Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
WILLIAM
ONE YEAR LATER
I fire a quick pass to Curren who is racing for our makeshift end zone, his little legs pumping. The ball drops perfectly into his outstretched arms, and he sprints the remaining few yards to score.
“Nice, buddy!” Zach calls as Curren does his celebratory chicken dance.
“Isn’t Zach supposed to be on our team?” Charlotte asks, huffing hard after our play, her hands on her hips.
The diamond I slid onto her finger two months ago flashes in the evening light.
Charlotte wanted a simple ceremony, so we gathered our closest friends and family at our favorite picnic spot by the blackberry patch and tied the knot.
With a laugh, I lean over and steal a kiss. She still sucks at sports, but it just makes me love her more.
“Dinner’s ready!” Barb calls out from the picnic area.
Our family gathers around, filling plates and crowding onto the picnic tables, Ollie and the Hutton’s new puppy sticking close to the food .
Charlotte and I sit with Henry, Sofie, and Zach with Tanya on his lap.
Theo, Ray, Morgan, and Crosby sit with Skye and Jesse.
Barb, Curren, and Rowdy, sit across from CJ, the new conservation officer he’s training, who is tucked in awfully close to Linnea.
She’s beaming at something he’s just said while Rowdy’s been scowling at him since the moment he showed up.
“What’s the story there?” I ask Zach in a low tone.
“CJ apparently took Linn to coffee yesterday,” he replies. “Rowdy’s just being his normal protective dad self.”
Sofie raises an eyebrow. “Dad’s been so busy up north, I’m glad he’s finally getting some help.”
“At least Everett won the election,” Henry says, his brow quirked. “Someone’s gotta stop those bastards.”
Zach claps his hands over Tanya’s ears too late.
Henry cringes. “Sorry, little lady,” he says to Tanya, who is too busy mowing down a wedge of watermelon to have even noticed.
“Thanks for including Crosby in your birthday cookout,” Charlotte says to me in a quiet voice after the conversation has moved on.
I hug her closer to me on the bench and kiss her temple. “Happy to.”
She rests her head on my shoulder.
Once Charlotte filled in some of the gaps, it was clear I’d been holding a grudge against Crosby for a reason that my broken heart had manufactured.
Though their friendship suffered because of the secrets Charlotte was bound to keep, Crosby never gave up on her, and I can’t help but respect him for that.
So after Henrik passed last fall, and Charlotte decided to rekindle the summer youth symphony, with Crosby’s help, I was all for it. He’s great with the kids.
I’m not so generous when it comes to his mom, Sally. Though I believe her intentions were pure, the burden Morgan and Charlotte were expected to carry as a result of her plan was impossibly heavy.
“What are you guys gonna play tonight?” I ask, forking up a bite of Barb’s potato salad .
“Besides Happy Birthday?” Charlotte teases, cutting a bite of her grilled chicken. “Skye and Mo are going to sing something.”
Skye helped out at Thunder Mountain all summer, and she and Morgan have become close. Almost as close as Jesse and Morgan, but from what Charlotte tells me, they’re taking things slow.
“…and Mo and I have been working on something with Crosby,” Charlotte adds with a sparkle in her eye.
“Any chance this is the first stop on Boxcar Doves’ reunion tour?” I tease.
She laughs. “It’s the only stop.”
I was fully prepared to support her auditioning for the Seattle Symphony like she planned, but she declined. What matters to me is being with you, and helping my family heal. We’ve all lost so much time already.
Since we returned to Finn River after Henrik’s service, she and Mo have been playing plenty of music together while also managing The Limelight’s music scene. We partnered with Mike Meekin to manage the bar and restaurant so the girls can focus on what they do best.
After the party winds down and the littles have all been packed into cars and the rest of us are doing the final clean up, Zach and I head to the creek to get water for the campfire.
“Salazar took the plea deal,” Zach says once we’re alone. “And Eric Rafferty got twenty-seven years for doing Nic’s dirty work.”
Relief floods me so fast I have to set down my bucket on the creek’s edge.
Zach walks over and pulls me into a firm embrace. My eyes blur and tears sting my nose.
“It’s over,” he says.
The tears I can’t hold back leak from my eyes as I hold my brother tight. The federal prosecutor offered Salazar life in prison with no possibility of parole instead of risking the death penalty via a trial, which would have forced Charlotte and Morgan and several other survivors to testify .
