Chapter 17
“I can’t believe you made him cave that fast,” Jericho said as Harley drove them along the back roads to her house.
They’d spent the past three hours at the sheriff’s office, mostly with Harley on the phone to her boss in Juneau.
But she’d also managed to convince T-Bone that it was in his best interest to hand over everything he knew about the possible drug storage locations, aka, construction sites of Summit Construction.
Harley looked over at him. “It was the plea. He’s already in trouble in Anchorage—he got into a bar fight.
Second degree assault, although they dropped the attempted murder charge.
Still, in Alaska, that’s up to ten years in prison.
Lydia offered to knock it down to third degree, with a three-year prison term.
” She turned onto her long driveway. “Deke’s working on a map to all the construction sites.
If I know him, he’ll have a plan for us in the morning. ”
The dome house reflected the stars, the moonlight streaming through the trees as they drove up to what felt like a secret hideout in the woods.
They just had to lay low until morning. Eight hours.
No problem.
Jericho would button her up tight, make sure Mars and Sloan didn’t walk out of the woods, and end this day where he’d started . . . watching his world blow up.
Orlando snoozed on the back seat, and Jericho put his hand on the dog’s body, feeling the rise and fall of his breath.
Good dog.
Jericho still hadn’t quite cleared his mind, his body, from the creep of the cave and how close he’d come to . . . well, slowly freezing to death in the dark.
So yes, he wanted to get home—or at least, to Harley’s home—start a fire, lock the doors and tell himself they were safe.
His gaze, however, glanced over at the dark hulk of his former family home. Maybe it was time to sell the place, like Hudson said. They could use the money, for sure.
The thought sat inside him, burned.
The house had eyes, and they seemed to watch him, his father’s voice thrumming through him. “I built this for you, Jericho.”
“I’m going to park in the garage,” Harley said and drove down into the heated garage under the main level.
Only then did he realize the road had been plowed. “Who else knows you’re here?” He got out and pulled the bag of groceries from the back. Orlando jumped into the snow, wagged his tail. “Yes, I have some for you,” he told the dog.
“We hire the same guy your brother does,” Harley answered. “He runs the local snowplow, works this area. Nils Hanson.”
“Hey, wasn’t his son in high school with us?”
“Yeah. Brandon. He’s around. Helps his dad sometimes. Works maintenance at the school.”
She opened the basement door and headed up the steps to the main room. He followed.
Light bathed the room, casting over the flooring, the butcher block countertops, the hand-carved cabinets—he remembered the hours her dad spent in his workshop, working on those. Jericho had probably sanded at least half of them.
The overhead light gleamed off the groovy orange stove in the corner of the room. He’d have to start a fire, maybe.
If he was staying the night.
Oh, who was he kidding—of course he was staying.
The place smelled of cedar and lemon and maybe a hint of lavender, the fragrances familiar and simply hitting him, drawing him back in time.
He loved this house. And, of course, his gaze fell onto the deck, where he spent too many nights figuring out how he might hold her hand across the space between their Adirondack chairs, bundled in down sleeping bags.
Maybe it had been enough that their breaths had mingled in the darkness.
He set the bag on the counter. “I’ll make a fire.”
“I’ll make dinner.” She smiled at him. “I hope you like toasted cheezers and tomato soup.”
“Normal people call those grilled cheese sandwiches, but don’t go changin’ to try to please me.”
She came over to him, stepped in front of him, grabbed his lapels. “Never.”
He nearly leaned down to kiss her, but she pushed him away.
“Firewood is outside, by the door.” She wrinkled her nose at him, stepped away.
“There will be stargazing tonight, HT. Just so you know.”
“My dad will be looking down from heaven, reminding you to behave yourself.” She laughed. He smiled at her and yes, it felt like . . . like maybe this was how it was supposed to be.
That thought clung to him as he stepped outside, loaded up his arms with firewood, and returned to the house. Then he built the fire, adding old magazine pages for kindling. Soon the flames bit into the wood.
She had spread out the bread on the butcher block, buttered it, the tomato soup smelling of garlic and basil.
His stomach roared as he headed outside again and loaded up a backup supply of firewood.
He couldn’t help standing for a moment and staring at his old house. The path between their houses seemed overgrown, but he knew it in his sleep. His dreams.
He could almost hear the laughter from the firepit down by the lake. And maybe his own whispers to Harley, so long ago.
