20. Chapter 20
The work-room. Theo, Declan, Rhys, Freya, Cade around the table going over options. Jace at the head. Maren at the window with her shoulder against the frame and her arms folded, looking out at the trees on the rise above the lodge.
Rhys came off the radio.
“South, north, both county roads, the service track. He's got us surrounded.”
Cade, from where he was standing, dry: “Problem goes away if he's dead. Just saying.”
Maren didn't turn from the window.
“That's so sweet, Cade. But I have a less bloody idea.”
A beat. Uncertain.
“Maybe.”
She turned then. Looked at the table.
“If we can't get out. Maybe someone can come in.”
Theo at the table with the contact pulled up. Desk phone off its cradle, on speaker, in the middle.
He started to dial.
“Wait.”
Theo's thumb stopped.
Maren came off the window. She was at the table now. Looking at Jace.
“What if there's nothing there?”
Jace, even: “What does your gut tell you?”
She held it.
She nodded at Theo.
It landed on her as Theo's thumb moved to the keypad.
This was the name Freya had put on the whiteboard weeks ago.
The federal agent who had been circling Bastian for years without the proof to close.
Maren wasn't calling a stranger for a rescue.
She was reaching the person her father's archive had been built for.
She had just never been the one holding the phone.
Theo pressed the last two numbers.
Two rings.
A woman's voice.
“Agent Morales.”
Maren looked at Jace. Jace nodded.
She leaned to the speaker.
“Agent Morales, my name is Maren Palmer. My father was an accountant for Bastian Holdings. Before he was murdered, he left something for me.”
A long pause on the line.
Maren's eyes came up to Jace's. Disappointed. The line had been quiet too long.
Morales’s voice came back through, lower than before.
“I'm listening.”
The breath came out of Maren in a way she didn't quite get on top of. Relief turned into a small smile.
Jace pulled her against his side and held her there.
He'd built the fire down to coals because she had said she didn't want it loud.
She was on the floor in front of the hearth with her back against the front of the couch. He was on the couch with one arm along the back of it and his hand close enough to her shoulder that his fingers were on the seam of her sweater without quite weighting on it.
“I think she believed us,” she said.
“She believed us.”
“She didn't have to.”
“She did, though.”
She tipped her head back until it rested on the cushion next to his thigh.
“You think she'll come.”
“She's hopping a plane tonight to be at our gate at eight. She believed us.”
She let it sit.
It sat.
Then her shoulder moved a fraction, her body no longer able to hold the position.
He saw it.
“What if—” she started.
“Come here.”
His hand was already out, palm up, between them. She hadn't seen him move it.
She slipped her hand into his.
He pulled, gently, until she was up off the floor and on the couch with her knees tucked sideways and her head on his shoulder and his arm around her ribs with the line of his hand spread the long way across her back.
He didn't say anything for what felt like minutes.
She didn't either.
It was a while before she pulled back.