Chapter Twenty-Four
Four months later and Price was still mad.
“I already said I was sorry. And that I won’t ever do it again.”
JJ was sitting shotgun in his parked truck, wearing a dress with daisies on it and a look of reproach that matched the expression of the girl sitting behind her.
“Yeah, Dad. She’s already apologized a ton,” Winnie added. “Also, you have to remember she only sacrificed herself because she wanted to make super sure that you and me were safe. And her brother. Her only family left after her tragedy.”
Winnie was overly dramatic with the last part, but his girlfriend in the passenger’s seat really ate it up.
She gave him the big doe eyes and nodded.
“Next time I feel outnumbered by an anonymous criminal organization trying to find and destroy everyone I love, I won’t sacrifice myself,” she said. “At least, not without checking with you first. Okay?”
Price narrowed his eyes but couldn’t deny that he liked hearing JJ put him and Winnie on the list of people she loved.
He also couldn’t fully blame her for what she had done, especially since they realized their situation had been a lot more dire than originally believed.
Lawson Cole’s nameless organization hadn’t just been one branch on a small tree.
His ego had been somewhat warranted. Aside from the men Price had fought alongside Riker, there had been more lying in wait.
It wasn’t until Lawson himself started turning on his group that everyone realized just how outnumbered they had been.
Still, that didn’t mean Price would ever fully be okay with JJ going off into danger alone.
Though, to be fair, she hadn’t so much as left his side or Winnie’s for more than a few hours since then. They had gone from partners to a unit of three.
Well, three plus the occasional fourth.
“Alright, alright, I guess as long as you check with me, I’ll try not to bring it up every time we come here,” Price said now, motioning to the house past his windshield.
“That would be nice, considering we come here every Sunday for dinner,” Winnie said.
Price let out a long sigh.
“If you two keep ganging up on me, I’m going to have to rethink our futures. Specifically, this whole combining households thing. You two against me and a house renovation? I don’t think I can take it.”
Winnie rolled her eyes and opened the truck door. She patted him on the shoulder before jumping out.
“Don’t act like you don’t love it, Dad.”
She was off in a flash, running up Josiah’s driveway with a laugh.
JJ stayed in her seat. Price did too. He could tell she was nervous about the day they had ahead of them. He simply waited for her to say so. She did after a moment.
“I guess it doesn’t feel real sometimes. Being here, being able to do this with them.”
Price knew what she meant. Being at Josiah’s was nothing new, at least not in the last four months. Ever since Price and Riker had convinced her to talk to Josiah. To tell him about his biological family.
She had asked for Price to be with her when she sat Josiah down, and that was how he became the second person to realize that Lawson Cole had been right. The key to finding Able Ortiz’s evidence against his group had been his son all along.
But, it had been Elle Ortiz who had been the one to lead them to it.
Josiah’s adoptive parents hadn’t simply been strangers that had wound up with him.
Instead, his adoptive mother had been a nurse at a scared Elle Ortiz’s hospital bedside as her health declined.
In the little time she had left, she had convinced the young couple to not only adopt her son, but to keep his origins a secret.
Then, with the money given to her in guilt by Lawson Cole’s father, she had orchestrated an airtight paper trail that would purposely throw off anyone who might come looking.
But, her last and most heartfelt request had been kept in a small wooden box with a few keepsakes she was promised would stay with her son.
The first had been Able Ortiz’s wedding band.
The second had been Elle Ortiz’s engagement ring.
The third had been Lydia Ortiz’s earring.
The fourth had been a key. She hadn’t known what it belonged to but had believed it was important.
And it had been, but only one person had been able to figure out where it led.
Riker Shaw hadn’t been able to save his best friend or his wife, but he had been the one to figure out Able Ortiz’s makeshift hiding place for all the evidence against the Coles’ organization.
It had taken a month to track down, but he had done it.
Not only was the group being dismantled, the growth that had happened after Able’s passing had been halted by the fact that Lawson was giving everyone’s secrets away for his attempt at a lighter sentence.
JJ had mused one night that, in the end, he had become the most destructive evidence against himself.
She wasn’t wrong.
The investigation was still ongoing but the fear that they would become targets had gone. That was largely thanks to a deal struck to keep the Ortiz family’s and Riker’s names out of everything attached to it. The last deal that Riker Shaw made for his best friend’s family.
JJ had admitted she was okay with keeping the name JJ instead of changing back to Lydia.
“As much as I love the name my parents gave me, I wouldn’t be where I am without JJ,” she’d said. “It feels more wrong than right to give her up.”
Price was wondering how she would feel becoming a Collins, but had decided to wait until after he proposed. Which he planned on doing in the near future. With the same ring that had belonged to her mother.
“I know I can’t remember her, but I feel like Mom would have wanted JJ to have this,” Josiah had told him when it had become evident to everyone just how much Price had fallen for JJ.
He’d pulled him aside one Sunday dinner and handed the engagement ring over.
“I’d like to keep Dad’s ring, though, if you don’t mind.
Whether I wear it or pass it down to my kids, I’d like to hang on to him a bit longer. ”
Price had thought that was an idea that the late Ortiz parents would enjoy.
It also gave Riker an opening to pull him aside and officially give the father-in-law speech to him.
“You’ve seen her fight, you’ve seen her think, so I don’t have to tell you that you’ll be sorry if you ever wrong her,” Riker had said. “But, on the off chance that isn’t enough, let me tell you that if you ever hurt that little girl of mine, you’ll have to deal with me right after.”
His words had been nothing but intimidating—and accepted.
Though, six months later when Riker would walk JJ down the aisle at their wedding, he’d be blubbering like a baby.
But now, sitting in his truck, Price’s wandering thoughts wandered right into the hand he took in his.
“If you think this is a dream, then let me show you it isn’t.”
Price leaned over and kissed the woman he loved. He felt her smile into it. When he broke the kiss, he was smiling too.
“Satisfied now?” he asked.
JJ surprised him with a laugh and a shrug.
“I guess,” she said. “Though, I wouldn’t say no to you trying to convince me a little more later tonight.”
Price let out a bite of laughter.
“That, I can do.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Lightkeeper’s Curse by Cassie Miles