Wyoming Cowboy Marine Page 18

  Cam cleared his throat, trying to get past the emotion clogged there. “You might find that someone else would come along and be more—”

  “They wouldn’t be you. I don’t need a million men lined up for me to make my choice. I just need the best.” With her free hand she reached out and cupped his face. “I don’t know a lot of men, but I know you’ll always be among the best I know. You cared about me when you didn’t have to. You wanted to make things right because they should be. You gave me a choice when I’d never had one before. So, here’s my choice. I choose you. I love you.”

  It humbled him. Her strength. That she could put her feelings into words like that. “I don’t have the words...”

  “That’s okay. I’ll give you a few days after you’ve been shot to find them.”

  He chuckled. “I guess we should work on that first date,” he said, his voice coming out raspy at best.

  “You’ll need to lose this.” She tapped the IV.

  “I’ll get there.”

  She rested her head on his chest again. “God, I’m tired.”

  “Rest. We’ll both rest. Together.” Because he was determined to make together work, no matter what came their way.

  Epilogue

  One month later

  Hilly looked at the little cabin on Delaney property. For the past month of building her life, she hadn’t been able to be shy about accepting help. When you had nothing, you had to accept other people giving you something.

  Now she had a cabin that had once been Laurel’s. She had two part-time jobs—waitressing some nights at Grady’s saloon, Rightful Claim, and cashiering at Jen’s general store during the day. And her arms were full of college applications.

  She stepped into the cabin, grinning to herself.

  Over the past few weeks, Sarah had helped her with the paperwork and proving she’d done the homeschooling work of a high school diploma with James. She knew she’d still run into some technical problems applying for school, but this was what she wanted to do.

  Cam was recuperating, though she was still a little afraid she’d hug him too hard and he’d keel over. It was difficult to watch a strong man struggle with having some physical limitations, but there was such a wonderful feeling in helping him sometimes. In that process of helping him, she’d received the best gift of all from Cam.

  She knew what she wanted to do with her life. The college applications were to local nursing programs. If that didn’t work out, Hilly would find something else similar, something in the medical field to help people. One way or another.

  Satisfied, she placed the applications on the kitchen table. She’d spent the first week after everything had gone down in Sarah’s house in Cheyenne, but she hadn’t liked it. Too many buildings, too many people.

  Zach had laughed at her when she’d told him that, because in the grand scheme of things, Cheyenne was on the small side. Still, Hilly had wanted to go back to Bent. It truly was small and she could go out to her mountains that felt like home whenever she wanted.

  She knew it hurt Sarah some, but Hilly had promised herself to spend this first year of freedom doing what felt right, what she wanted. At the end of the year, she’d reevaluate.

  She visited James in jail weekly, and she was prepared to testify on his behalf when his case went to court. Zach hadn’t been pleased, but he’d listened to her. Sarah had supported her wholeheartedly, though Hilly knew some of that stemmed from being desperate to forge a positive relationship with the daughter she’d thought she’d lost.

  Hilly had gone with Zach once to visit Ethan in the care center he’d been assigned to. It had been difficult for all of them, but he did seem to be making some progress.

  It was a weird thing, this life in the outside world. Thrilling and challenging. Wonderful and painful. In the end, she was so, so glad to be exactly here. Living both sides of it.

  A knock sounded on the door, then it opened. Cam stepped in.

  Hilly fixed him with a stern look. “You better have the doctor’s permission to be walking around without your cane, mister.”

  He grinned at her, and her stomach flopped pleasantly. Oh, she loved this man—a little more every day.

  “Just came from my checkup. Cleared to walk without a cane. Assured I shouldn’t have to have any more surgeries.”

  She crossed to him and gave him a gentle hug. “That’s great news.”

  He nodded toward the table full of applications. “What’s all this?”

  She’d kept the college plans a secret from everyone except Sarah. It had been strangely nice to have a secret with her mother. She was getting closer and closer to thinking of Sarah as her mother.

  “I’m going to try to go to nursing school,” she said, pressing a hand to her stomach. Planning her life in the outside world still caught her sideways sometimes. Scary and thrilling and with a whirlwind of choices that left her breathless. Even though she was sure, it was still a whole thing.

  “Hil. That’s great. That’s perfect.” He squeezed her tight. “You’ll be a fantastic nurse.”

  She squeezed him back. Her Cam. Always ready to hold her hand and be her anchor. To support her and encourage her.

