If this works, if this story does what I hope it will, it could save more than just the people I love from future pain, and that is what I need to focus on, not the fact that being done means my time here with Connor is, too.
I click save and pull the tiny USB drive from my laptop, clutching it in my hand.
For something so small, it weighs heavily in my grasp.
Probably because the contents are so heavy.
The crimes I documented hurt so many people—theft, human trafficking, prostitution, unspeakable violence and more murders than I even imagined possible. All of it is laid out in black and white on these pages. And whether I’m emotionally prepared to release it or not, it’s time.
With one final swipe under my eyes to remove any evidence of my tears, I step out the propped-open door of the cabin and into the sunny afternoon near the top of the mountain.
The place that has become home over the past two weeks because of the man who works on the far side of the clearing.
And just like every day, it hurts more and more to watch him do it.
Felling trees, stripping them, carefully hand carving and preparing them to become beams and walls of his new cabin. It’s an endless cycle of hard manual labor with only one goal at the end of it—to move up here permanently.
Connor still wants to leave the homestead. He wants to leave everyone behind to come up here and seclude himself even further, and that hurts almost as much as the thought of leaving this little slice of the mountain.
Nothing has changed for him.
Not where this is concerned.
Those damn tears start to burn in my eyes again, but I blink them away and slowly make my way over to him, watching the way his back and arm muscles bunch and flex as he uses the various hand tools scattered around the ground to strip the logs, level them, and prepare them to go on the foundation.
I still have no idea how he plans on putting together the cabin on his own. And I haven’t asked because I’m terrified to admit to myself that he’s actually going to move up here. That he actually still believes this is where he needs to be.
He turns as I approach, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Those dark eyes of his that have somehow seemed lighter lately sweep over me, and his lips curl into a half-smile. “Hey, I wasn’t expecting to see you for a while.”
I nod slowly. “Yeah, but…”
His brow furrows, his eyes narrowing on me instantly. “What’s wrong?”
Shit.
Apparently, I haven’t hidden my distress very well. Or he’s just gotten very good at reading me very fast. Probably a combination of both.
Connor has become so attuned to me and my emotions since we’ve been up here, that sometimes it feels like I can’t hide anything from this man.
I force a smile and hold up the drive. “It’s done.”
The concern etched into this handsome face shifts to something else, an emotion I can’t quite read from the man who keeps them locked away so tightly. “Oh.”
He doesn’t say anything else.
He doesn’t have to.
We’ve both felt it—this building tension as I worked toward finishing the story. The knowledge that whatever this was between us is over and now we have to go back to reality and to the possibility that we might face a dangerous opponent again has hovered in the back of both of our minds. We never discussed it, almost as if neither of us wanted to have the argument it might raise or face the feelings we’ve both been experiencing.
For years, we’ve torn at each other’s throats over every little thing, but now that something so huge looms, there suddenly isn’t anything to say.
Silence stretches between us as we stand beside the start of Connor’s new cabin, the adze still in his hand, his strong fingers flexing around it the same way mine do the drive that holds the key to destroying the Lorells, once and for all.
His eyes finally shift to the drive. “Is everything on there?”
“Yep.” I nod, mentally running through the checklist of everything I had to save on it to ensure it’s all there. “The story, a draft of the email to send it along with to the editor of The Atlantic Times, instructions on what to do if they’re not interested in the story, and who to go to next.”
“What did you say in the cover email?”
