3. Falcon #3
Cara smiles, it’s small but real, and the sight does something to my chest that I have no defence against.
“What?” she asks, catching me staring.
“Nothing.” I drag my gaze away from her.
“You’re staring,” she points out.
“Sorry,” I mutter, although I’m not sure I mean it.
Her smile fades, and I regret the word the second it's out. "I didn't say stop," she says, and that gets my attention fast, something shifting in the space between us that I don't trust myself to name.
"How are the girls?" I ask instead, because it's safer.
"Better now." She tells me about Emily, embarrassed about panicking even though there's nothing to be embarrassed about, her body not caught up yet to what her head already knows. I understand that better than she probably realizes.
Her grip tightens on the notebook. "We keep telling them they're safe, Falcon, but sometimes I think we say it because we need them to believe us."
"And they don't?"
"They want to. Wanting to feel safe and feeling safe are two different things.
" She looks out over the compound, at the brothers moving near the garage, there’s a prospect carrying boxes, and Vulture is talking to Sterling by the main building.
To me it's always read as secure. Walls, weapons, and men I trust. That's always meant safety.
Cara sees something else in the same yard, and I'm starting to understand that both of us have been right the whole time, just about different things.
"I'm learning," I tell her.
"What?"
"How to see it the way you do." Because she's right, it isn't enough to keep the danger outside if the way we do it makes the women inside feel like prisoners.
Cara falls quiet for a moment, her fingers tracing the edge of the notebook. “That’s almost exactly what I told Knox.”
“I’m smarter than I look,” I tell her.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she teases.
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it, unforced and startling in how easily it comes. Cara’s eyes soften at the sound.
“You laughed,” she says, almost as if she can’t believe it.
“Apparently.” I rub a hand over the back of my neck.
Cara’s smile fades around the edges. “I haven’t heard you do that since I came back.”
Her words land somewhere I don’t have an answer for, so I turn my attention toward the yard. “There hasn’t been much to laugh about.”
“No,” she agrees quietly.
The silence that settles between us isn’t uncomfortable, which might be the strangest part of the morning.
Cara moves closer to the porch rail but keeps some distance between us. “You really aren’t okay, are you?”
I could lie, and usually, I would. But Vulture’s words from an hour ago are still lodged in my chest.
You don’t have to be fine.
“No,” I admit.
The single word feels like a shout, even though it comes out barely above a whisper.
Cara doesn’t move toward me. She doesn’t try to touch me or offer some useless reassurance, and I’m grateful for it. I don’t think I’d survive her kindness right now.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I confess, staring out across the compound.
“With what?” Cara asks.
I force myself to look at her. “You.”
Pain flashes across her face, and I immediately push away from the post. “Not you being here. That’s not what I meant. I’m glad you’re here.”
“I know,” she says, but her grip tightens around the notebook.
“I spent five years believing you left.” The words scrape their way out of me.
“I know that too,” Cara replies softly.
My throat tightens. “I hated you.”
Her expression pinches before she manages to smooth it out. “I know.”
“I had to,” I tell her, because I need her to understand.
Cara studies me for a long moment, searching my face. “Why?” she finally asks.
Because loving you while you were gone would have killed me. It's right there on my tongue and I can't get it out. "I don't know."
I'm a coward. I know it while I'm saying it.
She nods anyway, eyes shining. "I hated you too. Sometimes."
That surprises me more than it should. "For what?"
"For not finding me." Her voice starts to shake around the edges. "I knew it wasn't rational. I knew you didn't know where I was, some days I didn't even know where I was. But there were nights I convinced myself you were coming, and every morning you didn't..."
Her voice breaks and I move before I think better of it, one step, and she stiffens, and I stop dead and feel like the worst kind of idiot. The distance between us is maybe two feet. It feels like miles.
"I looked," I say.
"What?"
"I looked for you for four months; every lead, every call, and every rumor I could chase down. Then somebody handed me security footage that made it look like you walked out on your own. I believed it. So I stopped looking because I thought you didn't want to be found."
Cara swallows hard, and her gaze drops to the notebook clutched against her chest. “I left a note.”
“I know,” I tell her.
