Chapter 9
THE STICKY-SWEET SMELL OF syrup still lingered in the air, clinging to the cabin walls like the warmth of a memory. Meaghan wiped the smear of chocolate from the corner of Willie’s mouth as he giggled, cheeks dimpled and eyes still rimmed with the exhaustion from yesterday’s terror.
“Okay,” she said, setting the spatula in the sink, “so pancakes were a win. Now comes the hard part, keeping three restless kindergarteners entertained without turning the cabin into a war zone.”
Lucas groaned dramatically and flopped onto the floor. “We’re bored already.”
“It’s been four minutes,” Meaghan said, smiling despite herself.
“That’s a long time when you’re five,” Sophie offered sagely from the couch, her feet dangling as she kicked them rhythmically against the cushions. “I waited for five minutes one time for my sister, and it felt like it took all day.”
Meaghan crossed her arms, surveying them like a general planning her next move.
She had already discovered crayons in the cabin’s emergency supply box, likely stashed there years ago by Callen’s dad, but no paper.
The firewood basket had briefly become a pirate ship, and Willie had nearly started a splinter-based revolution over who got to be captain.
And now, boredom loomed like a monster.
Before she could suggest an activity, Lucas looked up at her, brow furrowed. “Did you talk to my mom and dad yet?”
Her heart stilled for a beat. “I tried, sweetheart.” She crouched beside him, gently brushing a curl from his forehead. “I called, but I couldn’t get through. I left messages, though. I’ll keep trying, though. Promise.”
Lucas’s eyes dropped to the floor. “They don’t really answer. They’re always busy doing something.”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“They’re always busy,” he said, voice flat, not angry but matter-of-fact in a way no five-year-old should sound. “Sometimes they don’t even come home for days. My grandma picks me up when that happens. And they yell a lot at each other. I think Mom is mad at my dad.”
Her throat tightened. “I’m so sorry, Lucas.”
He shrugged, then buried his face in a throw pillow, the conversation obviously over. It was a child’s version of shutting a door.
Meaghan stood slowly, rubbing her palms on her jeans.
“Can we roast marshmallows later?” Willie piped up, clearly trying to change the subject. “Like, outside? With sticks? And an actual fire?”
“And play in the woods?” Sophie added, with a hopeful gleam in her eyes.
“Mr. Callen said it would be like a vacation,” Lucas added, staring at Meaghan, but not looking very hopeful. “It hasn’t felt like a vacation yet.”
She shook her head. “And that’s why we’ll have to wait until Mr. Callen gets back to see what he wants us to do. Remember, he’s in charge for our safety. No going outside without him here. That’s our rule.”
Lucas made a twisted face. “He’s bossy.”
Meaghan huffed a laugh. “Yes, he is. But he’s also a kick-butt Ranger who works with a very special team of protectors. He won’t let anything happen to us.”
Sophie’s eyes widened. “Like superheroes?”
“Exactly like that. And he already saved us once, didn’t he?”
That got a round of nods.
“He’s watching out for all of us,” she assured them gently. “So we have to listen to his rules, even if they’re no fun. He’s doing his best to get each of you back to your families.”
The kids grumbled but didn’t argue.
Meaghan glanced around, chewing her lip. She needed to keep them focused on something. Anything. Something that didn’t feel like the world was ending outside their four walls. She grabbed the empty pancake mix box, flipped it over, and laid it flat on the table.
“Okay, new mission,” she said, her voice brightening. “We’re going to draw our own comic book. About Ranger Callen and the Forest Heroes. You each get a page.”
“Oooooh!” Willie bounced in place.
“Can I make Sophie have flying powers?” Lucas asked.
Sophie scowled. “Only if I get to fly and shoot sparkles.”
“Deal,” he said.
While they scribbled with crayons—bright explosions, cape-wearing animals, and a very muscular version of Callen with glowing eyes—Meaghan sat back and let the sounds of their laughter wrap around her like a warm blanket.
It was temporary, and she knew it.
But it was something.
As they bent over their crayon masterpieces, little hands smudged with color and concentration, she let her gaze drift from one child to the next, so small, so loud, so impossibly brave.
Lucas, with his stormy eyes and jaw set too tight for a boy his age, was already a master at hiding disappointment.
She’d seen it in the way he never flinched when he didn’t get picked first, never cried when someone forgot to show up at a parent lunch.
His clothes were always neat, but he flinched sometimes when adults raised their voices, flinched like someone who had been on the wrong end of a belt, or worse.
The school counselor had danced around it delicately, claiming there wasn’t enough to open a file, but Meaghan knew.
She’d seen the hollow places behind his stubborn defiance.
She didn’t just worry about neglect in Lucas’s house. She worried about addiction in his parents, about the smells that clung to his backpack, and about the twitch in his hands some mornings. Alcohol. Pills. Maybe both. Maybe more.
And yet here he was, drawing a superhero version of himself with wings and laser eyes, trying so hard to believe in something better.
Sophie, for all her sweetness and sparkling laugh, wore loneliness like a second skin.
Her parents were always traveling: business, leisure, both.
Sometimes together. Sometimes separately.
