She sits up, her braid coming loose on the pillow, the hoodie of mine she slept in pushed up over her shoulder.
She looks at me a long second, and then her eyes go to the Glock in my hand and she's awake the rest of the way. "You're leaving."
"Yeah."
"Now?"
"In about an hour."
She swings her legs out of the bed, reaches for the jeans she had on yesterday, and pulls them on under the hoodie. "I'm going with you."
"No, baby."
"Spur. Pops promised."
"Pops promised you were in the room. You were in the room when we built the picture yesterday. That was the room."
"Don't do that," she says, voice sharp.
"Don't do what?"
"Don't twist his words around so you can keep me here."
I sit down on the edge of the bed while she stays standing.
The hoodie hangs off her shoulder and her bare feet are on the cold hardwood.
Her jaw is set the way her jaw sets when she's about to fight me. "Dakota."
"What?"
"Your father is not putting his daughter on a hit. Your uncles are not putting their niece on a hit. And I'm not putting my woman on a hit. Not today. Not ever. It’s too risky. Risky enough for the brothers, and I’ll be damned if any of us are too distracted worrying about you and someone else gets killed."
"That's not your call to make, Spur."
"It is all of ours, baby. We already discussed it. Voted on it. Phantom. Holt. Roan. Me. Even phoned Cash. The vote was unanimous."
She closes her eyes. Opens them. There's water in them and she's blinking it back. "You voted on me."
"We voted on the op. You weren't part of the op."
"Spur."
"Dakota. Listen to me."
I stand up, cross to her and put both hands on her face.
"I'm going to this barn to put a man in the ground. I'm going to do something there I don't want you toeversee. Not because I think you can't take it. Because I love you, and what's about to happen in that barn is going to be ugly, and I want to be the man you come home to at night, not the man you watched kill somebody this morning."
She doesn't answer for a long second. Then she leans her forehead against mine and closes her eyes. "Promise me you’ll come home to me."
"Yes, baby."
"You don't get hurt."
"No, baby, I won’t."
"You finish him."
