CHAPTER ONE #2
Gage produced a leash from his pocket and snapped it onto the dog’s collar. Pancake immediately dropped her head and stared at the ground, the ball in her mouth.
Gage tugged on the leash. “C’mon, Pancake.” He raised his gaze to Mel’s. “Now that she knows there’s a kid here, it’ll be a battle to keep her away.”
“We like dogs. Pancake can visit us any time, right, Mom?”
Addy’s utter confidence that Mel would back her up meant there wasn’t a chance she’d disagree. “Yeah, we like dogs. Pancake is welcome.”
Gage shook his head. “You say that now. You’ve been warned.”
With the reluctant Pancake plodding after him, occasionally turning her head to gaze woefully at Addy, man and dog disappeared into the trees.
***
Wearing only sweatpants, Gage wandered into the kitchen, Pancake following him, her nails tapping on the tiles.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d thought he’d broken the cycle of night terrors, yet here he was with the groggy hangover from the nasty dream clouding his brain.
At two in the morning he’d lunged up in bed, breath jammed in his throat, heart racing.
He’d been back in that black hellhole, Tino standing over Rafe, fingers smeared red.
Blood dripping from the long-bladed hunting knife forming a puddle in the dirt.
Tino, a cartel enforcer out of Mexico, was a sadistic motherfucker.
The nightmare brought back horrific memories and made Gage queasy.
Shackled to the wall, chains cutting into his skin.
Straining with all his might to break free.
Knowing escape from the compound was impossible.
Tino had become the focus of his rage. Gage could only hope to somehow kill the evil bastard and take out as many of the others as he could before they ended him.
But he hadn’t been able to do a goddamned thing to stop the twisted fuck from using that knife on his partner. The worst part had been the utter helplessness of watching Rafe die as the life drained out of him.
Head bent, Gage rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. The night terrors had left him alone for the past couple months. Maybe the bureau-mandated therapy had helped. But last night he’d been slammed back into the memories, and the aftereffect felt like his soul had been ripped from his body.
He dropped his hand and punched the start button on his coffeemaker and stared at it until the smell of fresh brew began to permeate the air.
Pancake headbutted the back of his leg.
“You’re not subtle, you know that?” In the mudroom adjacent to the kitchen, he scooped dog food into her dish.
She stared at the kibble, then at Gage. “It’s your own damn fault.
Vet says the canned shit makes your farts into toxic gas clouds.
Now you get straight-up kibble.” He could have sworn his dog sighed before giving up on the guilt trip and digging in.
Gage grabbed socks and a heavy shirt from a basket of clean clothes.
He hated folding clothes. He also hated grocery shopping, but he liked to eat so that was another chore on the list for today.
Socks on, he buttoned the shirt against the chill.
Having inhaled her breakfast, Pancake nosed her way through the dog door.
He didn’t have a fenced yard, but his dog generally stayed close and did her business out in the trees, same spot every day so it was easy to clean up.
He returned to the kitchen and grabbed a mug from the cupboard. It had a heart around the sappy words “Best Brother Ever.” It’d been a gift from Emery at Christmas.
Gage wasn’t anyone’s brother anymore, but he couldn’t bring himself to toss it.
His best friend’s wife refused to leave him to his solitude and generally bullied him into attending family events.
When he’d pointed out they weren’t his family, her wounded look had stung.
Which had been exactly her intent. Now the mug was somehow the one he reached for first. He filled it with coffee, blowing across the top before taking that first hit while standing at the sink and looking out the window.
The view never failed to center him. He figured living in the mountains helped him heal more than the therapy.
There was Payback Mountain towering mightily behind the ridge that rose like a shelf about a quarter mile behind Bluebell Lane.
The mountain sky was a deeper blue than any place he’d ever been, and the tall, shaggy pines swept up the slopes like an advancing army.
He often saw deer, and had even seen bear a couple times. When he and Rafael had been in that hole in the ground, he’d thought he wouldn’t live long enough to see anything like that again. Rafe hadn’t.
Gage took nothing in his life for granted.
He shifted his gaze to the house across the way.
