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  “I saw the dead one outside. Nothing of any interest on him,” Grady said roughly as Addie prepared a pot to boil water in. “Laurel said there were two.”

  “I... There’s one in the cellar,” Addie said, nodding toward the metal cabinet she’d dragged across the door. “I think...I think he’s dead.” Dead. She’d killed a man and kept telling people about it and she wasn’t sure how to feel about it...except Noah had said she should be relieved. Glad she’d protected herself and Seth. And him.

  “If he’s not dead now, he will be,” Grady said, so cool and matter-of-fact it sent a shiver of fear through Addie.

  Grady pulled a small gun from beneath the jacket he still wore. Whatever stabs of guilt from before the attack were gone now, because she could only be relieved she had people to help her.

  Grady moved the cabinet off from the cellar door and eased his way down. Addie grabbed a knife from a drawer and eased her way close to the cellar. While she thought the man was dead, she’d absolutely jump to Grady’s defense on the off chance the man was alive and got the better of him.

  But Grady returned, grim-faced and serious. “Dead,” he said stoically, and yet she could tell he was searching her face for signs of distress.

  Addie straightened her shoulders. “Good.” She wanted it to be good. She headed back for the kitchen and the boiling water.

  “Laurel’s beating herself up over this.”

  “She shouldn’t,” Addie said resolutely. “They’re mobsters. Escaping police custody and doing the most damage possible is part of their job.”

  She grabbed some towels out of the drawer, trying to force her face to look calm and serious. Like Laurel herself. In charge and ready for anything.

  Grady smiled ruefully. “And just think, you and Noah managed to stop a few. I wish I could convince Laurel she’s not to blame, but what we feel and what’s the truth isn’t always the same. Not much we can do about it. Though Laurel will try, till she’s blue in the face and keeling over. We’re all going to try to put an end to this.”

  “Noah thinks we need to lure Peter here. I think he’ll just keep sending men. After all, we know at least one more is out there. I can only imagine more are coming to do more damage.”

  “We’ll handle it.”

  “Are all you Carsons so sure of yourselves?”

  Grady grinned. “Damn right we are. You don’t survive centuries of being on the wrong side of history without knowing how to face the bad guy.”

  But Peter was so much more than a bad guy. Addie thought he was evil incarnate. Even a rational man would have taken Seth long ago. Instead, he wanted her in a constant state of fear. She had no doubt Peter would take away everything she loved before he was done.

  She had to find some Carson bravery and surety. She had to believe in her own power, and theirs.

  Peter couldn’t win this, if she had to sacrifice herself to make sure he didn’t.

  “Grady, I have a plan.” The scariest plan she’d ever considered. Dangerous. Possibly deadly. But if she had to face that to keep everyone she loved safe, well, then so be it.

  * * *

  NOAH WOULD NOT admit to anyone, even his own brother, he was feeling a little woozy. Part the loss of blood, and part the fact that someone stitching him up while he was unmedicated wasn’t really that great of a time.

  “That should do it,” Ty said, and because Noah had spent his childhood shoulder-to-shoulder with his brother and knew all the inflections of his voice, he knew Ty was struggling with all this.

  He also knew the last thing Ty would want was to talk about it.

  “How often you have to do that in the army?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  So Ty didn’t want to talk about that, either. Well, lucky for Ty Noah didn’t have the energy to push. “When am I going to feel normal?”

  Ty raised an eyebrow as he cleaned up the mess he’d made. “You got shot and patched up by passable emergency stitches at best. You need a whole hell of a lot of rest. Worry about that, not when.”

  “I have to keep her safe. Them safe.”

  “You have to rest first.”

  “I don’t have time to rest.”

  Ty sighed heavily and Seth began to move around. A few little whimpers escaped his mouth, but he was still half-asleep.

  “There is too much at stake,” Noah said in a whisper. “Don’t you see that?”

  “Of course I see that. I also see that you’ve been shot. You’re going to have to let some people step up and do the protecting here. We’re all on it. Carsons. Delaneys.”

  “What good has that ever done?”

  “You’re still alive, aren’t you?” Ty returned.

  “Thanks to Addie.”

  “Well, she’s a Delaney herself.”

  Noah scowled, well, much as he could with this terrible exhaustion dogging him. “You’re not hearing me.”

  “I’m hearing you just fine. Enough to know you’re getting mixed up with her.”

  “I’m protecting her,” Noah replied resolutely. He was not mixed up in anything, because Addie was...well, whatever she was. Strong. Vibrant. Everything.

  “Whatever you want to call it,” Ty said with a shrug, having cleaned up all the stitching debris. “You need to rest before you can do more of it.”

  Seth began to whimper in earnest and Ty looked at the baby with something like trepidation in his gaze. “I’ll get Addie.”

  “He won’t bite you, you know,” Noah offered irritably.

  “I’ll get Addie,” Ty repeated, hurrying out of the room.

  “Coward,” Noah muttered, smiling over at Seth. “I’d pick you up, but I think I’d get in a little bit of trouble, kid.” He painfully adjusted so Seth would be able to see him over the edge of his crib.

