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“Stop, stop, stop!” Reed yelled, and Kade released the controls of the excavator.

The shop wall was only halfway up, and Reed and Wreck were pulling on something just out of sight. Something was jammed.

Kade pushed open the clear door and asked Cash, “What’s up?”

Cash was grinning down at his phone, but at Kade’s question, he looked up at him and frowned. “What?”

“Dude, where is your head at? Your Alpha is pulling chains under a huge wall and you’re flirting with Harley.”

“She’s sending me titty pics. If Wreck needs help, he’ll holler.”

“Cash!” Wreck barked out. “Come hold this.”

Kade snorted.

“Balls,” Cash muttered as he strode over there, dragging his feet bad enough to kick dirt on every step.

Kade sank back into the seat of the excavator and kept the door propped open with his foot so he could hear what was happening. In the cup holder, his phone screen lit up.

A quick glance down at it told him an unknown number had texted him. Probably spam.

“Can you try to lift it again?” Wreck called to Kade.

Kade eased the arm of the excavator higher, trying to keep the drag smooth so it wouldn’t put any extra pressure on the chain that was holding the heavy section of wall. The chain was too thin for his liking.

This shop out behind their cabins was turning out to be a pain in the ass to build. Everything that could go wrong had done it. The kit for this shop was the most inefficient build ever.

The materials were wrong, the blueprint was wrong, the instructions were ridiculous and made no damn sense.

He eased the wall up and held it steadily there while the boys went to work bolting the metal to the steel frame. Their cussing echoed across the mountain because nothing was lining up. This was the part that Kade wished he could abandon the excavator and help with the brute strength, but he was the only one trained on this machine.

His phone lit up again, and that same unfamiliar number flashed across the screen.

He frowned at the part of the text he could read from here.

I hope this is you.

Well, that was a weird thing to say if this was a spam text.

Kade was staring at the phone when it lit up again. It’s Seth.

The blood drained from his face, and he relaxed his grip on the controls.

“Hey, hey, hey!” King roared, and Kade jerked the arm of the excavator into place again. He glanced at the text once, twice, three times before the screen faded to black.

Seth.

Fuck.

Seth?

How did he get this number? How had he found him?

Kade’s mind was bombarded with a thousand memories from his old life, all meshing together.

He’d killed Seth’s brother, Tanner. At least, that’s how the story went.

“Okay, we’re good!” Wreck called out.

Kade lowered the arm by a few feet to loosen the slack of the chain so the guys could unhook it, and then he cut the engine. He grabbed his phone and shoved the door open, hopped out of the excavator, and strode for his cabin.

“Where are you going?” King called.

“I need to take care of something,” he called without turning around. Kade lifted his phone and opened the text thread as he walked.

Someone said you got out. I hope this is you. It’s Seth.

Kade’s heart had never pounded so hard as it was doing right now. Short of breath, he took his porch stairs two at a time and bolted for the safety of his cabin. He slammed the door behind and deadbolted it, didn’t bother turning on the light, just went straight for the couch and sat down on the edge of it. He read the texts from his old friend again. They weren’t friends anymore. He’d testified against him. He was part of the reason Kade had been locked up.

A part of him understood though. A small part.

Kade began to respond but deleted it and just stared at the words on the screen.

It’s you , Seth texted. Maybe he’d seen the dots saying Kade had been typing. Maybe he was a freaking mind-reader. Who knew with Seth?

A video came through, and Kade held that phone in his shaking hand, while his heart hammered so hard inside of his chest cavity, it felt like it was chipping away at his sternum.

He’d worked so hard to forget his past. He’d done so much work to anchor himself to the present, and now his personal ghost had come calling.

He pushed the play button and tensed immediately.

Jess sat in Derek’s meeting hall. That was Jess, right? She’d dyed her hair darker and cut it shorter. He could only see her profile. Her face was downturned, and her eyes were unblinking, trained on the table. Derek was talking down to her, standing with his arms locked against the table. Beside him was his Second, and on his other side was a guy who had been working his way up the ranks when Kade had been hauled off to Alaska. From his position on the left of the Alpha, he was the new Third. He must’ve been Kade’s replacement. A couple seats away, staring straight at Jess was someone Kade hadn’t thought about in a long time. Connor Edge. He had his hands locked in front of his mouth, elbows on the table, eyes glowing blue, a hungry look directed right at Jess.

He couldn’t hear what Derek was saying. Kade turned the volume up on his phone but there wasn’t any sound at all.

The Alpha looked angry, but what else was new? Derek had always been a stick of dynamite with a short fuse. What had Jess done wrong?

She looked good. Her scars were fewer. She looked up at Derek, and then over at whoever was taking the video—Seth probably. The video shook and cut to black, but Kade had seen it. He’d seen it there in her eyes.

He found the exact moment she’d locked eyes on the camera and paused it. Her eyes were glowing gold. Jess never got worked up.

What the fuck was happening?

She’s used your Promise all these years, but your contract is up. She’s up for grabs. Connor wants her. She doesn’t have a choice.

“Fuck!” Kade yelled and threw his phone at the couch. He gripped his hair in the back and closed his eyes. This wasn’t his problem. It wasn’t his problem! He left that life behind long ago, and not a single person had clung to him, not even Jess. And fair enough! They were strangers. She hadn’t owed him anything! And he owed her nothing now.

