Chapter 3
3
ROBE
“What the hell is she doing here? What the hell are you doing, bringing her here?” Miller ran a hand over his recently shorn head, bushy brows lowering as he offered me his customary scowl. He flicked a glance at the door to my bedroom, where Mari slept as she had for the past two days whenever I tried to look in on her.
She took to only opening said door to accept the thin soup Alan provided in a stream of endless bowls and freshly baked, buttered bread. When I tried to speak to her, the door shut in my face, though not before I caught a daily glimpse of the haunted eyes that seared soul deep in me. She was hurting, and I wanted to help, but I couldn’t until she let me.
Not that I would allow the same response from her for much longer.
“How is it that we can’t tell anyone about this little piece of hell you’ve corralled us into under strict instructions of secrecy, on pain of death and the like. Fuckhead,” Miller added under his breath. I knew he wasn’t finished. “But you get to have the girl? As per fucking always.” He didn’t bother to disguise the sarcasm in his voice, and for that, I loved him all the more.
The nugget of a man who’d followed me through so many campaigns, took bullets on my behalf, and walked away with the tinge of disgrace to his pedigree instead of a pretty set of medals folded his arms over his barrel chest and glared at me.
Jon shifted at my side, but I held up a hand. “Miller’s correct. He has a right to know what I think at this point. You all do.”
The blond woodsman’s unspoken words hovered between us, though neither of us aired them.
“I need to know.”
And he would. Keeping secrets from the men who gave up everything to stay by my side while my world imploded had never been my intent. Certainly not blacklisting the soldier who backed me every step of my downfall like a stocky, battle-scarred shield.
I didn’t doubt his judgment or his loyalty. That he mistrusted mine in turn motherfucking hurt. They’d searched for her path, tracked her back to a spot that made no sense on the edge of my land. Done everything I asked with no answers. Now it was my turn to reciprocate and earn that trust back, unless I wanted the man with the yellow gaze who glared at her door with his arms folded to storm inside and shred her to pieces both mentally and physically to do what I couldn’t.
Protect us all.
Miller took his duties seriously. A stark reminder of where my loyalties lay.
“She’s a runaway. I found her panicking and flailing in the woods, Miller. And she’s clearly been abused. Are you going to ignore that, pat her on the rump, and send her off to the next house on the ridge? Have a heart, asswipe.”
Alan Dale, stripper and my best source of information about the city that abandoned me, sent the sturdy ex-soldier on the other side of the bar a scathing look.
I pressed my lips into a firm line as Alan beat me to saying the words already formed in my head. For a man whose IQ outweighed that of the entire cohort jammed into my living area, his tact lacked his standard brand of finesse. An unusual slip for him; Alan’s ability to blend was the trump card I kept stowed in my pocket for a rainy day.
I narrowed my gaze, taking in the faintest downturn of his lips that belied his smile. True worry etched his brow. In all the scant tells the younger man let show, he exposed only what he wanted me to see—and act upon.
I bared my teeth beneath my beard. Manipulation like that is an open door, my friend .
The curl of Alan’s lip when he looked at Miller told its own story. His gaze flicked between me and the closed door where Mari now slept in my bed. It might seem arrogant of me to place her there, but hell, she ran into my arms and home. I watched Alan, looking for what I might have missed in my first pass. Annoyance didn’t match what rang in my barman and friend’s gaze.
Concern.
“She escaped some sort of hell,” I hedged, unwilling to admit that, though she ranted at me the entire walk home, I hadn’t gotten a single piece of useful information out of her apart from her name. “And she’s been abused. That much is clear, but where— fuck .” I glanced at Alan.
The youngest kid in the room raised an eyebrow as if to say, Caught on yet?
The brat put together what everyone else hadn’t without my saying so, and I was a solid forty-eight hours too late with that intel. Of course he picked up on what I’d missed. His display of emotion didn’t bother me; on a deeper level, I knew what had happened to her. One simple fact remained obvious to us all—there was no next house on the ridge.
Gideon Blackthorne’s neighboring property matched the thousand acres of my land. His compound sat on the eastern boundary away from the cabin, on the other side of what the boys had fondly named Recurve Ridge. The forest Mari dove headlong through divided the distance between us, miles of scrappy woodland and sentinel pines that explained the surface scratches covering her body but not the rest of the damage she incurred.
Our remote location, paired with invisible fence lines we both made an effort to maintain without laying eyes on each other, provided both me and my sole residential neighbor a reminder of my failure in NYC. My presence gave his purpose—banishment for failing to keep me in check.
His boss had no concept of forgiveness, something I needed to teach both parties one day soon.
