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“Bastards always are.” Her voice was thick. “You know he found me even after I told everyone to leave me alone the night of my non-wedding? I’d have broken down if it was you, just collapsed into you and sobbed like a fledgling, and I’d have hated that.”

“I get it.” He stroked her back, understanding her to the core—because he’d cried in Aria’s arms even when he’d been able to stand strong against all others.

But she’d been older, and his grandmother, the emotional balance between them far different from his relationship with his ferociously independent wing-second.

“I’m glad he tracked you down, that you weren’t alone that night. ”

“Because it was Jacques, I got pissed. I yelled at him to fuck the hell off—and he just egged me on with that smirk he gets when he’s trying to be irritating. Like he knew I needed to rage at a target tough enough to take me on.

“After I was exhausted from fighting with him, he got me drunk. Tequila shots followed by disgusting rum chasers, all while I was in my newly shortened wedding gown.”

“Jacques never told me about that,” Adam said.

Which was just like his friend—he pretended not to care, did kind things, and never spoke about it. “Did you want to be drunk?”

“Hell yes,” she muttered. “Don’t know how he found me in that no-name dive bar, though. Accused him of having a tracker on me—asshole told me he just followed the trail of sparkles from my wedding gown.” A sniff against Adam’s ear. “He’s such a shit and I don’t want him to be hurt, Adam.”

“I know, D.” His own voice was pure grit, his eyes hot.

The two of them just stood there, holding each other for several minutes before they separated. “You should get some rest now that I’m up,” he told her. “We’ll have to trade off for the duration while Jacques is down, pull in Amir and Maraea to cover some of the duties.”

Dahlia nodded, stubborn but not illogical. “What are you going to do?”

“Tap my contacts in Raintree, see if they’ve heard anything. I think the shooting was done in panic, so there’s a chance he made a mistake.” No rational person would’ve called a vengeance-bound WindHaven down on their heads.

Falcons did not let go. The man who’d murdered Taazbaa’ and Cormac Garrett had learned that on a cold fall day when he’d been driving along a lonely highway far from falcon territory, and far, he’d believed, from any kind of justice.

He’d been wrong.

His bones now lay scattered across the bottom of the ocean, the shattered pieces of him carried there on the wing by a clan of falcons who had never, ever forgotten. And a son who had vowed vengeance the day the justice system—and the woman who should’ve been his everything—let him down.

Today, he didn’t wait till dawn to make his calls. The people to whom he needed to talk were more comfortable in the dark hours. Leaving Dahlia to finish up before she got some shut-eye, he returned to his room and stood in the maw of the exit into the Canyon to touch base with his contacts.

The first two on his list didn’t have the best reputations.

One was a drunk, the other barely talked to anyone, but when push came to shove, they fell on the side of good.

Each had a reason for being how they were, personal pain they handled without involving others.

One happened to be ex-Enforcement from Chicago, the other a fucking actual spook from a major international organization who’d burned out.

They watched and noticed things without anyone ever seeing them.

The world outside was still dark by the time he finished talking to them—both had already heard about Jacques but had nothing to report as yet.

Knowing they’d message him if they picked up anything, he looked down at the town.

It remained draped in darkness but for the odd light—like the one from the bakery, where Geraldine and her wife of multiple decades would already be hard at work.

A single light burned at the Enforcement station, too. Probably one of the two deputies: Jocasta Whitten or John Hendricks. The JJs, the two called themselves, both young enough that the shine hadn’t rubbed off yet.

Adam’s eyes went back to the inn, to the wing where he knew Eleri had been assigned a room, but the tree canopy blocked his view of that spot, and right now, despite his compulsion to speak to her—a compulsion that he fucking hated —her knowledge was background, not fresh.

He made another call.

“Sally,” he said when a woman with a throaty voice answered the phone after a few rings.

“Adam, I heard,” said the proprietor of the Dewdrop Diner—and a woman who was always awake at this early hour because that was when her first customers began to drift in.

The long-haul truckers about to start their journeys, the business types heading out of town, folks who’d been out partying a little too late and desperately needed food. “How is he?”

“Not good,” Adam said, because Sally was a friend of the clan from way back when she’d gone to school with Adam’s mother. “Have you heard anything?”

“I figure you already know about the stranger—the J?”

“Yeah.”

“Not that she seemed suspicious. She said she’s looking into a cold case when I asked, and I saw her with Beaufort and Whitten yesterday coming back from the site of Jacques’s shooting, so I figure she’s legit.”

Adam frowned; he should’ve realized Eleri would find a way to look at the scene. She might be shit at justice, but as Damon had confirmed, she was damn good at working with cops to hunt killers. “Nothing else?”

“Nothing on who might’ve done it, but John Hendricks was just in here to grab a coffee and mentioned the chief flew in late last night, cut his trip short as soon as he heard about Jacques. Drove home from the airport straightaway.”

That drive was a good two hours, so the chief would’ve arrived in Raintree after Adam crashed. “Thanks, Sally.”

“No need for that,” she said gruffly. “I’ll call you if I pick up anything else.”

Adam glanced at the time after Sally hung up and figured that despite his late night, Chief Cross would be up and at work. The man was a good cop, one who’d be angry at what had taken place in his town.

Adam decided to go see him, but first he looked in on the infirmary.

“She’s still sleeping,” Amir told him when he asked about Naia. “And Jacques…no change. Kavi is in there with him taking readings.” Shadows lined his eyes. “I’ve held off all visitors. Saoirse also put out the word.”

“Good.” Jacques wouldn’t want to be seen this way.

But that wasn’t what had Adam’s gut in knots.

“If I get injured and there’s no hope,” Jacques had said one night as they sat at the local bar nursing beers, “I don’t want a parade of visitors and I especially don’t want to be kept artificially alive. Pull the plug, scatter me into the mountain sky.”

“What brought this on?” Adam had asked.

“Just got word from my kid sister about the passing of someone I got to be friends with when we’d fly to visit my father’s clan.

His family couldn’t let go, kept him alive for fucking months.

Rick would’ve hated that. So you promise me, Adam.

If I’m that badly messed up, you make sure I get to fly. ”

Adam’s chest grew tight. I’ll keep my promise, Jacques. Just let me exhaust all possible options first.

“I’m going to see Chief Cross, and Dahlia’s catching some sleep.”

“I’ll hold the fort.” Amir indicated the small table against the wall. “Saoirse brought us enough food to feed an army.” A wealth of love in his tone. “She told me you two spoke.”

Adam nodded. “Hand things over to Pascal as soon as he’s up. I’ll need you to take a late shift again. None of us can afford to wear ourselves out.”

“Will do. You recall Maraea and Edward?”

“Right before I fell asleep—they’ll land sometime around midday.” Amir and Pascal’s fellow wing commander and her nurse husband had been visiting family in another clan. Their return would shore up their ranks on both the security and medical fronts.

“You driving down?”

“No, I need to fly.” His falcon was hurting, needed the balm of the sky, and the clan had a clothing stockpile not too far from the chief’s place, so it wouldn’t be an issue to fly down instead of driving.

He was on the wing a minute later, his takeoff smooth in the morning quiet.

He held back the falcon’s need to voice its angry pain until he was high above the desert, where the sound wouldn’t scare or wake his people.

Only once he’d flown off the first bite of anguish did he head to the unassuming two-story home that had been the chief’s residence as long as Adam had known him.

The lights of an emergency vehicle flickered on the street below.

An ambulance about to turn into the chief’s drive.