Kane's Salvation (Guardians of Blackwood Falls #6)

Chapter 1 Kane

I sit on the stool at the back bench with a piece of pine the size of my palm and the folding knife open across my knee, shaving curls off one corner.

My hands work and the rest of me waits. Three twenty-six.

The bus from Bozeman doesn't come into Blackwood Falls, so she has rented a car at the airport and driven the last four hours through country roads she's never seen.

I called her two weeks ago. Six minutes on the phone.

I gave her my name, told her I knew her brother, told her she needed to come, gave her an address.

What I didn't tell her: that I've known her address for eight years without ever using it, and that Thorne's people have spent the last month finding that same address.

She got the part she needed to act on. The rest waits for the right moment.

Another curl of pine comes off the corner, pale and damp. Spring in Montana means the roads north opened a month back, the snow is off everything except the high passes, and the four-o'clock sun comes through the bay doors to lay a slab of gold across the concrete.

The gate motor kicks on outside. Tires roll over the gravel apron, slow and careful, a small engine I don't recognize. Whoever is driving hasn't done this drive before.

I close the knife and set the piece of pine on the bench with the half-shape facing up, then I stand.

The door cuts open six inches on the wind, then opens fully. She steps into the doorway and stops there, one hand still on the metal, taking in the bays, the lights, the three men in coveralls who have all gone briefly still.

Eight years I've carried two images of her.

The first is a fourteen-year-old in the school portrait Danny kept in his uniform pocket, braces and hair pulled back for picture day.

The second is the same girl in the front pew at his funeral, crying without sound for the brother in the closed casket.

Both fall out of me the second she looks up.

The kid in the portrait was...a kid. The woman in my doorway is tall, with chestnut hair loose past her shoulders and a full mouth she's holding carefully, a denim jacket too thin for the wind off the mountains. She's been driving a long time and her shoulders show it.

Her eyes find mine and stop.

Clear blue, wide open. My chest tightens for the first time in years.

Fuck.

I grab the edge of the bench behind me to steady myself.

"Callie," I say.

"Kane?"

She says my name with the K landing soft, the A going long, and my throat goes dry.

I clear it. "You found the place."

"You gave good directions," she replies, the corner of her mouth lifting.

She lets the door close behind her without moving from where she stopped, looking at the room piece by piece, giving me the seconds I need.

I track her without turning my head. The leather bag on her shoulder is soft, not new, and inside it, between her things, is a letter Danny wrote her three weeks before he died with my name on the envelope. She has no idea I know about it.

Jaxson straightens up from the Mustang and walks over, wiping his hands on a rag. He doesn't look at me. He looks at her.

I do the introductions. "Callie, this is Jaxson. He owns the place. Jaxson, Callie Walsh."

"Drive okay?" Jaxson asks her.

"Long," she replies, and smiles at him, a real smile that reaches her eyes, genuine and disarming.

That smile is what does it. For ninety seconds I had her at a distance in my head. Height, hair, jacket, the strap of her bag. The smile goes through all of it. Danny had the same one, and people softened around him without knowing why.

Three rules. I hold them while she shakes Jaxson's hand: she's Danny's sister, she's twenty-two, and the only reason I called her here is to keep her alive.

The rules hold. I've done harder things than stand behind a bench and ignore my own body.

Jaxson lets go of her hand and steps back. "Kane will get you settled. You hungry?"

"I'm okay."

"There's coffee upstairs if you want some. Iron Vault rule is anybody under our roof gets fed."

"Thank you," she replies, and she looks at me again.

I come around the bench.

For eight years the promise to Danny was an abstract weight I could carry from a distance. Now she's three feet from me, and the math has changed. My body knew it the second her eyes met mine.

I cross the floor and take the bag off her shoulder. My fingers brush the strap and her shoulder under it, half a second of warmth through denim. The heat travels up my arm and reaches my chest.

She smells of white musk, faint and fresh in spite of the road.

Christ.

"Come upstairs," I tell her. "I'll get you coffee."

She nods and follows me toward the stairs. Behind her I hear Jaxson go back to the Mustang.

I take the first step without looking back. She's behind me, the bench is downstairs, and I have no fucking idea how to keep the distance without it.