“Thank fuck,” I manage, reeling in my emotions. A laugh comes out of nowhere, and Zach gives a hearty chuckle in response.
“Now you can put it all behind you.”
“Thanks for being the best big brother,” I say as another rush of hot tears sting my eyes. “I mean it. You’ve always been there for me. Helped me do what’s right.”
“I’m proud of you, brother.” He cups the back of my head, sniffling.
I hug him tighter. “I think Dad’s looking down on us right now, proud of us both.”
“Yeah,” Zach says, his voice cracking. “He is.”
When he steps back, his dark eyes are glossy with tears but he’s grinning. “Happy Birthday.”
With a laugh, I brush my cheeks dry. “Yeah.”
Back at the picnic site, I wait for a quiet moment to share the news with Charlotte, then I hold her as she cries. “He’ll never hurt anyone again,” she says as stroke down her silky hair. “I hope this helps the others heal too.”
I kiss the top of her head. “If they’re half as strong as you, they will.”
On the drive home, I pull Charlotte close and she rests her hand on my thigh. The cool evening breeze fills the cab, teasing the strands of her long curls from her face.
“I love you,” I say.
Smiling, she brushes her thumb across my thigh. “I love you too, QB.”
When we get home, I open her door and help her down.
Ollie leads the way inside and is curled up on her bed by the woodstove before we’ve slipped off our shoes.
I grab Charlotte’s hand and draw her into my arms. She cradles my face, gazing up at me with that soft yearning in her eyes.
I brush my lips against hers, and she releases that needy little growl I love.
We kiss in the darkness, my heart so incredibly full inside my chest .
She wraps her arms around my neck. “Did you have a good birthday?”
“Best birthday ever.” I lift her up and carry her down the hall to our bedroom. “And it’s not even over yet.”
She laughs, her pretty hazel eyes shining in the darkness. “Lucky me.”
“You’re the best present, blackbird,” I say as I set her on her feet at the edge of the bed. “You’ve always been my end, my sweet refrain I want to listen to over and over, again and again.”
Her eyes tense with emotion. She caresses under my T-shirt, her thumb stroking the little bird who kept my heart safe for her all these years. “We make good music together, don’t we?”
I scoop her up and climb onto the bed. “My favorite kind.”
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Chapter 1
Rowdy
Bitterroot National Forest, Idaho
The distant whine of an illegal chain saw and the muddy prints draws me deeper into the basin.
Tito’s ears have been perked for the past ten minutes, but I’ve been on alert since we crossed Crooked Pine Creek.
The hard spring rain I woke up to has long since saturated my slicker and dripped into my boots.
It cascades off the rim of my Stetson, soaking Tito’s withers.
A smarter man would have turned back already.
Which makes me exceptionally stubborn, or stupid. Probably both.
Crack!
The bullet splats into the muddy dirt somewhere behind us, but I’m already in motion, spurring Tito toward the dense grove of pine and aspen just ahead, my heart knocking into my throat. It was bad enough I’ve been in the saddle for hours in this shit rainstorm.
Now I’m being shot at?
Once we’re deep into the timber, I pull Tito to a stop and dismount to the spongy ground, slipping my rifle from its holster.
I’m also armed with a Glock beneath my slicker and wool parka, but the rifle has a sighting scope.
Tito’s breathing hard from our climb into the basin and the sprint to safety, steam rising from his rump and neck as I listen for movement, voices.
Anything that tells me where these yahoos are and what they plan to do next.
But it’s quiet. No whine from the chainsaw. Only the rain drumming on my head and shoulders, the nearby flooded creek sluicing past its swollen banks.
Engaging in a firefight with illegal loggers alone goes against not just policy but my survival instincts. Yet these assholes eluded me last time. And it’s not just their illegal logging I want stopped. It’s everything they stand for.
If I had radio reception, I’d at least call in my position.
A request for backup would earn me a chuckle from our dispatcher because I’m a full day’s travel from the nearest road.
And a helicopter would only be authorized to enter a wilderness area if I was dying.
Not that any pilot would fly in this weather.
Tito’s ears twitch, and he swivels just enough so I catch the flick of his eyelashes. What’s the plan, boss? his look asks.