Page 18 of I’ll Be There (Montana Fire #4)

“You don’t think...” Reuben said. “He couldn’t be coming here, could he?”

“Let’s find out. We have his number...let’s hope his phone has GPS.” Conner sat back down at the table. “This is probably where you guys need to walk away, disavow any knowledge of what I’m about to do.”

“What, hack into the FBI or something?” Pete said.

“No. It’s an anonymous site on the dark web where you can plug in anyone’s cell phone number, and it pings cell towers until it comes up with a last-known call. Then it triangulates it with two others and gives an approximate location. But the dark web is...well, sort of like the black market.”

“I am so in,” Romeo said.

Conner glanced at him as he typed. “Not a word to John Christiansen.”

Romeo nodded, and Conner pulled up the site, plugged in the number, his gut churning. “Why would Blankenship send someone to kill Blue? Or me? I thought—he was supposed to be tracking down Justin’s killer.”

“Or...he’s trying to track down Justin,” Micah said quietly. “Blue seemed pretty sure Justin was still alive—”

“He’s not alive. I asked—he was shot, his body burned by the Sons of Freedom. I couldn’t believe it so I asked Blankenship for the autopsy. He gave me dental records, and the autopsy showed the broken leg he’d gotten in the car accident our parents died in. It was him.”

“Maybe he’s after something Justin knew,” Pete said. “You said Blue had a thumb drive, right?”

“She told us in the hospital that Justin thought that maybe the Sons of Freedom secretly worked for the government, or at least had a government contact that benefited from their domestic terror attacks.”

“You think...maybe that contact was Blankenship?” Reuben asked.

Conner looked at him. “I’ve been calling him for years, asking for information. And for years he’s shut me down. Maybe it’s because if I dig a little, I’ll find something he doesn’t want me to know.”

His search finished and alerted to a GPS ping. He loaded in the lats and longs and pulled up a map.

Stared at the round red dot, blinking even as it moved.

“He’s in Minneapolis.”

Micah leaned over his shoulder. “And heading north.” He gave Conner’s shoulder a squeeze. “He’s following the phone’s GPS.”

“Which means, he’s on his way to Deep Haven.”

Conner glanced at Micah. “I have five hours to figure out what part Blankenship plays in this.” He gave a wry smile. “This is the part where you say, ‘Don’t do it, Conner. You could go to jail.’”

Micah just gave him a grim smile. “I showed up just in time for the fun. Now this is what I call a bachelor party.”

“We should have just eloped.” Liza sat on the deck of the Christiansen family resort lodge, holding a bowl of homemade ice cream.

“What? And miss all this fun?” Grace was paging through a catalog of hairstyles, holding up pictures now and again. “You don’t want to elope—think of all those people waiting to see you walk down the aisle.”

“With nowhere to go afterward!”

“We’ll find a place.” Mona got up, looking over Grace’s shoulder. “Yeah, that one.”

Grace held up the picture of a woman with her long hair fashioned into two disks atop her head. “The Princess Leia look?”

“Funny. How about I just keep my hair as it is? Long. Down. Normal.”

“Because it’s not a normal day,” Ivy said. She’d arrived earlier with their wedding license, filed, and ready to be signed on Monday. “You want it to be special.”

Conner, coming through when she needed him. So why was she so unsettled by Pete and Reuben’s appearance this afternoon? It wasn’t like Conner was in any danger. He probably just wanted to spend more time with Jim Micah.

“Trust me, it’ll be special when the guests have to eat hot dogs in the parking lot of the church,” Liza said.

“Really, it’s that bad?” Ingrid Christiansen had come out on the deck carrying cookies to accentuate the ice cream.

Overhead the heavens dished out brilliance in millions of diamonds, sparkling against the black vault of night. A slight breeze whispered through the pines, and in the darkness a loon called, lilting above the darkened water.

She would have liked to spend tonight walking on the beach with Conner, remembering that time he’d escaped the fire line to find her painting onshore. She’d been drawn there early with the urge to pray for him.

When he’d found her, he appeared drawn, wrung out. He’d told her later that he’d nearly been killed in a flashover.

Her first real peek into his world.

That day he’d told her about his parents’ death, and right then her heart had begun to soften—dangerously soften—toward this man who had turned to her and said, “You bring me out of my darkness.”

Those words found soft soil, dug deep.

She couldn’t escape it, the sense that something might not be right.

Please, let him not be in darkness tonight, Lord.

She heard Grace answer her mother, listing all the locations they’d tried—and failed—to secure. The churches in town, the fire station, the school—

“And the ice arena won’t work?” Ingrid said, passing the plate of cookies. Liza took one. Chewy, filled with sweet nuts.

