everett said. “He wanted to make an example out of you. They were sending you to Tiverton for a seventy-two-hour hold.”
“Tiverton?” The word sent ice through her veins.
“Maximum security,” Everett said. “The worst criminals from across the Caribbean. Violent offenders. Cartel soldiers. People too dangerous for local jails.”
Her mouth went dry.
“I wasn’t letting them put you in there.” He moved closer, but this time, nothing about him was teasing. “I knew what you wanted me to do. I saw it on your face at the beach. I couldn’t do it. If being angry with me is the price I pay for keeping you here with me, I’ll pay it.”
“Being sent to Tiverton is better than losing you.”
“Losing me?” His brows drew together. “I’m right here.”
“For now.” The words ripped out before she could soften them. “Until your conscience gets the better of you and you realize what a huge mistake you made committing a crime for me again.”
Everett’s expression changed.
Remi pushed past him into the hallway because staying still made her feel like she might splinter.
“The last time you did that, it broke you. You couldn’t look at me afterward.
You didn’t want to be around me, and I lived three cold, lonely years without you.
I am so afraid that’s what will happen now because of this.
” She swept a hand toward the room around them.
Everett followed her, keeping his distance. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“It’s the truth.” Her voice shook, but she kept going because stopping would only let the fear win.
“After I stopped being angry, I understood that I didn’t have the right to ask any more of you.
The best thing I could do was give you freedom from me.
From the memories of what you’d done. From the things you never thought you were capable of doing. ”
His face tightened.
“My one request turned you into the kind of man you had spent your whole life trying to bring to justice.” Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to look away. “I can’t imagine how much you hated yourself for what you did, even if you did it for me.”
“I never hated what I did.”
The words hung between them.
Everett held her gaze. “I hunted the men who hurt you to that house in Kingston. I made sure they couldn’t walk out, and I triggered the explosion that burned the place down with them inside.”
Her breath caught.
“I stayed until there was nothing left but fire, smoke, and smoldering ash. The police didn’t find the place for three days.
” His voice stayed low, rough, and unflinching.
“I know what I did. I know what it made me. But I didn’t regret it.
They attacked you. They killed our baby.
In my mind, they deserved what happened. ”
Remi pressed a hand to her mouth.
“I thought I would be horrified by what I did.” He looked away for the first time. “I thought there had to be something wrong with me because I wasn’t. That realization shattered everything I believed about who I was, but it had nothing to do with you asking me for vengeance.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“No.” He closed the distance between them. “This is where you were wrong, Remington.”
She blinked through tears.
“What you asked for didn’t make me like the criminals I hunted.
It took me years to understand the difference, but I understand it now.
Men like that kill for power, greed, money, and the pleasure of owning another person’s fear.
” His hand came up, gentle against her face. “Everything I did was driven by love.”
A sob caught in her throat.
“I love you, Remington.”
The world seemed to narrow around those words.
“I don’t love the memory of who we were before Jamaica.
I don’t love you because we were close as teenagers or because I’m trying to recover something the past took from us.
” His thumb brushed the wetness from her cheek.
“That girl is still in you, and so is the woman I lost for three years. But you are more than both of them now. Every time life has forced you to become someone new, I have fallen in love with her too.”
Remi stepped into him and wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her face against his neck as tears slipped free. He pulled her close, enveloping her in a strong embrace that felt like forgiveness and home and every impossible thing she had been afraid to want.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then Everett leaned back enough to look at her, his gray eyes soft with a tenderness that undid the last of her defenses.
“That means you never have to be afraid I’m going to leave you again,” he said. “You’re stuck with me.”
Her laugh broke through the tears. “I want to be stuck with you.”
“Good.”
“I love you so much.” She clutched the front of his shirt. “I never stopped loving you, Everett. Not once.”
His hand slid into her hair. “I know.”
“You know?”
“Okay … I’d hoped because I never stopped loving you either.”
He bent his head. The kiss started gently, his mouth brushing hers with a reverence that made her chest ache.
Remi rose into it, needing more, and Everett gave it to her.
The tenderness deepened, turning slow and warm and almost too much to bear as his arms tightened around her.
She tasted salt from her tears mingled with the sweetness of his mouth, felt the hard steadiness of his body against hers, and let herself believe, for the first time in too many years, that love had not been the thing that ruined them.
Love was the reason they were still standing.
Everett broke the kiss only far enough to rest his forehead against hers.
“Now,” he murmured, “please stop trying to escape from the safest place on the island.”
Remi closed her eyes and breathed him in.
“Fine,” she whispered. “But I’m still mad about the sedative.”