I smile.
Yeah. She is. And she’s mine.
We lift him. Wrap him. Carry him out the back door and into the trunk. Colten wipes down every surface we touched. I check the security panel one more time.
Harper is in the passenger seat when I open the driver's door. She's holding the little goldAfrom her broken necklace in one hand. The other is on her stomach.
She looks up at me. Eyes red. Face wrecked. But something new is behind it all. It’s the look of a woman who's made her last bad decision and knows it.
"Let's go home, Ace."
I start the engine.
"Yes, ma'am."
I pull out of Hudson Blake's driveway, past his fountain, past his gates, and the last time I ever have to see this place. Harper reaches across the console and laces her fingers through mine.
I squeeze. She squeezes back.
Three hundred and seventy miles to Sterling Ranch.
And this time, it’s forever.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
Harper
Song- FINE PLACE TO DIE, Alex Warren
"What about..." He pauses, tapping the steering wheel. "Ace Junior?"
I cackle. "No. What makes you so sure it's a boy?"
He shrugs.
"What if I told you I secretly would love to be a girl dad?"
I rest my hand on his thigh. We're nearing the border of Arizona. One more hour until home soil.
I glance down at theAin my hands. "I was thinking, April."
He smiles. "Yeah, I think I like that too, April. Are we going to find out?"
"I'm not sure I can wait."
"Phew. I was hopin' you'd say that."
And then he grins, and every worry I have melts away. He's happy. Even with my husband's dead body in the trunk. Even with everything behind us and everything ahead. He's happybecause I'm beside him, and that's always been enough for Ace Sterling.
I look down at the rings on my left hand. The blood dried in the setting of the diamond. Hudson's blood. Hudson's rings. Hudson's life, stamped onto my finger.
I pull them off. Open the window. And toss them into the desert.
"Did that feel freeing?" He squeezes my thigh.
"Very."
The weight of the world, gone in a glint of metal and dust.