We kept our distance from each other by means of a keen dose of mutual hatred. The old adage about keeping enemies close ran through my mind, but all I wanted was his head in the center of my arrow range and a clean shot on a windless day.
The soldier turned businessman crossed the law at least as many times as I had, but if a moral line existed, he fell in at the furthest edge of the black.
On our other side, a tall ridgeline of the next mountain rose, harboring a few small vacation homes owned by NYC politicians and CEOs along with the odd athlete and a reclusive artist who avoided politics and people at all costs. Those were rarely used until the holiday season, though some hunting went on throughout the year, whether legal or not. At the base of the mountain, a few small homes contained the rest of the local population.
As we harbored our own issues with that side of the law, we stayed the fuck away from everyone else, unless those activities crossed over our boundaries.
Like they had today.
I held Alan’s startling azure gaze as each thought turned over in my head. I’d wanted a shot at Gideon for a long damn time. Now that the opportunity had landed in my lap, I couldn’t grasp a clear course of action.
Pursue the need to destroy Gideon and wipe him from the face of the earth, or the desire to wrap up the girl he took a hand in abusing, protect her until she could manage on her own again, and then return to clause one.
Choices, choices.
My bartender’s knowing smile irritated me, but not as bad as it did Miller, who strode toward the exotic dancer with his clenched fists raised.
Alan raised his own hands, palms stretched outward, his explanation falling on deaf ears. “We can keep her safe. No one should have to go through whatever happened to her?—”
Miller swung at the kid as soon as he ventured within range.
“Like a fucking schoolyard,” Jon spat. “You gonna break it up?”
“Alan needs to stand up for himself.” I kept an eye on my young spy and knocked my shoulder none too gently against Jon’s.
The moonlighting exotic dancer backed up at speed, his grace and balance enviable. For a man with fists thrown at him every half second, his backpedaled crabwalk looked nothing like a man scrambling to save himself from an ass kicking.
In fact….
I narrowed my eyes. “Shit, he’s good.”
Alan bobbed low on his heels twice and then rose in a smooth movement.
Timed to perfection between punches, the slighter man straightened into the empty, undefended space between a blur of fists and jabbed Miller square in the nose.
A muted chorus of sympathetic hisses filled the room.
“There it is.” I canted my head as Miller, clutching his nose, delivered a sharp side kick to Alan’s ribs. I winced for them both. “Damn. Schedule hand-to-hand training for tomorrow. It’s meant to be a clear day.”
Jon nodded his agreement, his brow creased as he tracked the two men’s progress across the room. “Could do. Might also want to teach your new girlfriend how to fend for herself.”
“She’s not my girl,” I growled, low enough to strain my throat at the effort.
But the plain fact that Jon had called her mine sat all too well in the cavity that once housed my heart.
A hand banged against the wall of the room she slept in, and Jon shook his head. “Enough.” He thumped a fist on the kitchen bench, but neither man halted their mini battle despite pants and blood splattering my walls. “I said— ah , fuck it.”
He leaned into the foray and grabbed both boys by the scruffs of their necks to separate them at shoulder height. His shoulder height, which meant two pairs of feet dangled well above the floor.
Alan raised a hand and waved in my direction.
I rolled my eyes, noting Miller’s opposite reaction. He folded his arms across his barrel chest while still dangling in midair and glared first at his opponent, then me.
I sighed. “Put them down.” The big man hesitated. I clenched my teeth, my patience fraying. “Now, Jon.”
“Don’t you two start up again, or you’ll be cleaning outhouses for the next month. Got it?” Jon glared between the pair of younger men, both his junior by at least half a dozen years. The thirty-four-year-old giant took a step back, bracing his tree-trunk arms overhead against the thick, exposed beams that supported the ceiling, matching their girth.
Alan’s nose twitched. He made it all too easy to read his thoughts as his mouth opened to object that we didn’t have outhouses. The intent seemed to dawn on both men at the same time.
“Yes, sir,” two voices mumbled.
I caught a fleeting smile that disappeared from Alan’s face at speed. The brat would end up killed or come limping back with his ass handed to him if I didn’t do something about their attitudes soon, but right now we had other concerns.
“Miller. Spit it out.” I leveled him with a stare that said he’d crossed a line, but the soldier who had saved my life too many times to count sent that stare right back.
The balls and testosterone clashing in my house were better suited to a barracks. I needed neither when I had an injured girl in my bed with God only knew what damage haunting her mind as well as her fragile body.
“Fine. You bring home a girl who happens to turn up in our woods. Your woods, Robe.” Miller looked between us and threw up his hands. It might have been comical if his eyes didn’t bore their intent into mine. “You want to save her, but what if she’s a plant, Alan? Jon? Did you think about that?” He rotated on the spot, catching each man’s attention before his singular focus returned to me. “Did you?”
