Chapter 12
She could live forever on the joy of meeting her nephew.
Harley refused to think about how much she’d missed. Watching this little guy toddle his first steps, mumble his first words, get those baby teeth and learn his letters and numbers, and most of all hear his laughter when his dad tickled his tummy.
“He’s so adorable, Ga—Adam.”
Words spoken at the hospital when Gabe and Sunni arrived with Winnie. They’d run into the ER lobby, Gabe’s gaze landing on his son.
And he just swept the boy up, nearly unraveling right there. It put a stone in her throat as she watched.
Adam Waters. Yes, she’d have to get her brain around his WITSEC name before she blew his cover.
Her brother, garbed in a wool hat and a beard, finally put the boy down, and only then addressed her words with a wink. “Takes after his old man.”
Sunni had laughed through her tears, pulling Daniel into her arms.
Clearly, Gabe’s little boy knew him.
As the hospital staff wheeled Gregg into surgery to stitch his wound, it occurred to her that Gabe hadn’t exactly stayed lost, at least not to the people who mattered to him.
Sunni held her mother’s hand as Gabe stood next to them, Daniel in his arms. The picture just tore a hole through Harley.
Mostly because she wasn’t—hadn’t been—a part of it.
But also because it simply dragged up that moment so many years ago when her parents did exactly the same thing, praying that Gabe would survive his first overdose.
Maybe they hadn’t really. Or really, she hadn’t.
Gabe had managed to reassemble his life. Without her.
And, of course, as if Jericho knew, he put his arm around her and pulled her against him, her back to his safe, strong chest. Orlando sat, whining softly, and she put a hand on his head.
So maybe she had her own huddle of support.
They’d sat in the waiting room chairs while Sheriff Deke came in and took a statement from Jericho and Harley about the hunter from the woods. The Bowie brothers stopped by, too, on their way back to the lodge.
The nurse finally came out and directed them to Gregg’s room where the sturdy man lay in a bed, hooked up to a heart monitor and oxygen. Groggy but still strong enough to grab Winnie’s hand and pull her down for a kiss.
“Pops!” Daniel had nearly leaped on him, but Gabe caught him.
“Let’s let Pops rest there, big D.”
Gregg lifted his fist and Daniel bumped it and, again, a stone lodged in Harley’s throat. And weirdly a Thank you, God rose in her mind.
Then the nurse brought in crayons and paper. Gabe sat in a chair, Daniel on his lap, and they drew a picture on the bed tray, Gabe occasionally tickling his son and Sunni leaning over them to draw a rainbow above Gabe’s stick figure family.
And again, memory took Harley up.
“Mom would have loved him,” she said, nearly a mumble, but Gabe heard her because he looked up and smiled.
Her eyes filled.
He frowned. “It’ll be okay, HT.”
She nodded but closed her eyes.
“Hey,” Jericho said quietly, then pulled her to himself, his big arms around her. She longed to hang on. But . . . “What if this isn’t the end?”
She looked up, met Jericho’s eyes. His mouth tightened.
“We need to find that hunter,” she said.
He nodded. Sighed. “But not tonight.”
Stepping away, she wiped her cheeks, then turned back to the family klatch. “Can I color with you?”
Daniel looked up. Oh, he looked just like Gabe with that wide grin. He handed her a crayon.
She took it. “I love . . . fuchsia. What should I draw?”
“A dog.” He pointed to Orlando, who’d found a place on the floor beside Gabe.
“Right. A pink dog. I’m all over it.”
“I’m not sure Orlando is on board with pink,” Jericho said.
“Hey. Pink was the favored color worn by men in the eighteenth century. It was considered masculine and powerful.”
Jericho raised an eyebrow.
She drew the dog, adding big floppy pink ears and a bow tie. Daniel giggled.
Jericho had crouched to rub Orlando’s belly and the dog rolled over and groaned in happiness.
“He doesn’t seem to mind,” Sunni said.
“What’s your name?” Daniel had started to color the bow tie purple.
Oh. “I’m . . .” She glanced at Gabe and he lifted a shoulder, nodded.
“I’m your aunt Harley.” The words rolled off her tongue, a strange texture to them. “I’m your dad’s sister.”
Daniel twisted in his lap to look at Gabe. “You have a sister, Daddy?”
“Yeah, buddy.” He drew in a breath, and his gaze on Harley held sort of an apology. “Auntie Harley is my sister.”
He grinned at her. “Auntie Hawley.”
Close enough. She lifted her fist for a bump and her heart just about exploded when the little boy bumped it back.
A knock came at the door and Orlando got up as Deke entered the room. “Came to check on our hero,” he said and walked over to the bed. “How you doin’, Gregg?”
“Good,” Gregg said, sounding the opposite. He still had hold of Winnie’s hand.
