Nash
She doesn’t push. Doesn’t demand I tell her everything. Just ladles thick gravy over the chicken-fried steak and carries the plates to the table. “Grab me a Dr. Pepper, will you?”
This isn’t how I imagined the conversation would go. “You’re not surprised.”
“Darlin’, there ain’t nothin’ in this world that surprises me anymore. Not since I joined Hidden Agenda.”
I cut into the steak, unsure how to process the past twelve hours. I haven’t thought about food all day, but I’m suddenly ravenous. “Nothing?”
“My first mission, we had to go rescue Graham’s boyfriend. His ex kidnapped him, drove him to Utah, locked him in a basement, and kept him drugged out of his mind for two full days, all to steal his company. A few months later, a French cartel ordered a hit on one of their former members. She had enough evidence to put the leaders away for a dozen lifetimes, but they got to her first. Tortured her for more than twenty-four hours. We stopped them.”
“Stopped them?”
Raelynn pauses, a piece of steak halfway to her mouth. “Yes. They made their choice.”
Shit. She killed them.
Uncertainty tightens her expression. “What we do—what I do—is dangerous. We go up against the worst of humanity, and sometimes, people end up dead. If you can’t be with me knowin’ that, I’ll understand…”
Leaning across the corner of the table, I cup the back of her neck and brush my lips to hers. It’s barely a kiss. The briefest of touches. But when I sink down again, some of the worry has faded from her eyes.
“My father was the oldest son. He had a younger brother who was all in with the family. But Dad…he didn’t want anything to do with it.”
“How well did that go over?” she asks.
I take a long pull on my beer. “Better than you’d expect. My mom was pregnant with me, and my grandfather just…agreed. Dad went into real estate and until I was twelve, everything was great.”
Raelynn’s tongue darts out, swiping a drop of gravy from her lips, and for a moment, I forget all about the danger I’m in. “What happened then?”
“I don’t know all the details. But a member of the United States Marshal’s Service showed up at our house in the middle of the night, and suddenly, we weren’t the Rossis anymore. Two days later, we moved into a house in Minnesota with new names, new schools for me and Mae, and a whole new life.”
Peeling the label from my beer bottle, I shake my head. “Mae hated every minute of it. She was too young to understand. Hell, we both were. But Dad told me a little about the family ‘business’ when I started acting out at school. He said he needed me to understand we couldn’t go back. Things had just started getting better when…”
Raelynn reaches for my hand. I twine our fingers, holding on tight. If only her touch could keep the nightmares away. Or stop the DeLucas from coming after me.
“Mae started having night terrors after we left home. When they got bad, she’d come into my room and ask me to tell her a story. I heard her cry—just for a second—and got up, but she’d left Bandit on the floor, and I stepped on him.”
“Bandit?”
My backpack sits on a chair a few feet away. I don’t know why showing Raelynn the old stuffed animal is suddenly so important. Maybe it’s a way to delay the inevitable. Or maybe I need her to know what the little guy means to me.
Gently, I pluck the sloth from his special pocket. “This is Bandit. He’s…all I have left. I never go anywhere without him. It’s stupid. But…”
Raelynn’s face shimmers as my tears threaten.
“I slipped on him. There was this shadow, and then my head hurt so much. Mom screamed, and Dad…he was begging for our lives, but…” My fingers brush over the thick scar at my temple. “Two bullets. I was lucky.” The word tastes bitter on my tongue. “The shooter thought I’d died. Dad’s handler found me—found all of us, he said—and didn’t tell anyone I was alive. I woke up in the hospital three days later.”
Raelynn scoots her chair close enough she can wrap her arms around me. It’s too much. I don’t deserve her comfort. Not with Mae’s cry echoing in my memories.
“I wish I’d died with them.”
“Nash...” She rubs circles over my back, Bandit squished between us. “You have to know they wouldn’t have wanted that.”
I jerk away, knocking my chair over with a loud crack. Bandit tumbles to the ground, but Raelynn rescues him and cradles him to her chest. “What about what I wanted? Dad’s handler was so worried the DeLucas would come after me, he didn’t put me back into the program. Instead, he convinced his old partner to adopt me. To run. And to keep running for the next twenty years. That’s who Nash Grace is. A figment of someone’s imagination. With a fake social security number and a perfect backstory, but no friends. No family. No home. Nothing that makes life worth living.”
Raelynn rises and presses the stuffed animal back into my hands. “You have this. And you have me.”
“Not if the DeLucas have anything to say about it.”