Her fingers tighten around the cover. “I didn’t write it.”
My blood goes cold. Some part of me already knew that. I think I’ve known since the day we discovered she’d been taken, but hearing her say it aloud does something to me that I don’t have words for.
Cara lifts her eyes to mine. “What did it say?”
“You don’t remember?” I ask.
“No.” She shakes her head slowly.
Of course she doesn’t. I rub a hand over my face, trying to block out the memory of finding it. “Just, ‘I’m sorry.’”
Cara’s eyes close, and pain tightens her features. “That sounds like them. They liked making us responsible. They’d make us apologize for the things they did. For being difficult. For crying. For getting sick.”
Rage rises so quickly that it narrows my vision. I force it down before it can take control, because this isn’t about what I want to do to men who are already dead. This is about her.
Cara opens her eyes and searches my face. “They wanted you to think I chose to leave.”
“They did a good job,” I admit, my voice rougher than I intended.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracks, and she presses the notebook more firmly against her chest.
"No." It comes out harder than I mean it and she flinches, so I lower my voice fast. "No. You don't apologize for that. Ever. That's on them."
A tear slips down her cheek. My hand almost lifts to wipe it away and I stop myself, because it's her choice, always her choice, and she wipes it away herself.
"Thank you," she says, and neither of us knows where to go from there.
Gravel crunches behind me. I turn. Zip's coming across the yard with a radio clipped to his belt, and he slows the second he sees what he's walked into.
"Sorry," he says, not sorry at all.
"What?" I ask.
"Vulture wants you. Something about the south camera feed. Condor found another vehicle."
That wipes the moment clean off the porch. "Same SUV?"
"Maybe."
Cara's face tightens. "Stay inside tonight," I tell her.
She folds her arms across her chest, which isn’t unexpected after everything she said in Church. “I live here.”
“I know you do,” I tell her.
“So don’t order me around,” she warns.
“I wasn’t,” I argue.
Her eyes narrow. “You were.”
Beside me, Zip takes a careful step backward. Smart man.
I force out a slow breath. “Fine. I’m asking.”
Cara glances between us. “What’s happening?”
“We don’t know yet,” I admit.
“Then tell me when you do.” She holds my gaze, making it clear that it isn’t a request.
“Cara,” I warn.
She lifts her chin. “You just spent Church agreeing that we deserve information about our own security.”
Behind me, Zip covers a cough that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. I point at him without taking my eyes off Cara. “Not a word.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Zip replies, innocence dripping from every syllable.
Cara ignores him and focuses on me. “Will you tell us?”
“Yes,” I promise.
“Good.” She gives me a small nod, and it means more than it should, considering how little I’ve done to earn it.
I step off the porch and look back at her. “Lock the door.”
Cara raises her eyebrows. “Is that a request?”
I grind my teeth before answering. “It’s a strong suggestion.”
“I can live with that,” she says, the corner of her mouth lifting.
Zip and I start across the yard. Before we disappear from sight, I glance over my shoulder. Cara is still standing on the porch, watching me leave. She doesn’t look afraid, and I force myself to keep walking before I do something stupid about it.
Zip waits until we’re halfway across the yard before glancing at me. “Interesting.”
“Don’t,” I warn him.
He lifts both hands. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to,” I accuse.
“Actually, I was going to say that you managed an entire conversation without pissing her off,” Zip replies.
“She told me not to order her around,” I remind him.
“Yeah, but she didn’t throw anything.” Zip flashes me a grin.
“High standards,” I mutter.
“With you?” His grin widens. “Absolutely.”
The radio at his belt crackles before I can answer, Condor's voice tight and fast. "Falcon, Zip, get in here. Now."
Whatever's left of the moment disappears. Zip reaches for the radio. "What've you got?"
A pause, then Condor again. "Black SUV on the south road. This time it stopped."
I look toward the tree line beyond the compound, toward the place somebody thinks they can sit and watch my family, and everything in me sharpens at once. I don't reach for my bike. I don't think about going after them alone.
"Get Vulture," I tell Zip.
"Already moving."
We head for the clubhouse together, and for the first time in longer than I'd like to admit, my first instinct isn't to handle it myself.
It's to call my brothers.