“Good enough to give me a statement of what happened?”
Gregg nodded.
“Really? Right now?” Winnie said. “Can’t it wait until morning?”
Deke sighed. “We have a BOLO out for that hunter. Would sure love to get more details.”
“Yeah. Sorry, Deke.” Gregg patted Winnie’s hand. “He drove a truck—manila-colored, dirty. I didn’t recognize it. And the rest was . . . fast.” He glanced at Daniel, and Harley took that as her cue to keep drawing. She added a big bone at the dog’s feet and gave the pup a long tail.
“Frankly, I was just trying to . . . keep . . .”
“I get it,” Deke said. “Jericho said the man had a twisted nose—”
“Flattened, like it might have been broken, once upon a time. But in all honesty, I didn’t get a good look at him. I did have the sense he had . . . skills. I think we got lucky with that storm.”
Huh. That’s not how she’d put it. But maybe . . .
“Okay. Well, I contacted Rio and he’s setting up a safe house for you all while we track this hunter down.”
“And while Mars is still at large,” Gabe added.
“Mm-hmm. We’ll find him, Adam.”
And it nudged her again—wait. She turned, looked at Deke. “You don’t seem all that surprised to see . . . um, my brother.”
Deke’s face sort of paled then, and he drew in a breath. “Um . . . so . . .”
“You knew?”
“Harley,” Jericho said.
She glanced at Jericho. “Don’t tell me you knew too.”
Jericho’s eyes widened. “What? No. I just got here.”
But she’d found her feet as the tucked-away question simply roared back to her. Her voice fell. “Gabe, am I the only, um, person you cared about who didn’t . . .”
He met her eyes. “Harls—”
Her chest knotted, cutting off her breath. She held up her hand, forced a smile at Daniel. “Buddy, I’ll see you ’round, okay?”
“Bye, Auntie Hawley.”
She couldn’t speak. Sunni, however, reached out to her as she backed away.
“We had to make choices, Harl—”
Harley stared at Gabe and held up her hand, the words from the cabin rushing back to her. “You would have looked for me.”
Oh.
She was the problem.
She turned then and made for the door.
Orlando had scrambled to his feet, and she nearly tripped over him but pushed past and out into the hallway.
Stalked down it, away, toward the stairwell, not sure where she might be going.
Just . . . away. Away!
“Harley!”
Of course Jericho had followed her. Now she couldn’t shake the guy.
She hit the stairwell door, her thoughts careening, the events of the past few days crashing around her, from getting shot, to Gabe’s reappearance, to the search for Daniel, to . . .
Jericho. “I was afraid I’d fail.”
She’d taken the first flight of stairs down, rounded to the second flight, but for a second, Jericho’s words from the cabin struck her.
Sure, he said he’d been afraid he’d fail the resort—but, yeah.
She knew him.
“You’re going to get in over your head, and I won’t be able to save you!
” And maybe it was being back here, in the place where it all started, but as she reached the landing and plunged out into the back hallway of the hospital, she found herself standing in the very place where her world had exploded so many years earlier.
Her entire body shook with the memory of their argument. She’d been blinded by the brutal blow on her pride.
But he was right. She’d driven him away.
She’d driven all of them away, really.
“Harley!”
She’d escaped out the side door, outside, into the cleared path of the hospital, nearly running toward the parking lot. But she had no idea where she might be going.
And then a dog barked and ran up to her, nearly blocking her path—big surprise there because, of course, Orlando would track her. She stopped, right at the edge of the sidewalk, under the bright floodlight of the lot.
Jericho ran up, breathing a little hard. “Where do you think you’re going?”
And he probably didn’t mean it like it came out, but she snapped back, “I don’t know, okay?”
He exhaled a shaky breath, looked around, something stricken in his expression. Wait—
“Let’s get out of here,” Jericho said. He jerked his head toward his Silverado, Orlando on his heels.
She stared after him, his broad back. Probably a good idea.
Except when she got in the passenger seat, he sat, icy, his jaw tightened.
“Why do I get the feeling that every time we get in this truck, you’re angry with me.”
He sighed, then emitted a deep huff and turned on the engine. “It’s fine.”
She frowned at him as he pulled out of the parking lot. “What are you talking about? Nothing is fine! My brother lied to me, and you clearly think—and I do too—that Mars sent someone to kill Daniel, and clearly I’m in his sights too—”
“And you’re going to get yourself and the rest of us killed.”
He could have swung at her with less effect. Her mouth opened. “What?”
He’d pulled out onto the main road, toward the Bowie Resort, where she’d parked her Jeep. He could break molars with the clench of his jaw.
Yeah, well, her too. She folded her arms, looked away.
“Fine,” he said, his voice softer now. “You scared me.”
She stilled, glanced back at him.