“No,” Grace said, not looking at Liza. “It’s too dark for a wedding reception.”

Oh, bless her.

“We talked to the folks at the ski hill today. They said we could use the chalet—it’s off season, so that might work, but...”

“That’s at the top of the mountain.” Ingrid put the plate down. “And expensive.”

Grace nodded.

Liza wanted to just put her head in her hands. “Again, to my point—we should just elope. In fact, Conner suggested it, more than once.”

Grace gave her a look. “I mentioned that Max and I eloped, right?” She glanced at her mother, who shook her head. “I was afraid to tell my parents—I knew how disappointed they’d be. So...we hid it.”

“And sneaked around like naughty teenagers,” Ingrid said. “John was getting ready to hold Max at gunpoint.” But she winked at Grace. “By the way, I tucked Yulia in bed with a story. But she wants her mama to kiss her goodnight.”

Grace set down her bowl. “I’ll be back.” She headed for the door, stopped. Turned. “Don’t elope while I’m gone.”

Liza grinned, and Mona laughed. “I’ll keep her here.”

“How about the VFW?” Liza leaned back on the lounger.

Silence, and she looked up. Mona wore a look, her lip caught in her teeth.

“What?”

“What about the bingo tent?”

“The...bingo tent?”

“Yeah.” Mona was just finishing her ice cream. “You know, every year during Fisherman’s Picnic, they have that giant bingo tent that the Catholic church sets up next to the VFW. For charity. You could...set up the bingo tent.”

“In the parking lot of the VFW?”

“Okay, maybe not there, but...it’s a venue.”

Liza shrugged. “It’s better than a shelter at the rec park, I suppose.”

A breeze lifted her hair and ran chilly fingers up her skin. She shivered. Oh, super, now she’d catch the cold of the century.

If she were in Cancún on her honeymoon, she wouldn’t be catching a cold.

Her phone vibrated and she pulled it out. Conner.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Just his voice turned her body warm. She walked off the deck and onto the trail toward the lake, with the moon trailing a golden finger across the waves.

“I just wanted to apologize for not being there today.”

He sounded normal. Nothing life threatening, and her chest muscles eased. “Are you okay?”

A pause, however, and it had her slowing.

“Yeah. I’m...I had something come up, and I need to...well...” He let out a breath. “It’s not important—I don’t want you to worry. Pete said something about the venue falling through. Again.”

But she was stuck on I don’t want you to worry .

Which, of course, only made her worry. “Conner, what aren’t you telling me?”

Another pause, as if he might be conjuring up words, not the right ones.

“Conner Young, if you are doing something dangerous two days before we get married—so help me, what has Pete gotten you into?”

“No, it’s nothing like that.” He even added a chuckle, which, okay, made her believe him. “It’s just something Micah and I are doing together. Old stories, unfinished business.”

Now he really had her curiosity ignited, but he had a past with Jim Micah that he rarely talked about. Darkness about his military life, and she didn’t want to pry open old wounds. “Be careful.”

“Definitely.”

She walked down to the edge of the dock, sat. “And you’ll be back by tomorrow night?”

“The rehearsal. Yes. ”

“Okay.”

The loon called again, and she dipped her foot into the cool water. “Where are you right now?”

“I’m at Seth Turnquist’s place. It’s up the trail, very secluded. Amazing view. I’m on his deck, watching the stars.”

Frogs chirruped on his end of the phone, and she imagined him sitting on an Adirondack chair. Maybe wearing his faded jeans, a T-shirt, smelling of the forest.

A silence fell between them, easy, and she longed to be leaning back against his chest as they watched the same stars.

“Lize, can I ask you something?”

Or maybe she’d turn in his arms, feather her lips against his.

She sighed. “Mmmhmm.”

“I was thinking about what you said about Deep Haven, and...honey, are you saying you don’t want to go to Montana?”

Oh. She hadn’t expected...her throat tightened, scratchy now. “I...oh, Conner, I didn’t know how to tell you. But...I just can’t sit in your fifth wheel, thinking about you out there. And—”

“I built you a house.”

“You...what?”

“For a wedding gift—that’s why I was late. I built you a house. It’s not big, but it’s on a couple acres, and it overlooks the mountains, and there’s a little shop in the back for your pottery. And...oh, shoot, Liza, I should have asked. I thought...”

She closed her eyes against the heat in them. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

He let out a small noise through the line. “Not if it’s not what you want.”

“It is what I want—really. It’s amazing, and I can’t wait to see it...”

And there was the pause that said it all.

“But.”

She drew in a breath. “It’s not Montana. It’s not Deep Haven.”

“It’s the smoke jumping,” he said quietly.