I nodded. “I have. And I’ll risk everything to secure the safety and well-being of a woman who’s been treated so… harshly.”
Miller’s lip curled, and not in a nice way. “You haven’t changed.”
“I hope not.” I smiled, offering an olive branch.
Miller glared at me for a moment longer. Clumps of hair from his home buzz-cut job stuck up too tall from the top of his head. His mouth turned down when he failed to find what he sought in my face. A moment of stillness strained the oxygen in the room while we conducted a silent conversation about events the others weren’t privy to.
“Remember what happened last time?”
I remember saving lives, getting them to safety.
“I remember us getting shot at while you had a little romance.”
I let the old sadness grip my heart. It hurt, knowing the woman I almost gave both our lives for wouldn’t come back with me. At that point I still had a career, and afterward, a business.
Perhaps that choice had saved her a worse future here, where Mari lay.
“I remember acting human, even if I’d lost my sense of humanity by then,” I murmured.
Miller’s grimace transformed into a snarl. I wasn’t the only one affected by what we’d seen and done during those peacekeeping missions, every one of them bullshit. He pivoted on his heel and stormed from the house.
Alan sidestepped, waving him out the door in his typical flamboyant fashion. I half expected the younger man to say something, but the cabin filled with a strained silence.
“Miller—” Jon started forward, four steps too late.
I held out a hand, pressing my fist to his chest when he pushed against my arm. “Leave him. He’ll cool off.”
“Will he?” Jon rubbed the back of his neck. “He reminds me of….”
“Me, twenty years ago. Full of righteous indignation and a misguided sense of loyalty.” I gave my best friend a lopsided grin he didn’t return.
“Your moral compass might be screwy, Robe, but your loyalties are fine.” Alan pushed away from the door that swung shut after Miller’s exodus. “Are we going to have dinner or what?”
I waved him away, grateful for the distraction despite holding the same reservations as Miller. I kept those to myself, given that my moral compass never pointed true north. Maybe I hadn’t found my north yet. Miller was right; I broke both trust and procedure by bringing her to the house, but where else did one take a distraught and abused woman?
You should have taken her to her car, or the highway, or called an ambulance and sent her off without a whiff of fanfare.
I couldn’t hand her off to a law enforcement lackey who might or might not be in someone else’s pocket. She turned up on my front lawn, convenient as that may be, which gave me the right to seek vengeance on her behalf. My body burned for it.
A bored soldier is a dangerous soldier.
A cute adage, but true, nonetheless.
A reckless soldier is a dead soldier.
My mind slipped to her asleep in my bed as I acknowledged the truth that burned in my veins. As soon as she gave me what I needed, I’d take action, but not before.
“Wait until she wakes again. I want to know what the boys discovered this time out.”
Not that I expected their recon mission to come up with anything new. Whatever was there to be found, they had already seen it when they went looking two days ago when she first arrived. We were chasing a ghost long fled while the real thing lay in my bed, silent as though she had lost her soul somewhere in the woods.
My damn woods.
It had been a good hour since Mari last slammed the door in my face. That gave us more than enough time for Alan to work his magic, though Will had just as magically disappeared.
“Are you going to starve us out?” Jon glanced sideways at me. His gaze dropped, focusing lower.
A familiar thrum set every nerve ending alive. “Probably.”
“Asshole.”
“You know it.” I nudged him. “We need to talk about the company.”
“Isn’t Yana coping?”
My business partner had a limited range of use, and her expiration date encroached. A brilliant personal assistant, Yana had neither the drive nor the inclination to run a multimillion-dollar organization. If I didn’t find a replacement soon, Knight Gideon and his boss had the local sheriff and cohorts paid up a decade in advance. She’d be lucky if she didn’t end up with an extra cache of bruises and trauma if I sent her down the mountain. And so, I cleaned her.
No woman who had suffered what she did deserved to wake wearing the filth of her abuse. Shame shone from those eyes the moment the dull light in them faded. Telling her she couldn’t go back to whatever life she was living previously sat high on my priority list, but that didn’t mean I looked forward to breaking the news.
Letting her fall back into overwhelming despair would be the grossest neglect. I had existed in the shame-filled realm long enough to know intimately how that ruined a soul. I’d do anything to save hers. I needed to know who hurt her, and I wanted to make her safe by removing her aggressors from the face of the earth. My little rescue project unknowingly created the perfect distraction to put a pause on my inability to return to the world.
A world that hated me enough that I had removed myself from it in the first place.
Perhaps my chance at redemption had arrived after all.