They’d made a decision in another life, and it didn’t carry to the new one.

Why the hell hadn’t she moved on? Why was she still there? She’d been set free with his incarceration, so why was she still in that dead-end Crew claiming the Promise?

He blew out a shaky breath and rolled his head back, staring at the ceiling fan high above.

“Old life?” Cash asked.

Kade startled and glared at the man sitting on his kitchen counter, eating a carrot. “I locked the door.”

“Yeah, I know. So annoying. I had to use the back door, which was unlocked.”

“If I lock the door, it means I don’t want you showing up here.”

Cash arched his eyebrow. “Again, back door was unlocked. That’s an invite.”

“No, it isn’t!”

Cash narrowed his eyes at him and crunched another bite of carrot. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he muttered, pulling his phone from the crease in the couch that it had sunken into. He pulled up the video again and zoomed in on Jess’s profile. Where were her scars? Was this really Jess?

“Who is she?” Cash asked.

Kade shook his head, denying him an answer. None of this was Cash’s business.

“Who is she?” he asked again.

“Fuck, Cash! Leave it alone!” He was going to lose his mind right now. Kade paced to the stairs and back, his mind racing.

“We’re friends,” Cash said softly.

“A friend who would run to his mate and to the rest of the Crew if I tell you.”

“I swear on my life, I won’t.”

“Your life is a trainwreck. Swear on something else.”

“Fine. I swear on my bond with Harley, I won’t say anything until you say I can.”

Kade let off an explosive sigh and sank down into the couch. “A hundred years ago, I had a woman. A stranger. It was an arranged thing.”

When he looked up, Cash was just standing there staring at him with his lips in the shape of an ‘O.’

“Well? Say something.”

“You have a mate?” Cash asked.

“No. Yes. Kind of. We never consummated the pairing, so it doesn’t really count.” He gritted his teeth. “There was a contract though.”

“This marriage sounds sketchy as hell.”

“It isn’t a marriage! It was just…” Kade shook his head, searching for a way to explain it. “Not all Crews are like this one.”

Cash nodded somberly. “Why didn’t you go get her when you got out?”

Kade huffed a humorless sound and looked away. He stared at the woodgrain in the fancy wood floors of this place. “I’m not the same as when I left, and besides, my incarceration was supposed to set her free from the pairing. She’d talked about wanting to leave Sister’s Edge—”

“Holy fuck sticks!” Cash interrupted. “You’re from Sister’s Edge?”

Kade dragged his glare to him.

“You’re really from Sister’s Edge? From the Crew in Sister’s Edge? You were a member?”

“I was Third.”

“Oh!” Cash crowed, pacing into the kitchen and then back. “You were Third in Sister’s Edge?”

“You don’t have to repeat it a bunch of times. I don’t want to talk about this shit anymore.”

“Um, now I want to only talk about this—”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“There’re monsters in that Crew.”

“Cash.”

“They only bring in monsters!”

“Cash!”

“Why didn’t you consummate it? Was she an uggo?”

“An uggo?”

“Ugly?”

“Oh my God, stop talking.”

“Couldn’t get it up?”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“It happens, man. Not to me, but I hear it happens to some people. It’s called erectile dysfunction, and it’s—”

Whomp! The book Kade had thrown at his head hit the wall behind Cash. He’d barely ducked out of the way in time.

“We didn’t consummate it because she wasn’t ready, and I was arrested a week after we were Promised!”

Cash’s mouth finally freaking stopped talking, thank the Lord.

“So why are you freaking out about her now?” Cash asked low. “If you set her free, why are you dropping walls, and rushing in here, and locking doors and making the entire mountains feel heavy?”

Kade inhaled deep and cracked his knuckles. “Contract is up. My old friend messaged me a video of her in what I’m guessing are Promise talks with some asshole I know. Or I knew? Back before everything fell apart.”

“Is he bad news?”

“The worst.” Kade shrugged. “For her it would be bad.”

“We should go get her,” Cash said.

“No.”

“Think about it—”

“I have! I will be getting her. There will be no ‘we’.”

“Oh shit,” Cash rocked back on his heels. “You’re thinking of going to Sister’s Edge? Alone?”

“It’s mine,” Kade said, hoping Cash would understand. This part of his story wasn’t for Cold Foot Crew to meddle in. It was his old life, and his alone. It was his responsibility to tie up the loose ends.

Kade could feel it so deeply now—the pull of his old life.

Cash nodded. “I can cover for you at work. I can cover for you with the Crew too. How long will you be gone?”

“A couple days at least,” but probably forever in a shallow fuckin’ grave. Cash didn’t need to know the danger. It wasn’t a full lie, so Cash didn’t sense anything wrong. Clearly, because he told him, “You should pack fast and leave before the guys are done with work on that shop for the day. They’ll be too distracted to notice you’re gone for a few hours, I bet. They don’t need the excavator for the rest of today’s work.”

Kade nodded his thanks, and stood, then headed for the stairs.

“Hey, Kade?” Cash asked.

“Yeah?” Kade asked from the middle of the stairs.

“I respect how you’re handling this. If you need anything, I’m just a call away.”

And Kade knew what he meant. Cash would come help if he could. He appreciated the offer more than Cash would ever know.

Kade was beginning to think that Cash had told the truth—maybe they were friends.