Page 89 of Through the Fire

“You’ll love it,” Sarah said.

“True.” Jules smiled. “Everything seems so happy and easy now that we’re not running anymore.”

Sarah raised her bottle of beer. “I can drink to that. Here’s to no longer hiding.”

“Here’s to no more explosions,” Grace added, lifting her own drink.

“No more fires.”

“Or snipers.”

“Or helicopters dropping bombs.”

“Or drug lords who want to kill us.”

“Or murderers who live in our house.”

Kit blinked, a little overwhelmed at hearing everything that had happened to this tiny town over the past few months. What had she been thinking to move here?

But then she looked at the people around her, knowing that she had real partners and friends and a sweet, drone-building Sasquatch of her very own. Monroe resembled a postapocalyptic deathscape, sure, but it had become her postapocalyptic deathscape.

She raised her glass. “Here’s to mountain folk with good aim.”

“Hear, hear!”

Taking a drink, Kit lowered her glass and looked around the room at her new partners and friends. The sound of Wes’s laughter filtered in from the kitchen, and she smiled. It had been worth the frustration and loneliness and fear and even the painful hole in her leg to have found her place in this weird mountain town she’d grown to love.

Finally, against all the odds, she was home.