Page 120 of Archer

Archer rubbed a big hand across my back and pulled me against his chest. “We’ll figure this out. I know we all keep telling you that, but we’re tenacious, and we never leave a mission incomplete.”

I rocked my forehead against his ridiculously hard pecs, then raised my eyes to his, a surge of my own tenacity springing forth from his words to my heart. “Okay, I believe you, but new plan. I am not leaving Carolina Bay.”

He stared at me.

I stared back. “There’s no reason to increase the scope of the battlefield. We hold our ground. This island is only so big. Our odds of finding him seem much better here than out there in the world at large. Plus, local law enforcement is already on our side and familiar with the situation.”

Archer opened his mouth to argue, and I imagined him tucking me under one big arm like a football before running me off the island himself.

I raised my brows and one pointer finger. “We stay and fight. Even if I want to move to Peoria and open a donut shop under a pseudonym.”

The silence stretched, and I focused on the sounds of the tide through the closed windows.

Then, his shoulders dropped.

“Dammit.” He looked away from me, toward the dark window above the sink.

“We can’t let him win,” I said.

“He won’t,” Archer said. “But at what cost?”

Chapter 40

Archer

I stood at the wall of rear windows in Knox’s living room, transfixed on the sky. It’d been wrong since breakfast. Different than any other day so far. I didn’t have the words for it— coastal skies were still new to me— but this was different than anything I’d seen.

Back home in Colorado I understood weather. The green-black ceiling before hail. The stillness in the moments before a mountain storm. Even that sudden cold that arrived immediately before a snowfall. But this, whatever the hell this was, wasn’t any of those things.

The postcard-blue sky and puffy white clouds had barely made an appearance today, replaced slowly by a creeping opaque mass. It wasn’t a dark storm cloud, necessarily, but it caused a strange shift in the way light reached the water, and the air felt dense and charged.

By noon, the horizon had gone the color of old pewter, and the temperature had fallen several degrees. A vast sheet of continuous white slid across the sky like the cloth pulled from a table overhead. A cloth that never seemed to end.

Back on Earth, the water had traded its usually cheery blue-green color for a flat, rolling gray, and the swells were building in size far offshore.

Knox carried a mug of coffee to my side and looked across the beach to the sea and horizon with me.

“Is this winter settling in, or something more?” I asked.

“Storm’s coming.”

I cringed. “You get storms out here in January?” Not snowfall, surely. Though, I’d have liked to see snow on the beach at least once.

Knox gave a brief, humorless laugh. “Frequently.”

“Bad?”

“Depends on where it tracks.” He drained his mug. “But I need to get moving. Island Adventures needs securing before the winds pick up, or I’ll be replacing a fleet of kayaks and paddleboards. Maybe the roof. I don’t have the money for that.”

He turned and rolled his shoulders.

Colton looked up from his laptop at the kitchen table. “I’ll help.”

“I’m coming!” Sloane hustled into view, a clipboard in hand and bag over one shoulder. “We need a protocol for this. I’ll create one while we’re there. Then, when we add staff, it won’t be on us to run over there every time it storms.”

I headed in their direction. “How often does it storm like this in the winter?”

Knox and Sloane traded knowing looks and smiled.