The drive back to the cabin feels endless. Every second I’m away from her is a second she’s unprotected.
Not for long.
Chapter Seventeen
Keric
Smoke greets me when I open the cabin door.
Not dangerous smoke, just the acrid smell of something burning on the stove. Anna stands in the kitchen, waving a dish towel at a pan that’s producing an alarming amount of gray haze. Dinah watches from a safe distance, her small grey face judgmental.
“I was trying to make us a late lunch,” Anna says without turning around. “It’s not going well.”
Under other circumstances, I would smile. My female can organize an entire school department, survive three years on the run, and compile evidence that will bring down a US Senator. But she cannot cook.
She turns, dish towel in hand, and her expression shifts the moment she sees my face.
“What’s wrong?”
I don’t sugarcoat it. She deserves the truth, all of it. “Someone leaked your location. They know you’re at an orccommune in Maine.” Fear flashes across her delicate features before she controls it. “Aldridge and Vance hired mercenaries. Four or five professionals. They’re equipped with scent bombs.”
“Scent bombs.” Her voice is steady. “Like what happened to Garlen.”
“Yes.”
She sets down the dish towel. Turns off the stove and moves to sit at the kitchen table, her movements deliberate and controlled. This is a female who knows how to process bad news without falling apart. “How did they find out I was here?”
“We don’t know yet. We intercepted communication between Aldridge’s security team and the contractors, but it was incomplete, missing a few key details, but there was enough there to let us know they are coming and these humans somehow acquired scent bombs. This makes them much deadlier than they were without them.”
“Timeline?”
“The evidence goes public in ten days. They know they’re running out of time.”
Anna is quiet for a moment. Her hands rest flat on the table, perfectly still. Then she looks up at me with those dark eyes, and I see not just fear, but determination. Steel underneath the softness. “So what do we do?”
“I train you,” I say. “Starting tonight you need to know how to protect yourself if they breach the commune perimeter and then this cabin.”
She nods. That determined set to her jaw that I find incredibly attractive. “Okay. Show me everything.”
We start in the bedroom.
I lead her to the nightstand and crouch down, reaching underneath to reveal the hidden panel. “Panic button. Direct line to security. Response time is under two minutes.”
Anna kneels beside me, close enough that I can smell her shampoo. Something floral and clean that makes me want to bury my face in her hair.
Focus.
“This was installed while we were on the airplane,” I explain. “Kelt’s team upgraded the cabin’s security before we arrived. I hadn’t needed to show you yet, but now everything has changed.”
She reaches out, her fingers finding the button in the darkness under the nightstand. “I feel it.”
“Good. Practice finding it with your eyes closed.”
She does. Three times, four times, until her hand goes to it automatically. She’s a quick learner. I’m not surprised.
“If anything happens, you hit this first,” I tell her. “Before anything else. Even if you think I’m handling it. Even if you think help isn’t needed. You hit this button.”
“Understood.”