  “No!” the boy demanded, pounding his little stuffed animal against the sides of the crib.

  “I’d be in a whole heap of trouble.”

  “No,” he repeated forcefully, and Noah had to smile. A year old and he already had Addie’s spirit. A no-nonsense certainty, but with it a certain headstrong quality that wasn’t Addie at all, and still Noah admired it. Because it would serve the boy well as he grew up.

  Seth was damn well going to grow up somewhere where Noah could protect him.

  “Awake already, baby?” Addie swept in, smiling at Seth as she scooped him into her arms. She turned to Noah. “You okay?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “Well, that is encouraging,” she returned. Her voice was...odd. A little high. Not exactly panic, but nerves threaded through it. He watched as she moved around the room, collecting Seth’s diaper change supplies.

  Something was wrong. He’d learned in the past few months that poking at it would only make her insist everything was fine. He had to be sneakier in getting the information out of her.

  Too bad he didn’t have any idea how to be sneaky.

  “Everything okay out there?”

  “Oh, you know.” Addie’s hand fluttered in the air as she laid Seth down on the bed, preparing to change his diaper. “The guy in the cellar is definitely dead. Laurel is blaming herself.” She hesitated a second, only a second, before she said the next part. “Grady and I devised a plan.”

  Noah could tell by hesitation he wouldn’t like the plan at all. Besides, why was she devising plans with Grady?

  “What kind of plan?” he asked, hoping his voice sounded calm and not accusatory.

  She smiled sweetly at him. Too sweetly as she expertly pulled the used diaper off Seth’s wriggling body and wiped him up before replacing it with a new diaper.

  “You need to rest. We’ll catch you all up when you’re feeling a little more up to things.” She finished changing Seth’s diaper and pulled the boy to his feet, tugging his pants back up.

  “Catch
me up now.”

  “Everything is fi—”

  When he started to get up, she hurried to his side of the bed, Seth bouncing happily on her hip. She slid onto the bed next to him, pressing him back into the pillow. Not forcefully enough that he had to lie back down, but he didn’t like the idea of fighting her. Not when she was touching him and looking at him with such concern in her expression.

  “Don’t get up.” She didn’t say it forcefully like Ty had, but plaintively, worry and hurt swirling in her blue eyes. He didn’t want to admit it might come from the same place—care.

  “No!” Seth grabbed Noah’s nose. Hard. And squealed for effect.

  Addie gently pried Seth’s fingers off his face. “You need to rest.”

  “Now is not the time to rest. I can rest when this is over.”

  “Ty’s worried. I can tell he’s worried. Can’t you be a good patient? For your brother?”

  Noah grunted.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Addie smiled. “I’m going to go get Seth something to eat. Why don’t you try to rest?”

  “No! No! No!” Seth lunged at him, smacking his pudgy hands against Noah’s cheek.

  “Gentle,” Addie said soothingly.

  It was all too much, these two people who’d come to mean so much to him no matter how hard he’d tried to keep them out. He’d told Addie the worst parts of himself, and she was still here, wanting to protect him and get him better. That little boy knew him and liked him for whatever darn reason.

  He had to protect them, not just because it was the right thing to do, but because he cared. He needed them, much to his own dismay and fear.

  But dismay and fear were no match for determination. He took Addie’s free hand, gave it a squeeze as her blue gaze whipped to his, looking surprised by the initiation of physical contact.

  Which was a little much. He had kissed her before everything had blown up. Maybe he’d used the distraction excuse, but that didn’t mean...

  Well, none of it meant anything until she and Seth were safe. “Tell me what the plan is, Addie. I care too much about you to pretend I’m not worried about this.”

  She blinked, clearly taken aback by the mention of care, and maybe he should have been embarrassed or taken the words back, but he was too tired. Too tired to pretend, to keep it all locked down.

  “You won’t like it, Noah. I’m sorry. But you have to understand, it’s what I have to do. For Seth. Once and for all.”

  “Explain,” he growled.

  “I’m going to be bait.”

  “Over my dead—”

  “It’ll get Peter here, and if we plan it out right, Laurel will have grounds to arrest him and transfer him to the FBI, which means he won’t be able to escape this time.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  He could tell that doubt hurt her, scared her, but she clearly needed both so she’d start thinking clearly.

  “Or maybe I kill him, Noah. Maybe I do that. I don’t know. What I do know is I can’t keep running. You said so yourself. He has to come here. He doesn’t want Seth, not really. He wants to cause me pain. So, I give him the chance.”

  “We can make that happen without you being bait.”

  “Yes, it’s gone so well so far,” she said drily, pointing to his bandaged side.

  Which poked at his pride as much as the fear settling in his gut. That she would put herself in a situation where she could be hurt, or worse.

  “I won’t allow it.”

  She scoffed, shoving to her feet. Seth complained in his baby gibberish but Addie only paced. “I don’t know why you insist on acting as though you have any say, any right. You don’t get to tell me how to live my life, Noah Carson. You don’t get to boss me around. This is my problem. Mine.”

  “And I don’t know why you insist on acting as though that’s true when I have told you time and time again it’s mine, too. I’m here. I’m injured. I’ve killed to protect you and Seth. It is our problem.”

