Then he took it.
Her smile evoked all sorts of wild images—Harley bringing their own child off to bed, tickling the little tyke on the way.
She’d be an amazing mom. She just didn’t know it. Yet.
Gabe watched them go. “Wow, that was ... unexpected.”
“Why?” Jericho said. “She spent her entire life protecting you. I can’t count how many times she waited for you after school or made sure you did your homework or—”
“Yeah.” Gabe hung a hand around his neck. “At the time, I just thought she was being bossy.”
“Oh, she’s bossy all right,” Jericho said, and he held up a fist.
Gabe met it, laughed. “So, you want the dirt on Wilder Frost.”
“All of it.”
“Right. Well, so, he came to me about a year after Mom and Dad died. I was driving trucks to the North Slope, up the Dalton highway, and at the time, he was running dogs, working on qualifying for the Iditarod. I knew him because he was also working part-time at the FBO before Dad died, so he had introduced us. Wilder said he knew the Sorros brothers were doing something iffy—he’d seen the Summit Construction vehicles at odd places. He wanted to shut them down.”
“Seems like a dangerous request. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. He seemed pretty adamant about it. Anyway, not long after that Darrin was murdered—”
“Darrin?”
“He was working DEA in the area. I told him about Wilder wanting to help, and he talked Wilder into being an informant. Wilder witnessed Darrin’s murder. When he came to me, I told him to hang tight—I was working on a case against them. I didn’t talk to him again before I went into WITSEC, so ... I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Apparently, he’s been on the run since Conan Sorros tried to kill him on the plane.”
“He’d better keep running,” Gabe said as Harley came out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Her expression could turn Jericho inside out, the rawness of joy in it ...
“He’s so darling,” she said. “I had to sing the bunny song twice. And then he wanted me to pray with him.” She made a face. “I hope I did it right.”
“You can’t pray wrong, Harls. You just ... talk to God.” Gabe came over to her, put his hands on her shoulders. “After this is over, I hope this becomes a regular thing.”
Her eyes widened, and for a second, it seemed that Jericho could see right into her soul. The longing. The hope. The joy.
Almost as if nothing of her wounds remained.
“Definitely,” she said, then kissed her brother’s cheek. “So, what else did you guys find out about Wilder?”
“Just that he was working with Gabe as an informant.”
Her smile fell. “You’re not safe here,” she said to Gabe.
“There’s a deputy outside the door, and”—he glanced at Sunni, back to Harley—“I’m not unarmed.”
Oh.
“I’m worried about you, sis. Clearly Mars knows you’re after him and he’s tying up loose ends ... like Pete Barrow. Any leads to the info you got off his computer?”
Her mouth opened. “I ... wow. I just ... I blanked that after...” She glanced at Jericho. “We need to get back to the dome.”
“Why?” Jericho asked.
“My computer is there, and I dumped the contents of Pete’s hard drive onto my cloud.”
