The small sound she made when he slipped the joint into place—first one hand, then the other—cost him more than he could put into words.
After it was finished, she succumbed to her emotions, and he held her through it all with his mouth pressed to her hair until her breathing evened out.
Suddenly, she made another noise—this one a rough squeak.
She threw herself off his lap and barely cleared the van before she folded over and was sick in the gravel. He held her hair and kept his hand on her back as she dragged in gulps of air.
When it was over, she straightened. He glanced down at what she’d produced.
“There’s the tracker.”
“Oh god,” she whimpered.
Mason, who hadn’t gone far, issued a deadpan, “I’ll bag it.”
Ellory groaned. “In another situation, that would be funny.”
But as she said it, Ash looked up to see Con and Steele emerging from the front door of the house with the body bag between them. They lay it on the ground by the porch to be loaded into another vehicle and taken away.
That was Cipher. That was the end of it.
Ash stood in the cold Pennsylvania dark with Ellory and absorbed that it was finished. Not satisfying. Just done. It didn’t feel like much of a win, but it was closure.
For all of them.
Then Sinner walked out of the house with Archer beside him. When Ellory spotted him, she let out a cry. Ash tucked her against his side, wrapped in the blanket, as her brother crossed the yard to the van.
Ellory reached over and took his hand.
Headlights panned across the shadowy house, over the black lump on the ground in front of it, and then a dark vehicle pulled in.
It took just moments for the authorities Con had called to take away the body of a mass killer and just as long for the team, with Ellory and Archer, to pile into the van.
The chopper was waiting in the field two miles out, rotors already turning. Ash kept his hand at Ellory’s back the whole way across the ground, feeling her lean into his touch, that small unconscious shift that told him how much she trusted him.
Thank god he hadn’t let her down.
He got her up into the bird first with Archer behind, and he swung in after them. When they were all loaded, the noise drowned everything in a roar that shut off conversation and left everyone alone in their own heads whether they wanted it or not.
Ash didn’t want it. Didn’t want to think about what could have happened tonight. What he could have lost.
With her tucked against his side, he studied her hands, motionless in her lap. The swelling had spread, and she’d need real medical attention once they reached base.
He looked at Archer across the cabin.
He stared out the window at the dark landscape dropping away below them. His jaw was working slightly, the way a man’s jaw worked when he was processing things too large and too recent to make any sense yet.
He was thin in a way that wasn’t just recent weight loss. It was sustained deprivation from months of the body eating itself to keep the mind running.
He’d been in that house a while. Possibly all thirteen months.
There would be time for questions later. Right now, the man needed food and warmth and the relief of a door that could lock between himself and the world. Ash could provide all of that within the hour.
He turned back to the window and let the noise blank his mind until the lights of the base appeared below them.
The women were waiting at the edge of the grass when they touched down. And they weren’t only hurling themselves into the arms of the men they loved—they were pulling Ellory in for hugs too.
Kennedy released her and Elin stepped in without a word.
