PRESENT
Ten years.
I couldn’t help but circle the number in my head. Three thousand, six hundred, and fifty days. Yet I still knew these mountain passes like the back of my hand. The ones that got so packed with snow during the winter months they became impassible, the only ways in and out of town by air or taking the ferry to the opposite end of the lake, assuming things weren’t frozen.
The feeling of being mostly cut off from the world had always been something I’d relished. Cedar Ridge felt like a place the evil of the world hadn’t touched. We all knew better now. Evil was just better at hiding sometimes.
My gut tightened as I took the final curve that would deposit me across the border of the town limits, my Mercedes G63 hugging the road like a dream. On any other day, I would’ve gotten a thrill out of taking these mountain passes, testing my reflexes, and feeling that hit of adrenaline that reminded me I was still alive. But not today.
The bend in the road straightened, and I caught sight of the same sign I’d passed too many times to count. Welcome to Cedar Ridge. Population 2163. The number was higher than it had been ten years ago, and the appearances I’d made since leaving had always been by air—in and out as quickly as humanly possible.
Not tempting fate. No chance of seeing familiar faces other than my family. No risk of seeing her.
Memories slammed against the walls I’d erected in my mind, brick by painstaking brick. Blood. The feel of her thready pulse beneath my fingers. My palms desperately trying to shove life back into her chest.
The leather on the wheel creaked with audible protest as I reinforced those mental walls. Hell. I needed better defenses if I were cracking after only seconds.
Then again, maybe I didn’t. I deserved every painful memory that swirled and wreaked havoc on my brain.
I glanced at my dashboard clock. Eleven thirteen. My gaze shifted to my watch. Eleven fourteen.
A muscle in my jaw ticked as I quickly took in the screen of my satellite cell phone. Eleven fourteen. My fingers moved deftly to the console, adjusting the clock to match the correct time.
One minute.
To some people, it would be nothing. But I knew that lives could be lost in mere seconds. A whole minute was the difference between safety and catastrophe.
My cell rang through my SUV’s speakers, and Jack’s name flashed on the console. My thumb hit the button on the steering wheel to accept.
“Everything okay?”
“If I told you the team was falling apart without you, would you get your ass back here?”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. The team was falling apart with me. I wasn’t sure whether it was my dad’s heart attack or the past finally coming back around for payback.
Jack let out an audible breath. “I know we’ve been hit with one tough case after another. But what happened to Castille wasn’t your fault.”
“My mission, my responsibility.” A single second and another person on my watch had almost lost their life. Months of rehab were helping, but he still had a long road to a complete recovery.
“Every single one of us knows that this job comes with risks.”
We did. Working private security around the world could mean anything: Working for private contractors in the Middle East, wealthy families in Europe, celebrities in Los Angeles, CEOs anywhere you could imagine—people whose lives were at risk for any number of reasons. Greed. Obsession. A hunger for power.
Between that and the war zones where I’d served my tours, I’d seen unparalleled levels of darkness. But nothing would ever touch what I’d seen in my sleepy hometown.
My gaze tracked the storefronts that had barely changed in my decade away—the rustic cabin-like shops and restaurants with their huge windows that beckoned you inside. I caught quick glimpses of the lake between the buildings. A little girl running down the street, her braids flying, laughing as her father chased her.
You would think that nothing bad could happen here, but you would be wrong.
“Holt?”
I jerked my focus back to my second-in-command, my brother in all the ways that mattered. “You know I didn’t leave because of Castille.” I could’ve lived with the guilt eating me alive. I was no stranger to that. “My family needs me.” And it was time for me to suck it up and be here.
“How’s the old man doing?” Jack asked.
“Nash said he’s grumpy as hell and driving my mom up the wall.”
Jack chuckled. “Doesn’t surprise me. He doesn’t strike me as the type to sit still for long.”
My dad had come to train my security team in search and rescue a few years ago and had left an impression on just about everyone. “No, sitting still is not his forte.”
The sound of a chair squeaking came across the line, and I pictured Jack in his office in Portland, staring out over the Hawthorne Bridge. “Have you seen her yet?”
A phantom fist gave my heart a vicious squeeze. “Who?”
Jack sighed. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe the girl you won’t shut up about every time you drink a little too much whiskey.”
I let a slew of silent curses fly. Overindulging didn’t happen often, but it was unavoidable at times. Anniversaries—the good and the bad. Birthdays—hers and mine. The time Grae had thought she was helping by telling me all about the amazing guy Wren was dating.
Just thinking her name lit a fire in my gut. The burn was a mixture of good and bad. Desire and destruction. Love and a soul-shredding guilt.
Jack kept pushing, not sensing the war playing out in my head. “Let me know when you have your run-in. I have a feeling it will be interesting.”
“We aren’t teenaged girls. I’m not feeding you gossip.”
“I’ll call Nash then. He’ll keep me in the loop.”
A curse slipped free, and Jack chuckled. I’d regret introducing my walking trouble of a younger brother to Jack for the rest of my days. “Piss off. And don’t sink my company while I’m gone.”
“Will do, Sarge. Let me know how long you’re thinking once you’re settled.”
“You got it.” I hadn’t given the team a timeframe for my absence. Simply told them I needed indefinite leave. I had to get the lay of the land here. See how my family was.
If I were honest, the call about Dad’s heart attack three months ago had scared the hell out of me. I’d met them at the hospital in Seattle where they’d airlifted him. My mom’s pale face, flashed in my mind, so ashen it was almost translucent.
It had been a hell of a wake-up call. I was missing out on my family’s lives, and I didn’t know how long I’d have them. And all because I’d let my demons rule my life for far too long. I knew better than anyone that second chances rarely came around.
I was about to end the call when Jack spoke again.
“If you get a shot, take it.”
My gaze bored into the road in front of me and the forest that leapt up around it with pines so tall I had to look through my sunroof to see their tops. “You telling me to take a hit out on someone while I’m here?”
I’d thought the quip would make my ex-sniper friend laugh, but only silence greeted me.
“Don’t leave things left unsaid. Even if you’re scared as hell to say them.”
The muscles in the back of my neck tightened, knitting themselves into intricate knots. “It isn’t words she needs from me.” It was atonement. But I couldn’t give Wren anything that would heal the wounds I’d caused for not being there during the one moment she’d needed me the most.
“That’s bullshit. A damn cop-out if I’ve ever heard one.”
“You don’t know,” I growled. No one did—to hold the girl you loved more than anything as the life bled from her body.
“Maybe I don’t. At least not exactly what happened. But I do know what it’s like to have regrets. To live with ghosts. I don’t want that for you.”
A little of the pissed off seeped out of me at that. “I hear you.” It was all I could give Jack. I sure as hell couldn’t give him a promise to make things right because that was impossible.
“All right, man. You know I’m here if you need me. Call anytime. And if shit gets bad, I’ll take our chopper.”
That was friendship. The kind born of battle and bloodshed. Of being in hellish situations with only the other to get you out. We had each other’s backs. Always.
“Thanks. Tell the team not to blow anything up while I’m gone.”
Jack chuckled. “You never want us to have any fun.”
I shook my head and ended the call.
I’d made it to the center of town during the phone call. Just a couple of blocks left. But they were brutal ones. Wildfire Pizza, where I’d taken Wren on our first date. Cones, where she and Grae always begged me to stop on the way home from school.
But the damned dock was the worst. I swore I could still taste the hint of mint from the lip balm Wren always wore. Feel the hesitant press of her mouth to mine. See how she looked up at me with so much trust.
And I’d destroyed it all.
