I pulled my gaze from the picture and opened my desk drawer, then pulled out the tiny portable drive I’d clipped from Dimitri’s nightstand the night we’d found Rain Adakai.
I stared at the single word written in marker across the drive: Shepherd.
I didn’t know what it meant. Didn’t want to know.
I put the drive in my desk and closed the drawer.
Once upon a time I would have felt like a coward for looking the other way. Now I had something to lose.
A lot in fact.
And I was done losing shit to the assholes who’d stolen girls from Blackwell Falls.
Were there more bad guys out there somewhere?
Definitely.
But I couldn’t stop them all.
I’d already made a copy of the drive and sent it to the FBI. I couldn’t risk Maeve’s and Cassie’s lives by sticking my nose in every bad thing that happened the world over.
I’d played my part, had taken out my share of the trash.
It would have to be enough.
I closed the drawer.
53
CASSIE
Jaggerand I immediately went to work helping Maeve in the kitchen, whipping sweet potatoes and cutting fruit and pulling rolls from the oven.
Maeve didn’t need the help — she made everything in the kitchen look easy — but cooking with her was quickly becoming one of my favorite things to do, and Jagger seemed to enjoy helping too.
Ray ran through the loft chasing Lucy, the cat Bram had given Maeve (Lucy was short for Lucifer, the cat hated Bram for some reason) and Vigo and Hawk had joined Remy and Poe in the living room to watch football.
“Hey, Cass,” Bram said, entering the room. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
I smiled at my big brother. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
He kissed Maeve on the lips, lingering a little longer than necessary.
Jagger caught my eye and a flare of heat blossomed between my thighs.
“Can I help?” Bram asked against Maeve’s lips.
She turned and handed him a platter groaning under the weight of a huge golden turkey. “You can take this to the table for carving.”
He carried it to the table, and I had a flash of my dad doing the same thing when I’d been a kid, carrying a platter of turkey while my mom stood nervously behind him, laughing and telling him not to drop it.
And so it went.
The house in Kedrovsk seemed a million miles away, but it had been less than two weeks since we’d returned from Russia with Rain Adakai, shaken and in shock.
We’d taken her straight to the hospital and had waited until her mom and sister came to stay with her. Their reunion had been emotional enough to make me sob into Hawk’s chest, and we’d left them alone to heal.
Last I’d heard Rain was working with the FBI to help identify some of the men who’d trafficked her.
