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“Figured you’d be jumping off a cliff in those shiny red long johns right about now,” Jeremiah Bell remarked, leaning a hip on the hood of Lila’s forest green Land Rover.
I grunted and scrubbed harder at the spot of blood in the driver’s seat. Lila’s blood. “It’s a wingsuit,” I reminded Jeremiah, but I knew he hadn’t forgotten.
Most people who served in the special forces had a little bit of a daredevil in them, but not Jeremiah Bell. He was born an old man. Lennon Graves, his girlfriend, had put some life into him—hell, I’d actually heard him laugh the other day—but he still herded us like a border collie guarding sheep instead of full-grown men.
He wasn’t wrong, though. My normal solution to emotional upheavals was jumping off a cliff in a wingsuit. Yes, a shiny red one. How else would they be able to locate my body? I’d spent the last five years being mildly disgusted with my ability to open my eyes every goddamned morning. Not that I wanted to stop, exactly. I was…ambivalent. Pretty much the only time I was one hundred percent sold on living was when I was a hairsbreadth from death. Hence the jumping.
But risking death wasn’t an option right now. Lila’s life depended on me staying alive, too.
Jeremiah wasn’t one to watch another man work while his own hands stayed idle, so he grabbed a soapy sponge and went to work unearthing Lila’s truck from the thick layers of dust and grime. We were joined by Liam Cole and Mateo Alvarez seconds later.
The four of us—along with Holly Delaney—had all served together on a Navy SEAL team. Now we worked the ranch together. Four generations of the Cole family raised cattle at Mercy River Ranch. The ranch had nearly gone under with Liam’s parents until Liam’s younger brother, Daniel, decided to turn the ranch into a nonprofit.
“You gonna tell us what the hell is going on?” Liam asked, dunking a sponge and going to work on the tires.
“Start with the part where you called her your wife,” Mateo cut in. “You’re fucking married? What the hell, man? Did my wedding invitation get lost in the mail?”
“It was a long time ago. Right after my last mission, before I came to the ranch.” I glanced up in time to see them all exchange a look. They remembered—both the body count and the way I’d gone radio silent for nearly a year after. “Obviously, it didn’t last. We split after less than a year.”
Four years ago, and I still remember every excruciating detail like it was yesterday.
Her brows knit in confusion as her gaze lands on my suitcases, already packed and waiting by the front door. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Some old friends started a nonprofit at a ranch. I’m going to join them.”
“For how long?”
I can’t quite meet her eyes. “I’m not coming back.”
Her mouth falls open, but no words come out. She stares at me in shock.
“We both knew this couldn’t last. We barely knew each other when we got married.”
She rallies, her chin jerking upward. “You knew. Apparently, I didn’t know shit because I thought ‘til death do us part literally meant ‘til death do us part.”
I don’t know how to tell her that the one thing I can’t survive is her death being the thing that parts us. Silently, I hand her a sticky note with my new address.
She takes it, then looks at me. “So that’s it, then? No real explanation? Nothing? I can’t believe this is happening.”
“I’m so sorry.” That’s true, at least. I step closer, breathe her in for the last time. “If you need anything—anything at all—you know where to find me.”
She searches my face with pain-laced eyes, then rocks onto her toes. Her warm breath ghosts my cheek as she whispers her final words to me. “Over my dead body.”
Those words sure came back to bite me in the ass. As though they didn’t hurt enough the first time around.
Mateo pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and gave me a smile big enough to show his dimples. He could always be counted on to lighten the mood when things felt heavy. “You know what? I’m going to let this one slide. I forgive you, Seb.”
“Gee, thanks.” I dragged my face over my sleeve to mop up the sweat. The last few days of summer in this part of Wyoming tended to be brutally hot and dry, and today was no exception. “Hand me that towel, will you?”
Mateo reached for it, but Liam snatched it up first, holding it hostage while he eyed me narrowly through the open passenger door. “I’m less concerned with the secret marriage than the fact that she showed up here bleeding from a knife wound. What kind of trouble did she bring with her?”
I backed out of the vehicle and straightened. “I don’t know yet.” I filled them in on what Lila had told me this morning at the hospital. “We don’t have a name or a motive or what his endgame is. Until he’s behind bars, Lila will stay with me.”
Frowning, Liam tossed me the towel. “I don’t like it. We’ve already had one lunatic running amok on the ranch. What if he followed her here?”
