“Please say to Harry Potter World.” I smirk.
“No.” Maya chuckles. “To an escape room in an abandoned insane asylum.”
I wince. “Ah… she shouldn’t have. I just escaped one of those.”
Maya pinches me. “It was that or the Home Security Expo.”
I throw my head back and laugh. That little girl is a riot.
But this one in front of me is my favorite. “So where to?” I ask.
She walks her fingers up my chest, settling her hand around my neck. “How about California?”
“Wherever you go, I’ll follow.”
“In that case…” She rises to meet my lips. “Let’s go to the asylum. I need to see what you’re made of after all these years.”
I shake my head. “Fighting the bad guys doesn’t impress you, huh?”
She purses her lips. “A little. Mainly because of the muscles.” Her hands drift over my chest, and I bite back a smirk.
“In that case.” I scoop her up and throw her over my good shoulder.
“Soren!” She giggles. “Put me down this instant!”
“When I’m good and ready.”
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Home.”
I don’t know where that is, but I can’t wait to find it with her.
Epilogue
Maya
Sixmonthslater
In the middle of the Arabian desert
“Come on, we've got to go.” Soren grabs my hand where I’ve been painstakingly excavating the most exciting treasure of my existence. Okay, so it’s about four inches long and looks like an eating utensil, but it doesn’t matter becauseIfound it.
“Can it wait a minute?” I ask, brushing sediment out of the creases with my bristle brush. I’m using a bristle brush on a discovery at an actual excavation site. Can life get any better?
“Not unless you want another looter to get away,” Soren says.
“Another one?” I jump up and follow him through the open-air cave. I’m getting sick of people taking what isn’t theirs.
AfterNew York, Liam found us a sweet gig with an explorer group. I get to do what I love, and Soren gets to stop thefts instead of committing them. It’s been… an interesting challenge. We were only promised a three-month stint, but after the (mostly) good work we’ve done, I’m hoping to make this permanent. As hard as the work can be, it’s been an absolute dream, and I’ve loved every moment, especially having Soren beside me.
“I saw them go this way.” He takes off through the excavation site at a dead sprint.
“Wait!” I yell after him. He’s running too fast; I can’t keep up.
The site has been dug in a grid-like pattern, and the walls are high above my head. I don’t know where he’s going, and I don’t want to happen upon the thief without him.
“Soren!”
