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THIRTY-TWO

MARCH

“Please, make yourselves comfortable.” Meredith indicated the chairs that ringed the firepit. They’d brought in extras for their guests so everyone had a seat available to them.

Tables were set up nearby with a chili bar, soft drinks, bottled waters, and brownies. It was simple but welcoming.

Dr. Sabrina Fleming-Campbell was easy to pick out of the crowd. She and Mo were in an intense discussion about computers that made no sense to anyone else. Sabrina’s husband, Adam, stood nearby talking to Donovan and Cassie about the scuba diving they were planning for their honeymoon.

FBI Special Agent Faith Powell was talking to Gray and Cal, while her husband, Secret Service Special Agent Luke Powell, and Bronwyn talked about the possibility of a presidential visit to The Haven.

Meredith leaned against the porch rail of her tiny house and thanked God, again, that she’d made it out of the forest alive.

Carlos joined her on the porch. A month after returning to his real life, he carried a somewhat haunted expression.

“Are you okay?”

He pulled in a long breath. “No.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?”

He pointed to the groups of people talking. “This helps. Normalcy. Good people who do the right thing. It helps me remember that I’m one of the good guys.”

“You’re definitely one of the good guys.”

Gray looked away from Faith and caught her eye. His smile sent warmth flooding through her.

Carlos pointed his water bottle in Gray’s direction. “He’s one of the good guys too.”

“I know.” She didn’t know Carlos, but she’d been wanting to talk to him, and now was as good a time as any. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For the warning to run.”

“Ah.”

“How did you know they were coming for me?”

“Once upon a time, I would have said it was luck. Now? I think it must have been from God. I was in the right place at the right time and realized they’d decided to grab you.”

He rested his elbows on the porch rail. “I had a bad feeling from the time Johnstone told us he wouldn’t be at the wedding. Johnstone left town plenty of times before. The man likes the finer things in life, and he likes to see the world. But he’d never announced his absence before. Most of the time, no one knew he’d been gone until he was back. It screamed setup to me. But I didn’t know how it would play out.”

He took a sip of water and when he spoke again, the intensity of his tone sent a chill racing over Meredith’s skin. “What I did know was that if they got their hands on you, Johnstone would have tortured you until you told him where Amara was, and then he would have killed you.”

Carlos sucked in a breath and blew it out hard. “I owe you an apology, though. I didn’t realize how many pieces were moving on the chessboard. I thought if you hid in the woods for a bit, it would all blow over. I didn’t expect Johnstone to use the opportunity to clean house.”

It had taken several days to sort it all out, but eventually the pieces had clicked. The men who’d been coming after her were Johnstone’s men. They’d stolen her car and sabotaged Gray’s. If she and Gray had tried to leave in his car, they would only have made it a mile or so before they would have been on the side of the road and easily accessible. That had been the original plan, but Gray’s refusal to take his car had scuttled that.

The men hiding out in the hut had been the Atlanta drug dealers. Johnstone had been none too happy about the way they’d killed the women who were brought to them. So Johnstone planned to get payback by using them as cover. Johnstone’s people planned to plant evidence that showed the Atlanta drug dealers had captured and killed Meredith and Gray, and then blown themselves up cooking meth.

It would have been a pitiful story anywhere else, but Johnstone had Kirby in his pocket. And the arrogance to believe he could get away with it.

Johnstone’s crew timed the explosions to go off during the reception, not knowing that Meredith and Gray would be in the woods. They’d had no way to predict that anyone would be there to see and hear the fight, and later to find the bodies.

And neither Johnstone nor Ledbetter had anticipated that blowing up the hut would have the unintended consequence of dislodging so many corpses. It probably wouldn’t have happened in dry conditions, but the explosion had triggered a small slide, and once the bones were visible, it was like opening Pandora’s box. Chaos had ensued.

“Do you think it’s over?” Meredith voiced the question that had haunted her for weeks. “Really over?”

Carlos held his hands out. “I think it’s over for Johnstone and Kirby. And for Ledbetter. As for the drugs and trafficking? That’s never really over. The Atlanta gangs will find someone else to help them move their product. But I don’t think it will be in Neeson. At least, not on the scale it has been.”

“So for you, does it feel like a success?”

