Page 35 of Danger Close

“Yeah, maybe I did.” I hadn’t thought about it that way at the time, butsomepeople might see it that way.

I ran the sole of my riding boot over the pebbles of the drive.

“Fuck.” I let out the low reprimand as the pieces clicked together in my brain. I’m not always the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I usually figured things out eventually. “She must have been terrified.”

“Ya think?” Charlotte mocked.

“You wouldn’t have known it just from seeing her!” Why was I defending myself? “She never complained, and if anything…”

If anything, she leaned into my touch. Or was I only seeing what I wanted to see?

Charlotte shook her head, her eyes glazed over in disappointment. “I swear, some spies can’t get their head on straight after coming out of the field.”

“Not all of us have a hearth to come home to, Charlotte.” Did I sound bitter? I didn’t mean to sound resentful. But I was.

“Good to see someone else in the doghouse for once.” Mack kissed his wife on the cheek. “I’m going to get some firewood so that we can heat the place tonight. Looks like we’ve got company until the wedding, so we better heat the extra rooms. Don’t want our guest to wake up an icicle and think we’re inhospitable.”

“Fact!” Goose, who had largely stood back during the proceedings, bemusedly smiling at the drama in front of him, finally quipped up. “Alright, this has been fun, but I gotta get home before the tweenagers burn the house down.”

He stopped in the driveway on the way to his minivan with a stack of tupperware. “Thanks for the grub, Mamma Mack! The kids will be happy not to eat my cooking for a while.”

Without missing a beat, Trinity repeated her question, “You kidnapped my mother?”

Charlotte patted her shoulder.

“Don’t be too hard on him, sweetheart.” Charlotte turned away from me to go back inside, effectively dismissing me. “He’s been a spy for as long as you’ve been alive. It warps their moral compass.”

“Hey!” Just because it was true doesn’t mean she had to say it out loud. “Low blow, Charlotte.”

Charlotte stopped before she went inside, turning back to Trinity with a sly grin.

“Just remember—” Charlotte patted my daughter’s arm. “Your uncle, Jericho, is much,muchworse.”

“Fact!” Goose shouted, as he opened the driver’s side door of his minivan, and climbed in, turning on the car, and almost blinding us with his headlights.

“It’s notjustthat,” Trinity shrugged. “No one’s ever kidnapped anyone for me before.”

My kid smiled. She was twisted, just like her dad.

“I killed people for you, babe!” Griff snapped his shoulders back, mocking offenses. “I took a bullet for you – twice!”

“I know.” Trinity waved for him to calm down. “But my dad kidnapped someone as a wedding gift. That’s… sweet. Weird, but sweet.”

Damn straight!I knew my daughter understood me. She’s the apple, and I’m the tree she fell from.

Griffith let out an exasperated sigh. “What? Now I’ve got to break into Fort Knox, or… I dunno… steal the Declaration of Independence for you? Just so I’m not outdone by your old man?”

“Creepy that you think you need to compete with her father,” I grumbled.

Trinity, with a straight face that would have made her mother proud, shrugged. “It’s a start.”

Griff shook his head, letting out a low growl of frustration, mumbling something about preferring it when she had no father, as he stomped off to the guest cabin they were staying in until the wedding.

I moved to walk inside, only to get Charlotte’s palm in my face.

“Oh, no. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” Then, with a sly grin, she added, “You can stay in the cabin. The walls are paper thin, so you can imagine that you’ll heareverythingyour daughter’s up to with her fiancé.”

“Really, Charlotte?” I gagged. “You just had to go there, huh?”