Page 53

"Let’s see what was worth dying for," I whisper.

Team W Headquarters

Just Outside of Galveston

An hour later, we sit around the long table in the main house at the ranch—Team W’s headquarters and home base. Rush, Kari, Dalton, Gage, Gideon, and my dad—propped up in a recliner with an IV in his arm and a blanket around his shoulders. He looks like hell. But he’s here.

"Sookie knew something," dad says, voice raspy but steadier now. "She’d been poking around, said she didn’t trust the new budget allocations coming through city contracts. Not just skimming—wholesale laundering. And not just money."

Deacon nods grimly. "Trafficking. Infrastructure manipulation. Intel-sharing with private militias. It’s bigger than we thought."

Kari plugs the drive into her laptop and begins clicking through folders, her fingers flying over the keys. Her eyebrows lift, then arch higher with each passing second, her mouth parting slightly as the sheer volume of data unfolds across the screen.

"Holy shit," she murmurs. "Emails, purchase orders, blackmail material... She catalogued everything. Even had passwords. Names. Timeline logs. She even has the start of her expose. This is explosive stuff."

"And the Reaper is still out there," murmurs Dalton.

I lean over Kari's shoulder. "Can you write it? The expose? Make it public?"

Kari hesitates. "I mean, the last journalism I did was in college. My blog’s mostly character deep-dives for my romance novels and wild conspiracy theories I use to brainstorm plot twists. I don't know that I could do it justice."

"Better to give it to some Dan Rather type—you know, someone who's trained to do this kind of thing," says Dalton.

Ignoring him, I push gently, "Yeah, but Kari's smart, and I trust her." I turn to Kari. "You’ve seen what they’ve done. You're a wolf-shifter, and you've got the Team to look out for you..."

"No way," growls Gideon. "She gets into enough trouble writing romance novels. She does not need to be pissing off cartels and killers. Right, Dalton?"

I glance between the two men and Kari who's being uncharacteristically quiet.

"Kari, you know that if we drop this into official channels, it’ll get buried. Sookie left me everything. You're the only one I trust to tell Sookie’s story."

"She's not doing it," says Dalton.

Kari glances his way and then looks back at me, eyes steady now. She nods. "I'm in."

Rush steps into the moment to break the growing tension. "Say Frank, how are you enjoying retirement?"

My dad grins. "To be honest, it sucks. What do you have in mind?"

"Admin isn't really my thing, but it falls to me as team lead. We need someone to run point on logistics. Keep the paperwork tight, liaise with the governor in Austin."

"You offering me a job?"

Rush grins. "I am."

My dad huffs a laugh that turns into a wince, pressing a hand to his side. "I’m in."

Across the table, Deacon slips his hand over mine. He says nothing. He doesn’t have to. Everything I’ve survived, everything we’ve endured—it’s etched into his touch.

Outside, the sky burns bright and new.

For the first time since all this started, I feel like I can breathe.

Sutton's Townhouse

Galveston, Texas

That night, I find Deacon standing shirtless on the balcony, a glass of something amber in his hand, the wind tugging at his hair. He turns when I step out, watching me with that look that still makes heat bloom between my thighs.