Page 26 of Crowe
“Now tell me what happened here so I can deal with the feds Chance is sending.”
“Noah and I were in the cabin, and we heard the drones.” He didn’t need to know what we were doing when we heard them. “I called Kat to make sure they weren’t ours. I didn’t think they were, but I didn’t want to scare Noah if they were. When she confirmed they weren’t, I knew we didn’t have much time.”
I stopped and took a deep breath, preparing myself to say what came next. “I had him hide in the cellar, Hawk. The cabin’s small, and there aren’t any good hiding spots except for that cellar. He was held captive, locked in a basement, and I pushed him to go hide in a fucking cellar.”
Hawk reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, you kept him safe, and he seems fine.”
“He’s handling it better than I am. Hawk, when I came back down those stairs to get him, he was hiding in the corner—”
“I mean, I would think that would be the natural response to something like this after what he’s been through,” he interrupted.
“No, let me finish. With a gun pointed at the door.” I let out a wry chuckle. “He was squatted down in a ball with a gun pointed at the door, ready to blow away anyone who came down those steps to hurt him. He’s made of strong stuff.”
“Sounds like he could be a handful.” He clapped me on the back. “Why don’t we get this shit resolved so you can find out?”
Chapter nine
Noah
Once we were all loaded up, I settled into the passenger seat and exhaled. I knew the SUV was armored and was safe, but I wasn’t thrilled about being back out on the road.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, once we’d pulled down the drive.
He kept his eyes on the road. “Do what?”
“Drive me yourself. They could’ve taken me. You could’ve stayed. Finished your vacation.”
“I know.”
I watched his profile. He didn’t offer more than that, and after a second, I pushed a little further. “Why didn’t you?”
He was quiet long enough that I thought he might not answer. Then he said, “Because you slept.”
I turned to look at him. “What?”
“At the cabin. With me there, you slept.” He glanced over briefly before his eyes went back to the road. “I wasn’t handing that off to someone else.”
I turned back to the windshield. I pressed my lips together and nodded once, and I didn’t trust myself to say anything else for a while. But something quiet and solid settled in my chest and stayed there for the rest of the drive.
When I’d left the Three Bears Tactical building six months ago, I thought that putting distance between myself and what happened would help me figure out who I was on the other side of it.
It had helped, mostly. But arriving this time felt different. I could actually look at it now. The building was huge, and yet, it fit in its place downtown like that was where it belonged.
When the elevator doors opened on the ninth floor, Julius was already there.
“There he is.” He came straight to me, both hands reaching out to take mine. He looked me over from top to bottom and smiled. “You look significantly better than the last time you were here.”
“I feel significantly better,” I said. “Mostly.”
“Mostly is a start,” he said, like that settled it entirely. He released my hands and looped his arm through mine. “Come on. Mika and I have been setting up your apartment all afternoon, and we’re very proud of ourselves.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“We absolutely did,” Mika said, appearing from the hallway with a covered dish in both hands. He smiled at me. And not with a simple smile, but something more. The kind that made me feel like I belonged. “You’re in nine-seventeen again. We thought it might help to have somewhere familiar.”
My throat tightened. “That was really thoughtful. Thank you.”
Mika waved it off.
