“Great.” Her eyes followed his progress as the last bit of silhouette melted into the horizon. “A wild card.”
“I thought I was your wild card,” he said, low and rough.
“You’re my wild man.” She leaned in, put one hand on his chest, the other on Bo’s head, and tilted her head back for a kiss. “My highly competent wilderness man.”
“I’ll take it.” He kissed her—not a light, happy thing, but a claiming, out here in his domain. When he drew back, she was light-headed and hot and ready for frankly anything. And what a miracle it was that she had this man by her side.
Epilogue
“What are you not telling me?” She sat in an armchair by the lodge’s big fireplace with her guys and a few of the people from Schink’s Station in a circle around her.
Eric and Ford exchanged looks. Von remained expressionless. When she craned her neck to look at Elias, at least he met her eye.
“Come on.” Her eyes darted around. “What the hell?”
“First.” Eric sat up straight. “We’re working on next steps.”
“Okay.”
“We can’t keep the prisoners here indefinitely.”
“Sure we can,” muttered Amka, earning a couple of smirks, a laugh, and one head shake from the rest of the room. Oh, Leo had heard about the old lady’s exploits. Hell, if there was one thing she’d learned from this entire business, it was not to underestimate the elderly. In fact—she grinned at the woman with deep appreciation—quite the opposite. She knew exactly who she wanted to be when she grew up.
“What are your thoughts?” Leo asked.
“We’ve got—” Eric’s eyes shifted to Elias, then back to her. “We want to hear yours first.”
Her brows rose as she watched the byplay. Well, this was fun.
“Okay.” She started to nod and stopped when she remembered how much that hurt. “My thoughts: enough secrets. I want to blow this thing wide-open.” Elias’s hand tightened on hers. “I know it’s been done before, but there are more of us now. Hell, we’ve got a whole town. We call the media, call every freaking government agency. Hand the prisoners over in the most public way possible. So they can’t just…disappear like everyone else. At worst, we’re considered oddballs. This is viewed as some conspiracy theory. At best, we break it wide-open and people finally get the truth.”
Eric nodded, clearly in agreement or at least satisfied with that response.
“First, though, we get the virus out.”
“Right,” said Eric. “It’s hidden at Chronos headquarters.”
“Do we need to get it out, though?” Jameson asked. “Can’t we report that too?”
When Elias leaned in and spoke in his deep, slow way, everyone stopped to listen. “I could see them blowing the place up. Self-destructing to get rid of the evidence. Or taking it out first. We need someone there. In place.”
“That’s absurd.” Daisy stood, shaking her head. “Is the CEO really that unbalanced? Does she have that much power?”
“That kind of order might not come from her,” said Elias.
“This thing is huge,” Leo agreed.
“And I don’t care how much media you talk to, they’d kill us all,” Elias responded.
Ford Cooper nodded in agreement. “They didn’t hesitate to blow up an entire Antarctic research station. They’d make this look like an accident. Whole town destroyed by a gas leak.”
“Don’t got gas here,” said Amka.
“Doesn’t matter,” Ford said. “They’ll invent a goddamn pipeline.”
“He’s right.” Elias sighed. “I don’t know of every death, but there have been dozens at least. Law enforcement, the press…” He cleared his throat. “My family.”
Leo squeezed his hand, showing him the fierceness of her love. “We’ll do this right.”
