Chapter Three
Lawson strode down the main hallway in the lodge with purposeful strides. He went past Reception and the main gathering room, and was passing the dining hall, where he heard someone call his name.
“Hey, Lawson!”
He glanced around, and saw Xavier and Cade hanging out by the dining table in the center of the room, clearing out the plates from the recent meal.
“Can you give us a hand with all this?” Cade called to him. “Aaron’s out at the paddock and we could use an extra pair of hands.”
Lawson held up his phone and made an apologetic face. “Sorry, guys. I have to take this,” he told them.
Xavier shook his head at him. “Anything to get out of dish duty, huh?” he teased.
Lawson held his hands up. “You got me,” he joked. “See you guys in a bit.”
Truth be told, he didn’t have time to stick around and help out right now. No, he’d just gotten a text from someone he hadn’t heard from in a hell of a long time, and something told him that if she was getting in touch with him, something had to be going on. Something bad.
The text from Lainey Daye had told him to get to somewhere he wouldn’t be overheard and call her. He knew she wasn’t screwing around or being overdramatic when she’d typed that, either. Lainey had never taken a joking attitude. She always said exactly what she meant, and nothing more.
It was one of the many things that had made her such a good agent for the CIA. Lawson had trained alongside her, and she had worked in the agency for the better part of a decade before she’d left field duty and begun working as an analyst instead.
The two of them had kept in touch on and off, though they had mostly been focused on their own lives the last few years. Still, Lawson felt some loyalty to her, same as he was sure she did to him, and he wasn’t going to leave her out in the cold if something was going on and she needed his help.
He reached his room and pulled the door shut behind him, double-checking to make sure it was locked. He dialed her back and lifted the phone to his ear, and it rang a couple of times before Lainey answered.
“Lawson?”
“Lainey. I’m alone,” he told her. “What’s going on?”
“Good,” she replied, her voice taut.
Lawson could tell at once that something was up, and he didn’t like it.
They’d worked together for long enough that he could recognize when something was wrong, and when it came to Lainey, he knew it wasn’t going to be anything simple.
She had a knack for diving in headfirst when it was something important to her.
“What’s happening?” he demanded. “Are you safe?”
“For now,” she replied. “Can you meet me in town? I don’t want to say much over the phone.”
“In town?”
“I’m at a café, not far from the sewing shop,” she explained.
He frowned. “Wait, you’re…”
“Yes. It shouldn’t take you more than an hour to get down here,” she replied. “Can you make it? I need to talk to you. In person. It’s really important.”
“Of course I can,” he replied without even really thinking twice about it.
He was never going to leave Lainey out in the cold, and if she had come all this way to find him, she must have believed he was the only person who could help her.
“I’ll need to shift a couple things here, then I’ll be on my way. ”
“Good,” she responded. “Please, hurry. I’ll see you soon, Lawson.”
And with that, she hung up, leaving him even more confused than before. What the hell was happening? Why was she here? Why didn’t she just come up to Warrior Peak? He needed to get moving if he was going to find out.
As he gathered himself, his mind drifted back to their time together in the agency.
They had worked together well, their last mission a drug bust in Richmond that went off without a hitch.
With both of their analytical minds in the game, they had managed to put together a plan that led to no casualties, the drug runners arrested and their stash in police custody, where it belonged.
They’d gotten a hell of a lot of dangerous trash off the streets that day, and he was still proud of that.
Afterward, they’d gone to get a beer together.
Well, he’d had a beer. He’d noticed at once that she wasn’t drinking, and had wondered aloud what was keeping her from her usual postwork celebration.
They had grabbed drinks together multiple times over the years and it wasn’t like her to just order water.
“I—I’m pregnant,” she’d blurted out.
His eyebrows had nearly vanished off the top of his head. “What the hell?”
She looked up at him, and he could see how torn she was, the pain written all over her face.
“I can’t do this anymore, Lawson,” she admitted. “I… This work, it’s getting to me. I used to love the high I got after a job well done. But now, I have other things to think about. Other priorities, the baby…”
Lawson was stunned. She hadn’t even told him she was seeing anyone, and now she was pregnant? Sure enough, though, that was the end of it for her. She wanted to leave fieldwork and focus on raising her kid with the love of her life, and he couldn’t blame her.
