Page 7

Thatcher

The mid-morning sun barely paints the sky with its early brushstrokes when I find myself outside, Hunter and Griffin at my sides.

As soon as I put Duke on the bus to school, I called Hunter and Griffin and told them to get their asses over here.

Now, we stand staring up at the aged oak tree outside Duke’s window, its branches stretched like skeletal fingers towards the second story of our home.

“Look at this,” I say, pointing to a cluster of snapped twigs on a sturdy limb.

“Tell me that’s natural.”

Griffin squints up at the tree, then back at me, his tousled hair catching glints of the bright morning light.

“Could be anything, Thatch. Kids playing around, maybe? I used to climb trees all the time when I was Duke’s age.”

“You used to climb trees in other people’s yards? Outside of their bedroom windows?” I question him with a raised brow.

He shrugs, unfazed by my interrogation.

“Sometimes. My neighbors had better trees than us. Not to mention older sisters.” He bounces his brows at me and I roll my eyes in disgust.

Hunter, silent as ever, surveys the tree with a frown creasing his brow.

He isn’t one for needless chatter, but his presence is still reassuring—like having a loyal guard dog by your side.

“Could be an animal,” he chimes in quietly, crossing his arms.

“Yes!” Griffin snaps his fingers.

“A cat...or a raccoon.”

I shake my head.

“You know as well as I do that cats don’t weigh enough to snap branches that thick.”

“Could be a fat cat?” Griffin adds.

“Or a bobcat?”

“Sure,” I shoot back, my tone laced with skepticism.

“Bobcats are known to frequent our quiet downtown neighborhood.”

“Hey.” Griffin holds up his hands in a placating gesture.

“I’m just saying it’s possible. You’ve got to consider all angles before going full-on combat mode.”

“Griff’s right,” Hunter says.

“He is?”

“Not about the bobcat, that’s ridiculous,” Hunter explains.

“But we have to consider every possibility before we jump to a conclusion that someone is spying on your son.”

“Fine,” I reluctantly admit, though my gut tells me otherwise.

“Is there a reasonable animal that might climb these trees and be big enough to break the branches? Duke’s safety is on the line and unless you two have a reasonable alternative, I’m not waiting for things to escalate.”

“Let’s not jump to worst-case scenarios, man,” Griffin presses, his eyes softening.

“We can keep an eye out, set up a camera maybe?”

“Cameras,” I mutter, already running through the logistics in my head.

“Right. That’ll protect my son from Drakon.”

“Thatch,” Griffin’s voice takes on that soothing timbre he uses when trying to talk down a spooked witness.

“You’re on edge, and I get it. But let’s not go hacking down trees or setting up booby traps yet, okay? Especially since it might be some kid in the neighborhood?—”

“Nobody’s hacking down trees,” I reply, though the idea doesn’t sound half bad.

“Yet,” I add while considering the possibility.

A clear line of sight would certainly ease my mind.

But I hold back the instinct.

For now.

“I brought three cameras with me,” Hunter says, pulling three small black cubes from his cargo pants pocket.

“I can always get more and come back if we need them.”

Without waiting for me to agree, Hunter scales the tree, climbing it with the agility and silence of a panther.

In seconds, he’s up above the broken branches looking down on them, examining even closer.

Impressively, he didn’t snap a single one in his climb.

“What’s this?” he asks and pulls a few spears of scrunched up tin foil, tossing them down to me.

“Tin foil,” I say, examining them.

“Someone was…snacking while surveilling?” Griffin offers, his tone only half-teasing.

I shake my head, unsure.

“They seem clean of any food. And they’re shaped like… arrows?”

“Honestly,” Griffin says, “they look like a kids toy. Maybe Duke was climbing this tree himself.”

I press my lips together.

“Maybe. I’d still rather be safe than sorry.”

Above us, Hunter grunts as he screws one of the cameras into the tree from above, disguising it among the leaves .

I don’t remind them that I already have security cameras around the backyard and the front door.

But the window outside Duke’s room is an area I hadn’t considered.

I’m slipping.

I never would have let that sort of blind spot get by me before.

Hunter hops down from the tree as quickly and gracefully as he had climbed up, landing like some sort of superhero on the soft grass below.

“I’ll add the second camera down here at the base of the tree and I’ll put the other camera inside Duke’s room facing out the window. Sound good?”

“Fine,” I concede, stepping away from the tree with a last wary glance.

“We’ll play it your way. But if there’s even a hint of something off...”

“We’ll handle it,” Griffin says, his deep voice firm.

“Together.”

“Right,” I echo, taking a deep breath.

“Together.”

“I’ll chop down the damn tree myself,” Hunter says.

In that moment, standing between the levity of Griffin’s reason and the solid reassurance of Hunter’s resolve, I don’t doubt we’ll find a way to protect what matters most.

My son.

Our peace.

Whatever it takes.

“Do you have eyes on Drakon yet?” I ask Hunter, giving him a side-eye.

“Since yesterday? No .”

The itch to act flares up inside me, the urge to throw myself into the fray and hunt down whoever dares threaten us.

I look up at the tree once more, wondering if it’s him.

Does Drakon know we’re closing in?

Does he know we’re onto him?

“I want to join the stakeout with you this weekend.”

Hunter exchanges a glance with Griffin, and I know that look—they’re about to play good cop, bad cop on me.

“Not yet, Thatcher,” Hunter finally says, his brooding eyes holding mine.

“You’re too close to this. Emotions are high, and we can’t afford mistakes.”

“Come on, I can handle it,” I protest, but even as I say it, I feel the raw edges of my anger and grief, jagged and exposed.

“You haven’t read the file yet,” Hunter says simply.

He’s right.

It’s still in the top drawer of my desk.

