“Nobody in that chain wanted to hurt him, Decker. Every one of them followed procedure.”
“A procedure built for a situation that wasn’t his, and it broke him more. You put him in a room with a psychopath. Your procedure.”
He lets out a long breath. “And I’ve told you that I made a mistake. I know that now.”
“So who’s to say you won’t make another one with her? She came from a place just like his. Locked up. Strapped down.”
I fight down something that wants to crawl up my spine. It’s never been this visceral to me before.
“We wouldn’t strap her down, for fuck’s sake.” He’s losing patience now. “We did that for his own safety. We were trying to save him.”
“Right. What saved him was Sable putting him in a van and driving him out of there. Away from Aurora.”
I’m probably being unfair. Aurora does the right thing. I believe that, or I wouldn’t have worked for Viktor in the first place. But their system is built for clear cases, and I’ve spent a week learning that whatever this woman is, she isn’t one.
Hand her over tonight, and the evidence convicts her by the weekend. I don’t trust the evidence. And if the trouble in town means what I think it means, the story is bigger than it seems. She’ll never tell it from inside a cell.
I can’t take her back.
“Decker,” Viktor says into the quiet I’ve let sit too long. “Tell me you’re bringing her in.”
“I’ll call you when I know more.”
“Decker, you—”
I end the call. Give him a straight no, and he either has to make it an order or let me walk away from one. I’m not ready to find out which he’d pick.
I set the phone face-down on the seat. It vibrates three more times, then stops.
So that’s the outline of my next move, and it’s nothing I’d have drawn up. Bring her back, and she disappears into a process that isn’t built for her. Leave her loose, and the people from town finish what they started. The only ground left is mine. Which means I’m about to do the one thing I’ve spent my whole life not doing: take a woman who wants nothing to do with me and keep her somewhere she can’t leave.
I’m not going to pretend that’s okay.
The bear settles as the turnoff comes up, scenting the air with a satisfaction that unsettles me. He should be pacing. Strange ground, rules broken, a hostile organization behind us, no plan. Instead he’s calm, like something that’s finally going the right direction.
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. I’m the one who took the turnoff. I’m the one who started driving us here in the first place. I knew where I was heading the moment we left town. I just had to admit it.
Road gives way to gravel, gravel to packed dirt, trees closing in until I see what I’m looking for. A clearing. A path leading into the foothills of mountains I’ve called home. Of a sort.
I cut the engine and sit with my hands on the wheel. Behind us the track’s already gone to shadow. I check the mirror once more. Nothing back there. Not yet.
I get out and drop the tailgate. Pull back the tarp. She’s awake, eyeing me. Neither of us says a word.
Whatever fight was in her back in that lane, she’s used it up. What’s left is worse: the flat, careful look of a woman working out what I’m about to do next.
And the real problem is that I have no idea.
Chapter 12
Grace
He pulls the tarp back, frowning down at me, and the cold comes in with the dark.
I get one breath of it—pine, wet ground, nothing that smells like civilization—before he lifts me out of the truck and up onto his shoulder.
“Hey!” I yelp. My wrists are still tied in front of me. The rope bites where it’s been biting for an hour. “Where is this? Where are you taking me?”
Trees. That’s all I can see. No lights. No fence. No shape of Aurora against the sky anywhere.