“It feels like we won a battle, but the war rages on.” Carlos patted her hand where it rested on the porch rail. “But for the people of Neeson, I think it was a success. They’ll have new oversight, new law enforcement, new structures. Some of them will go to jail for their involvement. Most, hopefully, will take the opportunity to start fresh.” He shoved away from the railing. “As for me, my fresh start begins with a bowl of that chili, some of those brownies, and an evening with people who don’t want to shoot me.”

Meredith grinned. “By all means, don’t let me stop you.”

Two minutes later, Faith joined her on the porch. “I’m going to be nosy. Is Carlos okay?”

Meredith waved her hand back and forth. “According to him, he is not. But I think he will be.” This must be her day for thank-yous. “I haven’t had a chance to say thank you yet, but I hope you know how much I appreciate what you did for Neeson.”

“I did my job.” Faith sipped a Cherry Coke and looked around them. “Did you hear the latest theory about Kirby and Johnstone?”

“No.”

“There’s a rumor going around that the thing that tied them together was a criminal act from fifty years ago. Something about a friend of theirs who took a beating and never recovered.”

“I know that story.”

“The rumor is that at some point, Kirby found out who did it, killed the men, and hid the bodies. Then, like an idiot, he told Johnstone, thinking Johnstone would be thrilled.”

Meredith frowned. “He wasn’t?”

“Oh, he was, but not in the way Kirby expected. He used the knowledge to blackmail Kirby, and that started the chain of events that led us to today.”

“Do you think the evidence is strong enough to win cases against them?”

Faith nudged Meredith’s arm. “Don’t you worry. You can sleep at night. Those two won’t be coming back anytime soon. And when I was in Neeson this week, the people there were so relieved to be free of the corruption, you could feel it in the air. It’s like a completely different town. We’ve cleared two of their officers of any wrongdoing. The one you were worried about, Nichols, never caved. He’ll keep his job. And I think he’ll be an asset to the new administration there.”

“That’s wonderful to hear.”

Faith sighed. “The good news is a little thin on the ground. But it’s there. It will take years to heal the wounds, but I think there’s hope for the town now. I heard that the church wants you to come back with your dental van and that they want to open up the building so people have a place to wait. There was even talk of allowing the kids to play on the playground equipment.”

“Wow. That is progress.”

Faith’s husband, Luke, came to stand beneath where they stood. “We have to come back here. This place is gorgeous.”

Cal joined them and pointed to his tiny house. “That one will be available as soon as my cousin gets married. And my guess is that this one”—he tapped Meredith’s porch—“will be empty soon too. We’d love to have you. Come on up anytime.”

JUNE

Gray loved the mountains in all their seasons, but summer nights might be his favorite. Tonight, he sat by the firepit outside Meredith’s home. It had been warm today, but the June evening had cooled off enough that the fire made everything cozy. They had the place to themselves for once. Cassie and Donovan were on their honeymoon. Cal and Landry were at the beach with his brothers, their wives, all the kids, and his parents.

Bronwyn was overseeing everything at Hideaway because, with Cassie out of the country, she didn’t fully trust the temporary chef to keep things under control. Especially on a Friday night.

Mo was in New York City on a job for some clients and had messaged Meredith eight times today telling her that if he ever hinted at wanting to move to a city, she should shoot him because he’d been abducted by aliens.

Meredith came to sit beside Gray. She’d replaced their Adirondack-style chairs with a larger one big enough to sit in together. She snuggled in beside him and rested her head on his chest in a position that had become so familiar to him that he wondered how he’d ever lived without this connection.

“Long day?” she asked.

The forensics team had found another body at the Neeson site today. That brought the body count to thirty-nine. Any other night, he would have told Meredith all about it, but he didn’t want to bring that into their time together.

“Busy. You?”

“Same. This working on Fridays is for the birds.” She yawned. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow, though. Me, you, and a hike that doesn’t involve people trying to kill us.”

“My favorite kind.”

They watched the fire for a few minutes of what should have been comfortable silence, but he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Meredith?”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

She cuddled closer. “I love you too.”

He kissed the top of her head and slid the ring from his pocket. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Of course I will. All you have to do is ask.”

“Pretty sure I just did.”

Her body went stiff beside him, and she slowly pulled away from him. “You did?”

“I did.”

Her smile was slow and huge. “Gray! Are you serious? Because if you aren’t serious—”

He grabbed her left hand and slid the ring on her fourth finger.

“You are serious.” There was a hint of wonder in her voice, and when she looked away from her hand and into his eyes, he saw the forever he’d never allowed himself to dream of.

“Till death do us part.”

“Yes!”