Meeting his neighbor had been like a sucker punch to the face.
He didn’t like having that kind of reaction to a woman.
And the kid? Little Addy was a firecracker.
She’d grinned up at him with twin dimples, her top teeth missing, and a light shining in her eyes that had him rubbing a hand over his heart.
That’s how kids should be. Happy and free, not worrying whether the electricity would stay on, or if your sister would survive her diagnosis.
Addy was a dead ringer for her mom, minus twenty-odd years.
Same dark hair that was nearly black but not quite, same deep brown eyes with glints of gold, same pointed chin.
Melanie hadn’t smiled so he didn’t know if the kid’s dimples came down that side of the gene pool.
And while Addy’s hair went down her back, the mom’s was cut short, a thick cap that left the long curve of her neck exposed.
It wasn’t even eight and the older couple who’d been there the day before were coming up the driveway from where they’d parked a pickup truck.
The woman carried a caddy of drinks and the old guy a white paper bag Gage would bet had the Three Sisters Bakery logo printed on it.
He had a sudden craving for their blueberry lemon muffins.
He didn’t go to the bakery often because invariably there’d be some old geezer looking for someone to shoot the shit with.
There wasn’t much Gage disliked more than making idle conversation.
The kid ran out, her mom following her. The flash of a smile lit up Melanie’s face. It packed a punch but was too far away to confirm dimples.
He turned over the thought that had occurred to him after meeting her the day before.
After being rescued from the cartel, Gage had arrived in Sisters following a weeks-long hospital stay.
He’d been in bad shape, lost too much blood.
But he’d been alive. At the time, he’d wanted nothing more than to find somewhere dark to lick his wounds.
When he’d healed enough, at least physically, to be discharged, Shane had stepped in. His best friend from college, a brother in every way that mattered (hence the mug), Shane Keller had shown up at the hospital and informed Gage he was coming home with him to recover.
He’d loaded Gage in his pickup and taken him to Lone Pine Ranch near Sisters.
Gage had been too beat down to put up much resistance.
His mother had wanted him home, but she’d recently gotten married and didn’t need to be worrying about him.
Beyond that, he’d needed space, and the ranch had a helluva lot of space.
Gage’s natural inclination was to keep people at a distance.
Superficial relationships kept his life simple, and he liked simple.
But staying at the ranch had meant Shane’s friends showing up to hang out or help with a project.
Somehow, he still wasn’t sure how it’d happened, they’d made him part of what was essentially a family. And they hadn’t let go.
The core of that group were the women, the three half-sisters, Delaney, Emery, and Cam.
Over the past couple years they’d paired off.
Emery and Shane had gotten hitched, while the other two had married the McGrath brothers, Delaney with Walker and Cam with Sawyer.
The most recent wedding meant two others in their group, Owen and Keeley, had tied the knot. And now they were all having babies.
It was like none of them realized how precarious life could be. Anyone could be living in a normal family, safe and secure one moment, and the next the rug was pulled right out from under them, leaving them scrambling to survive.
He shook his head to clear it and focus on the thought that’d occurred to him.
A few weeks before, Gage had been at the McGrath clan’s Cider Mill Farm and Delaney’d mentioned a friend from high school was moving back to Sisters and had bought a house.
The friend’s name? Melanie Brennan. He hadn’t gotten his neighbor’s last name, and the name Melanie wasn’t uncommon.
But add in that she was about the right age and Delaney’d said she had a daughter, and Gage had a feeling he knew more about his neighbor than she might be comfortable with.
Over a decade ago, Delaney’s Melanie had been at the heart of an atrocity that had rocked the community and sent Walker to prison, framed for a crime he hadn’t committed. The crime? Sexual assault against Melanie.
Gage took a deep pull of his coffee, feeling the warmth spread through his chest. Because he had a background with federal law enforcement, he’d gone over the details of the case with Walker and his cop brother, Sawyer.
Walker’s conviction had eventually been overturned, but the perpetrator had never been caught.
The injustice against Walker was bad enough, but that Gage’s neighbor might’ve been the victim? Fucking infuriating.
Movement at her house snagged his attention. “Shit.”