Doing what they did, day in and day out, was tough on families, and he’d heard of way too many people who’d ended up divorced because of the amount of pressure their line of work had put on them.
Lainey could see it just as clearly as he could—she would have to make a choice. And she chose her new life.
Of course, Lawson had missed her, but he wanted the best for her, and he trusted that she knew what that was.
She had retired from the field to start working as an analyst, a much safer job with more manageable hours.
He had asked about her in their mutual circles a few times over the years, and based on the small details he’d picked up, she seemed to be doing really well.
But this? This wasn’t good. This sounded serious. What had happened to throw her back into the middle of the action like this? He knew she wasn’t in town just to catch up with an old friend. Hell, she could just come up to the lodge for that.
His mind was spinning as he tried to put the pieces together, but he knew there was no point in guessing until he was in front of her and she could tell him herself what was going on.
He left his room and headed down to the entrance as he tried to keep his thoughts from running wild. She had said she was safe for now, so someone was chasing her? Looking for her? For what purpose? Information, or something worse?
He was starting to give himself a headache but he couldn’t seem to stop the questions from forming in his mind.
What had happened to her kid, her husband?
He knew how much they meant to her and he doubted she would have been able to handle it if something had happened to them.
Damn, the thought of it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
He’d learned what it was like to have the things he held close threatened these last several months, and it wasn’t a good feeling.
He diverted down one of the side halls and headed downstairs. He knew he needed to let Xavier know he was leaving the property and what little he knew of Lainey’s urgent request. They were business partners, but they were also best friends and they looked out for each other in all ways.
“Hey,” Lawson said as he walked in the office door. Xavier glanced up from the papers on his desk, his brow furrowed. A far cry from the goofy guy clearing dishes just ten minutes ago.
“What’s up?” Xavier asked, narrowing his eyes. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” he assured him, even though he didn’t know if it was truly the case. “I’m going down to Blue Ridge for a bit. I got a call from an old friend at the CIA. Remember Lainey Daye?”
Xavier’s shoulders immediately tensed at the mention of the CIA. Lawson didn’t blame him after everything that’d gone down a few months prior. “Yeah, didn’t work with her, but I remember her. What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure yet—she asked me to come meet her. Can you hold down the fort for now?”
“You got it,” Xavier replied with a nod. “You need help? Backup?”
“Not right now,” he answered, slipping his hands into his pockets. “I’ll keep you updated as much as I can. But I need to go, it seemed pretty urgent. I’m not sure when I’ll be back, either, probably later tonight.”
A dark shadow flitted across Xavier’s face, and Lawson could tell his mind was drifting back to the memories of what had happened with Jed just a few months ago.
He’d blamed himself for that, for bringing that kind of danger to their door, even though Lawson had tried to tell him he had nothing at all to feel guilty about.
Everyone came to Warrior Peak with some history to their name, and sometimes, that history came back to bite them in the ass. It wasn’t Xavier’s fault that a deranged man was desperate for information about illegal weapons and would stop at nothing to get it.
“Oh, and can you keep an eye on Sarah for me while I’m out?” Lawson asked.
Xavier cocked an eyebrow. “I guess so,” he replied. “Why, is something going on with her?”
“Something happened in her last appointment,” Lawson explained. “She should be okay now, but she seemed pretty shaken up by it. I don’t want her getting into her head about it, you know?”
“You got it,” Xavier agreed, and Lawson nodded his gratitude before he turned to head out to his truck.
Even though the sun was shining above his head, he felt a shiver run down his spine.
Lainey reaching out to him like this wasn’t exactly what he had expected.
As far as he knew, she was living a quiet life as an analyst and enjoying her family life.
Something told him that she wouldn’t have been contacting him unless she felt as though she didn’t have any other choice.
When she had gotten out of the game, she’d been intent on making a new life for herself, a life that didn’t revolve around the stress and danger of what she’d known before.
But, as he knew all too well, just because you wanted to leave something behind, it didn’t mean it wasn’t going to come looking for you at some point or another. So if he could help her get through this, then he would.
He owed her that much.
He jumped into his truck and pulled away from the sanctuary, watching the main building shrink in his rearview mirror. And he said a brief prayer to whoever might be listening that whatever was going on with Lainey didn’t cause any more trouble at Warrior Peak.
Because God only knew they had been through enough lately as it was.