“And I need a shower.” Garrett walked over to the door. “Then, wake up your daughter. I have some eggs that need gathering.” He winked and headed inside.
Ham followed, poured himself another cup of coffee.
The stairs squeaked and he looked over to see Orion coming down. He wore a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and was walking barefoot. “You’re up early,” he said to Ham.
“So are you.”
“I heard Garrett talking and thought . . . well, um . . .”
“He’s in the shower. But my guess is you’ll get a yes.”
Orion ran a hand through his brown hair. “Yeah, well, maybe this isn’t the right time. It’s only been a couple months—”
“Love doesn’t have a timetable. If you’re ready, then . . .” Ham took down a mug. “Coffee?”
“Black and strong, please.”
“By the way, are you up for flying to DC tomorrow? There’s a fundraiser White wants the team to attend.” He handed Orion the mug.
Orion leaned a hip against the counter. “A fundraiser. Right.”
“That’s what we’re calling it. For now.”
Orion took a sip of coffee, and Ham was turning to go back outside when a cry sounded from an upstairs bedroom.
Orion startled, but Ham put down his coffee and was already heading toward the stairs.
The old farmhouse had a plethora of bedrooms, but Aggie was in the one at the top of the stairs, first one on the right, with the twin beds and a faux fireplace. He knocked on the door, then let himself in.
Aggie sat up in bed crying, her blonde hair in knots, the covers clutched to her chest. The sun streamed blood-red fingers into her room, through the eyelet curtains.
“What’s going on?” Ham asked and sat down on the bed, pulling Aggie into his arms.
“I dreamed about Mama. I dreamed that . . . that a bad man was after her. That he was trying to hurt her again.”
Again. Ham’s jaw tensed. “Shh. He’s dead, honey. He’s not going to hurt her.” But oh, he wanted to dig into that statement. And frankly, couldn’t stop himself from adding, quietly, “Did he hurt her a lot?”
She drew in a shaky breath. “She tried to hide it, but . . . yes. Sometimes he came into our room and dragged her out, and I’d hear shouting in the hallway.” She leaned back. “He scared me.”
Ham’s chest had fisted into a hard knot—yes fury, but horror too—but he kept his voice gentle as he pressed his hand to her cheek. “Did he . . . did he hurt . . .” Oh please, no. “You?”
Her eyes widened. “No. He called me his sladkaya. His sweetie. He liked to tell me stories about his life in Russia. He never . . . he never hurt me.”
Ham had to tighten his jaw against the images of a terrorist talking to, even touching, his daughter.
Thank you, Signe. Whatever she’d done to appease Tsarnaev, it was enough to keep Aggie safe.
Ham could weep with the unexpected, deep prick of compassion.
“Can we call her?” Aggie reached for her unicorn, digging out the phone inside. A small flip burner phone. He kept the phone off to conserve the battery, but Signe had given it to her daughter to keep in touch with her.
Spy craft.
He hated that he suspected it of her, but of course Signe was a spy. There was no other way his brain could compute the choices, the sacrifices she’d made.
Aggie handed him the phone. “Please?”
Wait. But his daughter was staring at him with those big, pretty eyes, so much longing in them, and they just reached in and wrapped around his heart.
He powered on the phone. Felt the bang of his heart as he dialed the only contact in the list.
Listened to it ring. And ring. And ring.
No voicemail. The call simply disconnected.
Ham stared at the phone. Glanced up at Aggie. A tear streaked down her cheek.
“She’s not coming back, is she?” Aggie said.
Ham flipped the phone closed. Pulled her against him. And tried to keep the ball of fear—and fury—in his chest from exploding.
Today, the whole world would be his.
Orion just needed to figure out the right words.
He sat across from Jenny at Shakey’s Pizza, the smell of rosemary, garlic, and basil rising from the open kitchen to her right, a fire crackling in the hearth to her left, country music playing in the background, and the ring box burning a hole in his pocket.
Jenny, I love you. Will you marry me?
Eight words, and they should be easy enough, but they stuck like paste in his throat.
Of course she’d say yes. Right?
He’d been pretty jazzed for the last twenty-four hours, frankly. It started when he reached over Ham’s shoulder and snagged Aggie, nearly out of midair. Orion’s heart had lodged into his ribs when he saw the little girl dangling from the Ferris wheel, and he climbed up behind Ham without a thought to his knee.
Which worked perfectly, thank you.
Aggie had crawled into his arms and clung to him like he was, well, Jake. Unca Jake, Aggie called his teammate—and Orion didn’t want to name it jealousy but something inside him did a hooyah when she asked him today to play basketball with her. Had high-fived him after he taught her how to shoot a hook shot.
Ham’s daughter was adorable, with her blonde hair and cute smile, and frankly, it had him wondering what his own kids might look like.
Someday.
He might be getting the cart ahead of the horse.
But he’d also been a hero to the kids trapped in the other basket. He’d stayed with them until the firemen extended the ladder to their perch.
Jenny had looked at him differently when he climbed down too. He couldn’t put a finger on the change in her, but something . . . well, he hadn’t really been on his game since the fall on Denali, and all this PT had made him feel like an invalid.
Not anymore.
So, yeah, he felt the wind under his wings a little, and maybe that’s why he’d followed Garrett into the barn this afternoon, after lunch.
He’d cornered Jenny’s foster dad in the winery as the man was checking on a batch of fermenting wine.
The place smelled of yeast and oak, big fans keeping the space cool even as the autumn air sneaked inside. Orion wore a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans and probably should have dressed up for this event, but since Garrett wore the same thing, maybe it would earn him points.
Jenny had told him that Garrett and Jenny Marshall—Jenny called them Papa G and Mama J—had given her the home she never thought she’d have when she went into foster care. Somehow in his gut, Orion knew that asking Garrett for his blessing to marry Jenny was the right move.
Garrett only confirmed it when he said, over his shoulder to Orion, “I love her like a daughter, so if you hurt her, you’ll answer to me.”
That took the wind out of his sails a little. Still, “I won’t hurt her.”
Garrett had been inspecting a temperature gauge, but he turned and pulled his readers off his nose. “Good. Because Jenny is a special girl. She’s one of the bravest women I know. When she first came to us, she’d gone through so much, but she refused to let it beat her. She went out for basketball and made varsity in a year. Came home every day after practice and shot baskets for hours, in the dark, even after it snowed, when her hands were ice cubes. She doesn’t do anything halfway.”