Epilogue
Three weeks later, the trees throughout Zurich had turned gold, the air chilling with the first real bite of autumn coming off the lake.
They gathered in the same restaurant where it had all started, the private room in the back, the long table crowded with the people who’d become, somewhere along the way, Cate’s people.
Hammer and Jaz. Crusher and Marta. Dmytro and Lucie, arguing over a bottle of wine neither of them could pronounce.
Phantom, his arm in a sling he wore like a medal.
Inspector Lena Brandt lifted her glass. “Garrett Sterling has been charged in three jurisdictions,” she said, and the table quieted.
“The recording, the documents from the box and Marcus Calloway’s full cooperation gave the American prosecutors more than enough.
He will not see the outside of a courtroom for a very long time, and after that, not the outside of a cell.
” She allowed herself a small, fierce smile.
“Sean Sanders and the other mercenary have named Sterling as well, in exchange for consideration. It seems no one wished to be the last loyal soldier of a man who tried to kill them all.”
“And the money?” Marta asked.
“Frozen, then released—to its rightful owner.” Brandt inclined her head toward the far end of the table, where Devon Marsh sat, greyer than he’d been a month ago, and lighter, too. “All nine million dollars is on its way home to the United States Treasury, where it should have been all along.”
Devon raised his glass to his daughter. “And Dana walked out of that detention center yesterday morning,” he said, his voice thick.
“Charges dismissed. She asked me to tell you thank you for all you did and that she loves you.” He had to stop and clear his throat.
“You did that, Cate. You brought her home.”
Cate blinked hard and drank, because she couldn’t speak.
Her friend was hardly home after all that had happened. The house she’d shared with Marcus would forever hold bad memories. Her marriage was over. But she was free and had her whole life ahead of her.
Later, when the others had drifted toward coffee, Draco found Cate by the window, watching the lights come up along the Limmat River.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“Dangerous.”
“I’ll move back to Virginia.” He said it simply, the way he said everything that mattered.
“Your business is there. Your father, your license, your whole life. SOS can loan me out to the East Coast, or I’ll go private.
I’m done deciding things for you, Cate. So, I’m asking.
” He turned her to face him. “Let me build it where you already are.”
She looked up at this beautiful, terrifying, gentle man who had once driven fifteen hundred miles rather than tell her how he felt, and who was now offering to drive all the way back.
“No,” she said.
His face went carefully still.
“I’m coming to Texas.” Cate slid her hands up his chest. “I’ve been running down other people’s worst days for six years, and it turns out I’m good at it.
Cheating husbands. Crooked business partners.
Insurance frauds who threw out their backs at work and then went waterskiing.
” She smiled. “I can do that anywhere. I can do it in the Hill Country outside San Antonio with a porch and a dog and a man who comes home smelling like cordite.”
“Cate—”
“I want children someday,” she said before she lost her nerve.
“I want a calmer life. And I know—” Her voice caught, and she pushed through it because they didn’t lie to each other.
That was the rule. “I know I’ll never really have calm.
Not with you. You’ll always run toward the things everyone else runs from.
One day you might run toward it and not come back, and I’ll have spent my whole life bracing for someone knocking on my door.
” She pressed her forehead to his chest, over the steady drum of his heart.
“I’ve spent my whole life bracing for the door anyway.
Alone. At least this way I get you first.”
Draco sighed, wrapped his arms around her and held on. This was his life. She was his life, and he would spend his time cherishing every moment they had together.
“I’ll take every day I can get,” Cate whispered. “All of them, however many there are.”
“That’s it then. You’re stuck with me,” he said into her hair. “Yes, I’ll have to work, but I’ll always be working to get back to you.” He tipped her chin up, his heart so full it pressed against his ribs. “But I’m not leaving you ever again.”
Outside, the city lights reflected off the blanket of clouds, making night more like a soft, gray version of day.
Inside, for the first time in her life, Cate Marsh stood in the circle of Draco’s arms and knew she’d found her forever home.