Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
“You’re back.” As she walks toward me, her eyes move over me the same way my brothers’ did, but it feels different when she does it.
Rhett moves over to the table, which is still covered with maps, radio gear, a laptop Sentinel brought, and a legal pad covered in Rhett’s blocky scrawl. “Tell us.”
So I tell them about the prefab command post and the containers. I tell them how many vehicles I saw and the security schedule I observed. I tell them how the ridgelines are a blind spot for Turner because he’s not prepared for an overland assault. Rhett absorbs it all with an expression that tells me his mind is moving fast.
Then I tell them what I heard about the shipment next week.
“Novak’s window,” Rhett says, and I nod.
Boone exhales slowly. “Then this is almost over.”
It’s a relief, but it also means a fight is coming. It means Turner might be cornered enough to be dangerous. It also means that when this is over, Wren’s work may pull her back to the city.
My hand closes around nothing at my side, and Wren notices.
Boone starts gathering notes I’ve laid out, and Rhett reaches for the secure phone. “I’ll get Novak.”
Wren keeps looking at me.
I should go help. I should give Rhett every detail while it’s still fresh, and I should eat something, drink water, clean my rifle, and write a formal report that Novak can read.
Instead, I step toward her, and when I do, she tips her head back.
I touch her cheek, and brush my thumb near the corner of her mouth as the warmth of her seeps into my chilled flesh.
“It’s almost over,” I tell her.
Her eyes soften, and it’s worse than the fear. I can handle fear, but softness gets under my armor.
She turns her head and kisses my palm, and it wrecks me.
“I know,” she says.
Rhett’s voice is low behind us, already speaking to Novak, and Boone’s moving around the table, deliberately not looking our way. I drop my hand before I do something stupid in the middle of the room.
“I need to shower.”
I walk off to grab clean clothes, and Wren trails after me. When I reach the bathroom, she’s waiting at the door, and when I go inside, she comes, too.
CHAPTER 35
CADE
She closes the door behind us, then leans back against it, looking at me. “You came back different,” she says.
I huff out a laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “I came back dirty.”
The way she looks at me cuts through the dirt, the scrapes, the cold, and the fatigue, and I have to look away, because holding her gaze is too much after days of only seeing rocks, trees, armed men, and a future narrowing toward violence.
“I’m fine,” I say, though I know she’s not buying it.
I’ve been fine for years, because fine is easy. Fine is waking up and doing what I need to do.
Wren pushes away from the door and reaches for the hem of my shirt. “Let me.”
I lift my arms, and she pulls the shirt over my head. Her gaze roams over my bare chest, my shoulders, my arms.
Her fingers touch a bruise along my ribs. “Cade.”
“From the rock shelf. Not a wound.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s accurate.”
My stubborn biologist meets my eyes again with a look that’s afraid, annoyed, and relieved all at the same time. “I missed your terrible reassurances.”
I catch her wrist before she can pull away. “I missed you.”
My words are too rough and too blunt. I can lie under cover for fourteen hours and slow my breathing until I practically disappear, and I can put a round exactly where it needs to go while everything inside me is quiet and cold, but I don’t know how to tell Wren that missing her was like hunger. It was a constant gnawing ache that had me picturing this cabin every night and counting how many men were guarding her, and still I couldn’t get my mind to settle.
I don’t know how to explain that I’ve survived a lot of things, but wanting something as badly as I want her might be the thing that finishes me.
Instead, I say, “I kept thinking about coming back.”
Her lips part, and her eyes brighten, then she steps closer and presses her mouth to mine.
I breathe her in, and any part of me still trying to be careful gives up the fight. I cup the back of her head and kiss her like I’ve been thinking about this for three days, because I have.
Her mouth opens for me, and the sound she makes goes straight through me.
I back her against the sink without meaning to, and she digs her fingers into my shoulders, then up into my hair, her nails scraping lightly over my scalp. I groan into her mouth.