Chapter 17 #2
I reach into my pocket and dig out the drive, holding up the small piece of technology that potentially holds the key to all our futures on it. “Raven’s been working on something that’s going to affect all of us, and if we don’t do this right, the mountain will be covered in blood again.”
His jaw tightens as Tony and Barrett approach.
Tony removes his hat and rubs his hand through his disheveled black hair. “What’s this I hear about blood on the mountain again?”
Last time created a real quagmire for him. The FBI came and took over the scene, but they wanted everything kept under wraps, they wanted the details hush hush. And in a town like McBride Mountain, that’s hard to accomplish.
And Tony’s job is about to get a lot harder.
“I have Raven somewhere safe. That’s all I’m telling you guys and that’s all you need to know. For now.”
Killian gives me a look that has a million questions in it, and he looks ready to beat them out of me like we used to when we were kids rolling around in the dirt, but he holds them back.
Thankful for the momentary reprieve, I draw in a long inhalation, the fresh mountain air helping ease a little of the tightness forming in my chest. “She uncovered some things about the Lorells…”
Killian and Tony exchange a look that could kill.
“And she wrote a story…”
“Fuck.” Killian sucks in a sharp breath. “I fucking knew she wouldn’t be able to stop herself.”
Tony rubs the back of his neck. “This smells like trouble.”
“You have no fucking idea, but we have a plan and I need both of your help to implement it while I go back to her. If we don’t do this right, all of us will be in danger. Even more than we already are.”
RAVEN
Even though we didn’t spend much time together during the day since we arrived—with me working on the story and Connor focused on his cabin—being up here alone feels wrong.
Off.
Like some of the beauty and vibrancy of this tiny mountain dell suddenly vanished the moment I woke up in that bed and realized he had left.
After spending a night like that together, I’m not sure what I expected, but a cold, empty spot where his large, warm body had been felt like a kick to the stomach.
No kiss rousing me to say goodbye.
No gentle touches or scrape of calloused fingers along my skin to bring me pleasure one more time before he left.
No whispered reassurances that he would be back and everything would be all right.
Nothing.
“Since when do you need a man to reassure you?”
My own voice sounds deafeningly loud in the cabin today.
Maybe because there’s no one to hear it.
Probably because the one person I want here isn’t.
Talking to myself makes me feel less alone, but it also makes me see something I never did before being dragged up here—that I’ve been lonely for a very long time.
Since long before Willow disappeared and I lost my best friend.
I’ve been lonely since the night I started hating Connor McBride…
Because I shut down my heart that night.
I closed it to him and anyone else who ever wanted to take a chance trying to break through the walls of snark and aggression I lived behind.
All I’ve done is seek quick, uncomplicated dalliances that wouldn’t open me up to the kind of pain his rejection caused me.
And it worked.
Until it didn’t.
I don’t even know when that change happened, but seeing Willow and Killian find their happily ever after, then Liam and Lucky, it’s been harder and harder to ignore the fact that I’m the one left out in the cold.
Alone—like I am now.
I can’t stay in this cabin any longer. Not when the smell of him, the smell of us, permeates the air and clings to the bedsheets and blanket. Not when everywhere I look in here, I see him.
There are only so many times I can review my notes, re-read the story, and wonder if it sucks and if I’m making a terrible mistake bringing this down on us.
Agent Michaelson warned me not to poke the hornets’ nest, to let sleeping rabid dogs lie, but no matter how many analogies that were thrown around, I marched right through the warnings.
I only saw the glittering potential end where we’re all finally safe.
The fact that more blood may spill getting there was easy to push aside when focused on that future, but now that the time has finally come, knowing everyone is about to be in even more danger because of what I’ve done, the choices I’ve made, has me as twisted up inside as everything that’s happened with Connor.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is all bigger than us.
It’s bigger than just McBride Mountain. The Lorells have hurt thousands of people during their reign of terror.
They’ve threatened, they’ve maimed, they’ve killed in the name of their greed and to protect their own. And they will keep doing it.
Unless I stop them…
All the terrible possibilities of what they will do when they find out what I’ve been up to continue to run through my head as I slam my computer shut and push it away on the small table.
I tug on my boots, lace them, and jerk open the door a little too aggressively, as if it is what I’m mad at, not the situation or the man who left me up here alone.
Fresh mountain air fills my lungs as I step out the same way I have countless times. Birds fly overhead, chirping and chasing each other in dizzying circles in the sky, and I can’t help but grin despite how wrong things feel.
Because it does feel wrong not to hear Connor working, not to see him bent over a log, sweat trickling down his tanned skin or swinging his axe chopping wood for the stove that keeps this small cabin heated.
When I first got here, I couldn’t understand how Connor could live like this—with no electricity, in this tiny shack, with a goddamn outhouse for a bathroom and a bathtub full of river water with a fire beneath it to get clean.