Never with the kids. It didn’t seem to matter.
The longest she’d gone without seeing them in person was three months.
They left her with Kara, a sister still in high school who couldn’t even be bothered to notice Sophie hadn’t come home yesterday.
That realization had gutted Meaghan. Not because she expected perfection, but because that kind of indifference was more dangerous than rage.
It taught a little girl that her presence was optional.
And still, Sophie smiled. Drew glittering crowns and flower-laced boots for every character. Clung to Meaghan’s side like a shadow, like she was afraid she’d disappear next.
Then there was Willie. Sweet, sensitive Willie, whose curls always needed trimming and whose heart was too big for his small chest. His parents had died in a car crash two years ago.
Just… gone. No warning. No goodbye. He’d gone to live with his grandmother, Mrs. Evelyn Davies, who was nearly eighty and had a bad hip, which was just made worse by a fall, but who would still move mountains for that little boy.
She came to every school play, every open house, even the half-days when most parents didn’t bother. She always brought Meaghan banana bread and asked if Willie was doing okay, like it would kill her to miss a single sign that he wasn’t.
And now she was in the hospital. And Willie didn’t even know.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. She couldn’t fix their homes. Couldn’t undo what they’d lost or give them back the childhoods they deserved.
But she could be there now. She could keep them warm. Keep them safe. Keep them coloring superheroes until the crayons broke, and the daylight faded, and there was no more room left for fear.
She could do that.
And for as long as she could, she would.
After about twenty minutes, the coloring devolved into a whispered game of “I Spy,” which was fine by her. She sat by the window, sipping lukewarm coffee from a chipped blue mug, watching the trees sway gently outside.
Her fingers itched to hold her phone, to scroll through news updates, to do something. But Callen had chucked it out the window yesterday, for her own good, he’d said, right before turning off the highway and disappearing down a dirt road like something out of a spy movie.
She was still mad about that.
But she also remembered the gunfire; the way he’d grabbed Willie and shielded him with his own body. The precision in his movements. The steel in his voice. The utter focus.
Callen McHollister had come crashing back into her life like the wrecking ball he’d always been.
Only now, he wasn’t the boy who made her sneak out of debate team meetings to kiss him behind the bleachers.
He was a man. Hardened. Carved out of something tougher than time and war.
A protector, yes, but also dangerous. Even to her heart.
She thought of his kiss last night: hot and rough and full of all the things they hadn’t said in a decade. Her fingers had fisted his shirt, and she’d felt the thrum of something ancient and unfinished.
And then she’d walked away. Like an idiot.
Because she couldn’t afford to want him. Not now. Not when she didn’t even know what kind of storm her father had pulled her into.
What had he done?
That question burned in her mind every time she tried to breathe.
She wanted to call him. Demand answers. Scream into the receiver like she used to when they fought about college or career choices or dating anyone who didn’t work on Capitol Hill.
But she had no phone, and he had made her promise not to use the satellite phone for anything outside of an emergency.
“They can track your phone,” he had told her as he tossed it. And even though she hated him, she knew he was right. Whoever was after her could use it to get to her father, or worse, track her and hurt the kids. And she hated that he was right.
She hated even more that a part of her was glad he was the one watching over them.
And God help her, she remembered everything.
That final night before he left for the military had been soaked in the kind of aching, forbidden heat that stayed under your skin for years.
She could still feel the rough press of his palm at the small of her back, the way his mouth had whispered her name like a prayer before dragging her under.
The way he kissed her like she was the only solid thing in a world already slipping away.
She’d been nineteen. Reckless. Wild with love.
He was twenty. On the verge of everything.
And she’d wanted to give him all of her.
No part of her had been afraid. Not of him. Not of what came next. She’d looked at him and seen a future. Maybe not a tidy one. Maybe not a safe one. But it would have been theirs.
Then morning came. The sun broke over the windowsill, and he’d pulled away like she’d been a mistake.
“This is for the best,” he’d said, voice thick, eyes looking anywhere but at her.
She hadn’t even asked what he meant. She already knew. It meant goodbye. It meant I want you, but I’m leaving anyway. It meant he’d decided for both of them and never even talked to her about it.
And it was the same damn thing her father always said.
This is what’s best for you, Meaghan.
Trust me, sweetheart.
Let me handle it.
She was tired of it. Tired of men who claimed to love her but never trusted her to choose her own life. Her own heart. Her own future.
Her jaw clenched as annoyance filled her.
Let them all keep saying what was best for her. She was through listening.
“Miss Harrington,” Sophie called out, dragging her out of her thoughts. “Can you help me draw Callen’s super suit?”
Meaghan stared over at the trio, not sure when they had given up the game and went back to coloring. “Absolutely. But only if I get to design the cape.”
“Pink!” Sophie screamed with certainty.
“Well, obviously.”
She sat down beside the children, pressing herself back into the now. Into this strange little sliver of stolen safety, where pancakes and crayons made up the armor keeping the fear at bay.
But even as she laughed and helped draw rocket boots on cartoon Callen, her heart kept drifting to the woods.
To the man who kissed like fire and silence all at once.
And to the secret that’s waiting for them. If only they knew where.