Page 43 of Her Mountain Man Protector

"Down," Harlan says. The man goes down. He looks offended about it.

I'm already at the chair.

"Colt." Oakley’s voice breaks on my name. "It's a trap. They wanted all of you. They wanted Billy. Don't."

"Already here." I cut the rope at her wrists first, then her ankles. Her hands are torn. I take them anyway. I pull her out of the chair and into me and the warehouse can burn for all I care about the rest of the floor.

She fists my flannel and sobs once against my throat, furious and shaking. "I didn't want you to come."

"I know. I came anyway."

Wyatt on comms: "Lot's clean. No second van."

Marin: "I've got the phone the driver dropped. Banks, you're going to want this number. It's a Helix board line."

Billy walks to the man in the coat. He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to. The years sit between them without decoration. "You sold the program," Billy says. "You sold my name. You sold my sons when they wouldn't stay gone. You're done."

The man smiles with nothing in it. "You died, Hawthorne. Dead men don't testify."

Banks, from the door, says, "Dead men don't have seven sons and a hard drive and a photographer who kept the raws. Also we have your live voice on a board line and your face in this room. Sit still."

Mack laughs under his breath. Crewe cuffs the man in the coat himself. Alden is already on a second channel that isn't Equinox, the kind that brings people who wear badges and mean it.

Oakley pulls back enough to look at me. Snowlight finds the tear tracks. I thumb them off her face and I don't care that my brothers are watching.

"I love you," she says, plain, no joke. "I didn't say it in the cabin. I was going to hate myself if the last thing I did was keep it."

The warehouse goes quiet in a way gunfire didn't manage.

"I love you too." I say it into her hair first and then into her mouth, my hands shaking. "I've never said that to a person I wasn't related to. You're it. You're the reason I didn't put this building on the ground."

Sin makes a sound that might be a laugh. Jace tells him to shut up. Nash is already checking the driver for a second phone. Work doesn't stop because I finally told the truth.

Billy looks over from holding onto the man with the coat and his eyes do something tired and proud at the same time. He nods once at Oakley. She nods back, still in my coat, still mine.

"Marin," I say into the comm. "She's out. We need a medic at the mill for her wrists and a room that locks from the inside. Helix principal is in cuffs. Driver and the other guy are down and breathing. Call it."

"Already called," she says. "Rowe is going to bake something obscene. Try not to crash on the way home."

We move them out in pieces. Harlan and Wyatt stay to clear the crime scene. Alden stands with Billy while Billy gives a statement. Banks bags the phone and the scraped crate and Oakley's stolen drive, still jacked into a laptop that now belongs to us.

I carry Oakley to the truck even though she tells me she can walk. She can. I don't care. I set her in the passenger seat and buckle her and rest my forehead on the frame for one second because the alternative is falling down in the snow.

"Your dad," she says softly.

"He's here. He's late. He's ours again." I kiss her temple. "You're first. He can wait in line with the rest of them."

My brothers load up around us. Nash slaps the roof of my truck as he passes. Crewe lifts two fingers. Mack’s already threatening a lawyer by phone. Sin and Jace take the Equinox rig. Banks rides with Alden. Billy pauses at my window.

"You did good," he says. "Both of you. I'm done running. Whatever comes next, I do it in the open."

"Good," I tell him. "Open is the only place this family lives now."

I drive. Oakley holds my sleeve the whole way down the north road, past the train tracks, past the washboard turn, back toward a mill that still has power and a girl who bakes when she doesn't know what else to do with her hands. The scare is still in my chest. It has a different job now. It has her pulse under my fingers at the next red light, alive, counted, mine.

Behind us Helix is a set of cuffs and a board line and a dead cover story. Ahead of us is a table full of Hawthornes and an Equinox pot of coffee and a photographer who kept the files that finished a war I didn't know how to end.

I glance at her. She's already looking at me.