She chews on her bottom lip. “I still don’t understand your plan.”
“My plan is, you finish your damn story, I take it back down the mountain and do whatever you tell me to with it, give it to whoever it needs to go to, but you stay here. Where it’s safe?—”
“What about everyone else you say is going to be in so much danger when I publish?”
“I trust that Killian and Liam can keep them safe. Whether they want to leave the homestead and the mountain and take them somewhere else for a while or do it at home? That’s up to them.”
She nods slowly. “So, you didn’t tell anybody we were coming up here before you kidnapped me?”
I snort and shake my head. “I didn’t kidnap you.”
Her brows rise. “Really? Because you told me you would literally throw me over your shoulder and drag me up here if you needed to. Plus, you threatened to tie me to the roof of that ATV.”
“I would have.”
“Sounds a hell of a lot like kidnapping.”
I scowl at her. “You could just say ‘thank you,’ you know.”
Those emerald eyes of hers widen. “For what?”
“Saving your fucking life.” I tighten my grip on the canteen. “Do you know how easy it was for me to follow you when you drove to Atlanta? If any of the Lorells were watching us, if they still have eyes and ears in McBride Mountain, they could have followed you right to your source’s doorstep.”
Her shoulders stiffen. “Then we have to warn him.”
“My guess is if he was involved with the Lorells, he already knows how much danger he’s in. His own safety’s on him. Yours is on me.”
Raven shifts restlessly, her brow furrowing. “Why?”
“Because if anything happened to you, Willow would never be okay.”
She draws in and releases a shaky breath. “So, I’m just supposed to sit in there and write until, what? My computer dies? I don’t even know how much battery is left on the charge.”
“There is this amazing invention you might have heard of…pen and paper. I’m sure you have them in that work bag of yours.”
She scowls at me and crosses her arms over her chest, her dirty clothes still clutched in one hand. “Do you have any idea how long that would take to hand-write a story like this?”
I shake my head. “No. And I don’t care. You do whatever you need to do, and I’ll do what I need to do.”
If she’s right and everything she’s uncovered could help build a real case against the Lorells, then I’ll keep her alive long enough to do her job.
It might be the only way I’ll ever sleep again.
The only way we’ll ever truly be safe.
She considers me for a moment, and I give her my back and toss the canteen to the ground so I can snag the adze from the tool pile to begin leveling off the stripped log.
I set to work, swinging the tool and removing chunks of wood that only add to the piles of bark already surrounding me. Only when I hear her retreating steps do I glance over my shoulder at her.
She reaches the hunting cabin and pushes open the door, pausing before she steps inside. But she doesn’t turn around, just stands in the open jamb, her back to me, as if she’s considering spinning and marching over to say something else that’s sitting on the tip of her sharp tongue.
I brace myself for the assault.
Raven has been directing them at me since her freshman year of high school, so I am more than prepared to defend myself against one of them.
But it never comes.
Her shoulders rise and fall as if she’s drawing in a deep breath, and she walks inside and slams the door, leaving me to my “peaceful” solitude once again.
