Oh, I looked crazy?
Funny thing. I felt crazy.
I didn’t know who I was anymore.
Chapter 10
Daniel
Chance insisted on coming with me back to Gary’s house, and I relented because after the morning we had, I was feeling pretty raw, and I also didn’t want to take the time to drop him off somewhere.
“Damn, Danny boy,” Chance said, leaning forward to get a better look out the windshield. “Where’s your banjo? Feels like we need some banjo music.”
“Rosemary’s father is really fucking smart,” I replied distractedly. “Lives completely off-grid. If Rosemary hadn’t told me where to go, I never would’ve found the place.”
“And you said he’s ex-Command?” Chance asked with a hum. “Weird coincidence.”
I nodded. “He didn’t want to bring work home with him.”
“Can’t blame him for that,” Chance said, leaning back in his seat. “Bad enough for us, but a human? Fucking forget it.” He paused as the small house came into view. “Looks like Dalton’s here.”
“Good,” I murmured with relief. From the moment Rosemary had called me and I’d heard a car in the background, I’d had to beat back the panic that threatened to choke me. We’dagreed that she wouldn’t show her face in public. Sheknewthat it was for her own safety.
What the hell had she been doing out on the road?
“Time to bring him in on things?” Chance asked.
He’d been pressuring me about it since the moment we’d found the USB drive my brother Zeke had hidden before his death. It was filled with account information and names and dates and photos, but the hundreds of files weren’t labeled, and nowhere in Zeke’s information did he explain how they all fit together.
My baby brother must’ve been gathering intelligence for a long time before his death, and he hadn’t said a word to any of us about it. We’d been scrambling for the past couple of weeks to make sense of the information he’d left, and it wasn’t until that morning we’d finally been able to piece most of it together. We’d gathered to look at photos from when Zeke and Charlie met, and unbeknownst to Charlie or his sister, Zeke had filmed a goodbye video to his mate on Lucy’s camera.
He’d left a cryptic message for us on the video.
The fucking asshole.
If we hadn’t found the files he’d stashed and looked over them until we couldn’t see straight, we never would’ve known what the message meant.
The dipshit couldn’t have just explained what he found. Instead, it was like some kind of fucked-up scavenger hunt, as if we weren’t in the middle of a godsdamn war and didn’t even know who the enemy was.
“We’ll tell Dalton everything,” I confirmed as I parked.
At least he was already at the house, and I wouldn’t need to track him down. After the day I’d had, that seemed like a boon.
I wanted to get our little meeting over with as fast as possible so I could get my mate alone and just breathe her in. Seeing Zeke’s face on that video, the pain in his eyes as he said goodbyeto the other half of his soul, had felt like someone was reaching inside my chest and twisting my insides into a knot. Witnessing Charlie’s reaction to the goodbye had almost been worse.
My skin was on fire. My head pounded. I’d vomited more in the last month than I had in my entire life. My muscles were knotted and painful. Being away from Rosemary was awful. It was the worst thing I’d ever forced myself to do. I ached for her.
But if I had to make the same choices again, I would, because nothing mattered more than keeping her safe. She was safe with Gary on that piece of land that no one knew how to find.
“You’re back,” Gary greeted as he wheeled onto the porch to meet us.
“It took longer than I thought,” I replied.
“You didn’t tell me he was in a wheelchair,” Chance muttered, coming up beside me. “How is he supposed to protect your mate?”
I clenched my teeth together in frustration.
“My hearing’s not so bad,” Gary replied, looking Chance over. “At least she’ll have a little warning before men start repelling onto the roof.”
