Spec lifted her gaze, peering over her screen.
Kawan turned his attention back to the road. Lark had a massive heart. She protected it with a thick armor of steel, grit, and sarcasm. But her team was her world, and Specs was all that was left.
“Okay,” Lark said softly. “The Refuge it is, and I’ll participate because I know she’ll need me doing things right by her side, but I need something from you, Kawan.”
“Name it.”
“There’s no question that I trust you and your team. But I can’t sit on the sidelines. I need to know everything, and I need to be part of it.” She turned, arching a brow. “Once I know Specs is in a good headspace and leaving her to face her demons alone won’t be an issue, I need to forge forward with a plan to take these assholes down. Whether that’s with your team, or someone else, that’s?—”
“It’ll be with my team.” He reached out again, taking her hand. This time, she didn’t yank it away. “You’re going to love The Refuge.”
She groaned.
“Doesn’t matter how hard you fight it, the place is pure magic. It heals the soul whether you want it to or not. The people are the best.”
“If you say so.”
He squeezed her hand. Lark might never open up. He understood that. It had taken him a long time to lay bare his emotions about the death of his foster mom, sister, and his foster sister’s baby for the world to see. While he did blame himself, because it was hard not to, intellectually, he knew it wasn’t his fault. He’d done everything in his power to save them that day.
But his best hadn’t been good enough.
“Just give The Refuge and the people a chance. They saved me, and you know how dark it had gotten. You even said so.” The memory of that time still made his chest tight..
She dropped her head to the window and laced her fingers through his. “Wake me when we get there.”
It wasn’t an admission or an agreement to do anything. To be open to anything. But it was a letting go of something. And that was a start—a crack in the foundation. A way for someone to reach her before it was too late and she was lost to humanity.
Perhaps that was a bit dramatic, but he’d seen it before. Seen people in this shadowy world of covert ops become solid stone. Once that happened, their massive, warm, loving hearts closed. It didn’t make them bad people. At their core, they were still the ones protecting freedom with the fiercest veracity. Empathy for others was still a driving force. However, their hardness left them without the ability or the room for love.
Only, they didn’t even know it because they had simply slipped into a way of life that they seemed to be born for.
Lark had been slipping since the day she signed on the dotted line at age eighteen.
It was time to pull her out.
7
THE REFUGE—NEW MEXICO
The porch creaked under Lark’s boots as she stepped out into the early morning light.
The silence was too loud. Too wide. Too… safe.
Which made her suspicious as hell. Lark didn’t do sheltered. While her life had moments of quiet, the next mission—the next tactical maneuver—always surrounded her.
Her gaze slid over the landscape—stark mesas in the distance, a crown of peaks behind them, dawn painting their edges in gold and copper. It was too pretty. Too still. Where was the danger? There was always something or someone lurking in the shadows waiting to add to the chaos.
But here? This patch of land? It felt… peaceful. As if someone reached inside her body and placed a hand over her trembling muscles.
It had to be the calm before the storm. That was the only explanation that made sense to Lark.
Air that smelled like pine and woodsmoke, with the faintest whisper of horses and hay—had to be an illusion.
She understood that the idea behind The Refuge was all about healing. She valued what Brick, Tonka, Pipe, and the other men had created. This place had given Kawan and his team somuch both personally and professionally. Needing to come here didn’t make anyone weak. It made them human. It made them flesh and blood. It made them real.
And she was all those things.
But she couldn’t afford to bleed. Not today. Not until she found justice. And maybe not even then.