“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since you gave me the file?—”

“I’m not scolding you for not reading it,” Hunter corrects, his voice firm, but calm.

“Merely pointing out a fact.”

“So if I read the file top to bottom by the weekend, can I join you on the stakeout?”

“More time, man,” Griffin chimes in, always the voice of reason wrapped in an easy smile.

“We need to verify the intel, make sure we’re not walking into a trap.”

“But—”

“For Duke’s sake,” Griffin says, more firmly this time, clamping his hand to my shoulder with a weight meant to reassure me.

“For Duke’s sake, we need to be sure this isn’t a setup. Yeah?”

“Fine.” The word is a boulder in my throat, heavy and hard.

I can’t just sit back though, can I?

Duke deserves better.

My wife deserved better.

She knew Drakon had been following her.

She’d all but told me, warned me.

And I dismissed her as though she was paranoid, too caught up in finalizing my other mission to remember the one I had wrapped fifteen months earlier…

leaving a scorned man seeking revenge on the death of his brother .

I clear my throat, pushing the ghost of Jenna aside.

“But keep me posted. Every detail.”

“Of course,” Hunter promises.

“We’ve got this, brother.” Then, he takes off to place the other cameras, leaving Griffin and me in the yard at the side of the house.

“All right,” Griffin says, clapping some dirt from his hands.

“What’s our plan for tonight?”

Tonight.

I almost forgot.

It’s Thursday night, only leaving two days before the gala this Saturday.

I need to know everything I can about Allie before then, if possible.

“Allie’s reviewing that new fusion place downtown, and you, my friend, are going to be there having dinner for one.”

“What’s my reason for having dinner alone at a trendy spot downtown?”

“Do you need a reason?”

His brows lift.

“Do you think someone will believe that this… ” He pauses to gesture up and down at himself.

It’s not even noon and he’s dressed in a three-piece Hugo Boss suit.

“…dines alone?”

“I think a man as poised and confident as yourself isn’t afraid to eat alone at a hip place.”

“It’s more believable if I’m there with someone.”

“Well, it can’t be a woman because then you look like a jerk. And it can’t be me because I’ll be undercover watching from the back. So unless you want Hunter there with you?—”

Griffin groans.

“Remember last time he had to play Romeo with me?”

I grin at the memory.

“It isn’t funny,” Griffin says.

“He growled at the hot bartender. Actually growled at her. That shit only works in romance novels…not real life.”

“Reading a lot of romance novels, are you, Griffin?”

He rolls his eyes.

“I think you should read more of them.”

I huff a laugh, unsure if he’s joking or not.

“So I take it you’d rather dine alone for the night than have Hunter join you?”

“Fine,” Griff grumbles.

“All you need to do is flirt with her. Send over a drink. I need to see how she handles an interested guy approaching her,” I explain.

“Got it. Play the charming stranger, gauge her reactions, keep it casual.” Griffin nods, already slipping into his role.

“Not my first rodeo. Any tips on wooing the fair Allie?”

“None yet. Just...be less ‘you’ and more ‘mysterious yet harmless flirty dude,’” I say, trying to inject some levity into the situation.

“She seems the type to be turned off by someone who’s too charming…if that makes sense. Can you dial down the charm, or is it stuck at ‘irresistible’?”

“I make no promises.”

“Griffin—”

“I might be able to dial down the charm, but I’m naturally set to ‘devastatingly handsome,’ so no guarantees.” He flashes a grin that I begrudgingly admit would easily work wonders on any woman…

and Allie is probably no exception to the rule.

“Keep it light. Friendly. Flirty. Don’t be so intense that she can’t stop thinking about you weeks from now. We want her to fall for a normal guy. Not Griffin the Heart Destroyer,” I warn, though part of me wonders if I’m saying it for Griffin’s benefit or my own.

“Thatcher, please. Professionalism is my middle name,” he says with a wink.

“Since when?” I retort, but don’t push it.

I know he can pull this off without turning it into a rom-com cliché.

And I trust Griffin.

But…

I can’t ignore the twinge of unease I feel sending him to flirt with Allie, though I’m not sure why.

She’s no different than any of the other women we’ve vetted and taken on as clients.

And watching how a client handles a man giving her attention helps prepare us for the mission of taking them out into the world to flirt.

I need the intel.

Griffin is merely a tool to learn more about Allie.

He catches me watching him as he straightens his already immaculate tie.

“What, you don’t trust me to keep this professional now?” He arches an eyebrow.

“With any other woman, no question. But Allie...” I trail off, struggling to put words to my convoluted feelings.

She’s smart, a little quirky, annoyingly daring…

and adorable as all hell.

She’s exactly the sort of woman Griffin would seek out and woo for a one-night stand under different circumstances.

He pauses, regarding me curiously.

“You know, now that I think about it, you seem awfully invested in how this all goes down with Allie. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were jealous.”

I scoff, avoiding his gaze.

“Don’t be ridiculous. This is about the job, nothing more.” But even as I say it, a twinge of something I can’t quite name torques in my chest.

Griff studies me for a moment before his expression softens.

“Hey, I get it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to sweep her off her feet or anything. I’ll play my part well enough to get a read on her.”

I nod, hoping I don’t look as transparently conflicted as I feel.

The truth is, I know how easy it would be for a man like Griffin to win Allie over, charm offensive or not.

And the possibility that they could genuinely hit it off tonight leaves me unsettled for reasons I’d rather not examine too closely.

With a weary sigh, I rub my eyes and try to focus back on the matters at hand.

Our job is to find Allie her soulmate.

And that soulmate is clearly not me…

no matter how bright her smile or how effortless her charm is.

I found my soulmate already…

And she’s buried six feet underground.