The line clicks.
I stay on the porch with the phone in my hand and the sun on my face for another long moment before I put it in my pocket.
* * *
I close both monitors before supper. The right screen goes dark. Then the left.
The desk is bare except for the two halves of the broken pen and the burner I moved to the back of the drawer.
I stand up and walk to the kitchen.
Hadley is at the stove with a spoon in her hand stirring something that smells like onions and meat and the bunkhouse's good chili powder. She has my t-shirt on still. The bare skin of her throat is in the warm kitchen light.
I come up behind her. Slide my hand around her hip and rest it against her stomach. Press my mouth against the side of her neck.
She leans her hip against mine. "Hi."
"Hi, baby."
Nash, from the rug behind us with Diesel asleep against him. "Rogue. You eatin' with us tonight?"
I turn my head. "Yeah, partner. I'm eatin' with y'all."
He goes back to his coloring pages.
I keep my hand on Hadley's stomach and my mouth against her neck.
I came out of that life ten years ago with nothing in my hands.
Tomorrow I'm going back into it with a woman, a boy, a dog, and a name.
The firm has never come at a man with this much to lose.
Good.
Let them try and take it from me.
I promise it'll be the worst mistake of their fucking lives.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hadley
I've been on the porch since before the sky started to turn.
The coffee in my mug went lukewarm twenty minutes ago. The flannel over my t-shirt is one of Rogue's that smells like him mixed with cedar.
Diesel is asleep against my left boot, which is odd. He sticks to Nash like glue. Maybe he knows I'm feeling a bit uneasy. But Nash is also at Mama Lou's.
She didn't mind Diesel going with her, but two kids plus the dog was a bit much for her.
The east pasture goes from grey to pink in the slow degrees of a Texas morning that's in no hurry to start. The dogs haven't started up yet, and the cicadas are still asleep.
My hand goes to the bare place at my throat without me telling it to. The skin is warm.
I drop my hand back into my lap.
I didn't sleep much. Hartley's name has been a thing in my head all night, along with the bunker map Rogue drew for me, the code word, the names of the brothers I trust in any emergency in the order I trust them. I repeated the whole list back to him five times before he was satisfied I had it.