She’d wanted him to make promises.
He’d wanted her to trust him. Wait for him to come home.
Wow, he’d been unfair. Maybe they both had.
He headed inside to the scent of grilling bread, savory gouda melting, and set the firewood beside the stove.
It all felt so . . . domestic. And perfect. And the words just bubbled out of him. “I’m sorry.”
He wasn’t sure why that came out . . . again. The first time, back in the cabin, he’d meant it as sort of a general “I’m sorry I didn’t come back for you.”
Now, he turned to her. “I’m sorry, Harley.”
She’d turned to him, frowning. “For?”
“For not being the hero you hoped I was.”
Her mouth opened. He sighed, came up to the counter. “I should have told you I was leaving long before the fight. I was afraid that . . . I don’t know, that you’d get mad.”
“I would have. I did.” Her mouth made a grim line.
“And you had a good reason. But . . . the fact is, I . . . I loved you, Harley. So much and I feared that if I told you then . . . well, you had the power to make me stay.”
She met his gaze. “And you couldn’t stay.”
“I wanted to cast my own shadow. Not follow in my dad’s. And I wasn’t ready for that. But I never . . .” He shook his head. “I wish he knew I wasn’t rejecting my legacy. Or whatever.”
“No, that’s the word.”
She flipped the sandwiches, then came over to him. “Go over to the house. Say goodbye.”
His mouth opened. Closed. “No.”
“Yes. Are you kidding me? Of course you should go over there.”
Then she lifted herself up, put her arms around him, and kissed him. Not urgent. Not desperate.
As if she might be his partner, the girl who knew him, the woman who believed in him. It swept him up, and he put his arms around her and kissed her back. Not desperate but needing her.
Oh, needing her. Yes, he had a new heart, and this one had no fear of belonging to Harley Tatum.
He lifted his head when she gasped and pushed him away.
“What?”
But she’d fled to the stove and pulled the pan off the heat. “Aw. I burned the cheezers.”
“I like burned toast.”
She shook her head. “I don’t. Listen, really, go over to the house. I’ll keep the soup warm. When you get back, I’ll make more sandwiches.” She leaned a hip against the sink. “Then we’ll watch the stars. But . . . you’d better behave yourself.”
“That’s a promise I can’t make there, HT.”
She grinned at him. “I hope not.”
He sighed.
She cocked her head. “What?”
“I don’t know. Just . . . memories.” And unfinished conversation.
“They might surprise you,” she said softly.
His mouth tightened.
“Go. I’ll be watching.”
He frowned, then. Oh. “The light.”
“The light,” she said. “One last time.”
He laughed, despite the bittersweet taste of her words. “Lock the door behind me. I won’t be long.”
His feet remembered the way through the forest to his childhood home.
The house seemed less grand than he remembered.
Two stories, with a front porch and gabled windows that overlooked the lake.
The stone chimney jutted from the roof, now cold, although the front porch was cleared of snow, thanks to the local rental company.
It groaned as he stepped on it, the light by the door bearing rust, a little crooked.
He fixed it, then pushed the code for the lockbox by the door, retrieved the key, and went inside.
He wouldn’t call the place warm, so clearly they turned down the heat between guest stays, but the chill didn’t capture his breath, and he slid off his boots to walk across the rug and stand in front of the grand fireplace.
Wide enough for a kid to sit inside the hearth and get warm after skating on the lake or tobogganing through the snow.
There was new leather furniture in the space, but old conversations rose and maybe, for a second, he could hear his father’s voice, reading the Bible.
“The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.”
The words warmed him.
He walked into the kitchen, stood in the room that had been painted yellow by his mother one gloomy winter. He was ten again, sitting at the kitchen table with his brothers, fighting over the last pancake. “Settle down. There’s more, boys.”
Wow, he missed her. Could still hear her praying for them as they left for school. “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
He found his way then, to the den, his father’s hideaway, and stared at the bookshelf, empty now, save for a few paperbacks left for guests.
He took one down—a well-read, dog-eared version of The Daybreakers, book six of The Sacketts series.
His father, no doubt, had fancied the Bowies were like the tough, hard-scrabbled family of Louis L’Amour’s west.
Maybe they were.
The words of his father’s journal roused inside him, settled.
“They’re your sons even more than they’re mine. I trust you with their paths, even when those paths take them from me.”