  She closed her eyes briefly before sitting back down on the bed. “I know. I know. I just... We have to work together but that doesn’t mean... You’re hurt, Noah. We have to play to our strengths. You have to watch over Seth for me. You’ll have to protect him and keep him safe. That’s what I need from you. What we need from you.”

  “Addie,” he all but seethed.

  “I’m counting on you, so you have to do it.”

  “I’ll be damned if I let that madman touch you. If I have to fight you and Grady to make sure that’s the case.”

  “It’s the only way. You’re the only one who can keep Seth safe. I need you to do that for me, Noah. You’re the only one I can trust with him.”

  “I can’t let you do this, Addie.”

  “I know you must think I’m weak or stupid to have gotten mixed up in this thing—”

  “I don’t think that at all.”

  “Then you have to trust me.” She took his hand in hers, Seth still happily slapping at his face while tears filled Addie’s eyes. “Noah, I need you to protect him. He is the most important thing in the world to me. You’re the only one who can do it. I know this kills you, but I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t the only way. I can handle Peter as long as you can keep Seth safe.”

  He couldn’t do this anymore. He was too tired. His head was pounding. Everything hurt, throbbed and ached. He couldn’t fight her like this. He needed to build up his strength first. “We’ll discuss it more tomorrow.”

  She sat there for a few seconds looking imperiously enraged before she let out a slow breath. “Fine.” She seemed to really think over tomorrow. “We can talk more tomorrow. You need to rest.”

  “Yeah.”

  She started to move, but she still had her hand on his, so he grabbed it. Squeezed it. He needed her to understand that plans where she went off and put herself in danger just weren’t an option. Not because she was weak. Not because of anything other than a selfish need to keep her close and safe.

  Addie’s and Seth’s blue eyes peered at him, and he looked at them both, some brand-new pain in his chest. Not so much physical, this one.

  “You’re both important to me,” he said resolutely. As much as he’d wanted to keep care and importance to himself, it was getting too dangerous to keep it bottled up. Too dangerous to try to keep her at arm’s length. She had to know. “So important.”

  Some ghost of a smile flittered across her mouth before it was gone. Then she pressed her lips to his forehead, warm and smooth and somehow reassuring. “You’re important to us,” she whispered. “Now get some rest.”

  He wanted to fight it, but exhaustion won as Addie slipped out of the room, and Noah fell into a heavy sleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  Seth’s schedule was so off it was nearly two in the morning before he was down for the night. Ty was asleep in the other bed in the cabin, having fixed up all the broken-in areas from earlier. Grady was asleep on the couch, snoring faintly.

  Addie slipped into Noah’s room and carefully laid Seth in his crib, watching him intently.

  She would sacrifice anything for this boy. Including herself. It hadn’t been an option before, but now she had people she could trust. People she could entrust.

  Noah would protect him. The Carsons and Delaneys would give him love. Stability. Family.

  She turned to Noah, asleep on the bed.

  Knowing what she was going to do tomorrow she had to accept this might be the last time she spoke with him. She wouldn’t allow herself to consider she might not survive, but she had to consider the fact that Noah might be so angry at her he’d never speak with her again.

  She had to do what she had to do. For Seth, and for the only opportunity for a future that didn’t involve running, losing or fighting for her life.

  She slid onto the empty side of the bed, her heart bea
ting a little too fast no matter that she was sure. Sure what she was going to do tonight, and sure what she was going to do tomorrow.

  Noah stirred next to her and instead of staying on her own side, she scooted closer to him. The warmth of him, the strength of him. It was such an amazing thing that time and luck had brought her this man who wanted to protect her.

  “Morning?” he murmured sleepily.

  “No. Middle of the night.” She should let him sleep. She should insist he rest. But she only had this one moment. She couldn’t waste it. She pressed her mouth to his bearded cheek. “Would you do something for me?”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Well, it’s a naked kind of something. Night seems appropriate.”

  She felt his whole body go rigid, and she was almost certain she could feel his gaze on her in the darkened room.

  “Am I dreaming?” he asked suspiciously.

  She allowed herself a quiet laugh and slid her hand under the covers and it drifted down his chest, his abdomen and then to the hard length of him. “Feels pretty real to me.”

  “That’s a terrible line,” he muttered, but he didn’t shift away. Which might have been because of the injury on his opposite side, except he didn’t shrink from her intimate touch. If anything he pushed into it.

  “Noah, I want to be with you.” She kissed his cheek, his jaw. “I’ve been pretending I don’t, but it seems so silly to pretend with all of these horrible things going on. I don’t want to pretend anymore, but if you don’t want me—”

  His mouth was on hers, fierce and powerful, before she could even finish the sentence. He carefully rolled onto his good side and his arms wound around her, drawing her tight against his body, trapping her own hand between them.

  “I shouldn’t,” he said against her mouth. “God knows I shouldn’t.” But he didn’t let her go, and his mouth brushed her lips, her cheeks, her jaw.

  “Why not?” she asked, if only because he hadn’t stopped touching her, holding her, kissing her.