  They’d had their first date, and a few more since he’d been out of the hospital. Tonight she’d be by his side at Laurel and Grady’s wedding. It was wonderful. The them they were building.

  Of course, there was more she wanted, but she’d held off because of his injuries. He’d hate if he knew that was why, so she hadn’t told him.

  But he was walking without his cane, and his color was back. She knew he was still in pain sometimes, but he was healing. They were both healing.

  “I know we were supposed to go out to lunch before we got ready for the wedding, but—”

  “You want to work on your applications. That’s fine. I can—”

  “No. That isn’t what I want to do,” she said, taking his hand. She led him to the bedroom.

  He was grinning when she turned to him inside the room. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he pulled her close.

  “I love you, Hilly,” he said seriously. So serious. So sure. So good. And so very hers.

  “I love you, too.” Without a doubt. She might still be ignorant about a lot of things in the outside world, but the one thing she’d been given her whole life, even from a complicated man who’d done some bad things, was love. And now she’d been opened up to so much more.

  So, she’d believe in it. Always.

  * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Undercover Justice by Nico Rosso.

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  Undercover Justice

  by Nico Rosso

  Chapter One

  Stephanie Shun didn’t steal cars. Her father had always told her if there was a car she wanted that someone wasn’t willing to sell, there were people they could hire to steal it for her. But she’d stopped listening to him long ago, around the time she decided that his criminal empire tucked into a corner of Chinatown, San Francisco, wasn’t the legacy she wanted to be buried under.

  And yet here she was, crouched next to a car in a dark parking lot, prying the plastic cover off the side-view mirror. To anyone who might catch her, it would look like she was a car thief, and that was exactly what she wanted. This job was the first step to ingratiating herself with a crew of drivers who contracted out to the worst criminals on the West Coast, and it had to look perfect. Nobody could know she was stealing her own car.

  Once she had the side-view mirror cover separated out enough to spot a collection of thin wires, she placed a plastic wedge in the gap and pulled a multi-tool from her belt. Even if it was her car, bought and paid for with the profits from her various investments, it was still a crime to threaten the bodywork of the sleek Mercedes. Striving to minimize any exterior damage, she selected one of the wires and stripped the insulation from a section using the knife of the multi-tool.

  Footsteps froze her. It was after three o’clock in the morning, and still someone was up on the second floor of the private parking lot to retrieve their car. One of the hazards of committing crimes in a city as populated as San Francisco: there was activity at all hours. She coiled her body by the front wheel, in case anyone was searching below the chassis. The buzzing lights on the concrete ceiling created deep shadows for her to hide in. She knew she was undetected by the security camera, but an individual might spot her, even though she wore all black and carried a black bag.

  The quick pace of the footsteps put her mind at ease. A guard would’ve been less direct, but this person had no intention of lingering in the parking lot. They got into their car and closed the door. Stephanie used the sound of the engine starting to mask her retrieving an electronic device from her bag. Headlights turned on three rows over, making her shift her feet so they were in the shadow of the wheel next to her.

  But the other car didn’t move. Checking their phone? Waiting for the heater to kick in? The night was cold, but Stephanie shivered with a deeper chill. Her watch read 3:21 a.m. The instruction from the driving crew boss was that she had to have a stolen car on the road by 3:30 a.m., when he would text her the next move. If she botched this job, it would kill her chances to get in with the crew. And if that happened, the ultimate target could slip through her fingers.

  This was the one shot to find human traffickers who’d eluded law enforcement for too long. And while Stephanie had access to the law’s resources, she didn’t have to play by their rules. That was the point of re-forming Frontier Justice over a hundred years after her ancestor had first helped create the organization. The vigilante group wasn’t exactly legal then, or now, giving her the space she needed to go after the bad guys.

  The other car in the parking lot finally chugged into gear and crept up the aisle. It was a risk, but the clock was ticking, so she resumed her work on stealing the Mercedes before the other car completely descended this level. She attached a small metal clip to the exposed wire in the side-view mirror and plugged that into the electronic device in her hand. The dim screen immediately started scrolling with information taken from the central computer of the coupe. Pushing buttons on the side of the screen narrowed the focus of the data scan until she located the factory-set key codes for the car.

  She adjusted a mode switch on the side of the handmade device, pressed another button to broadcast the captured code and the doors to the Mercedes unlocked. Of course, she could’ve done all that with the key fob that sat in her Pacific Heights condo, but that wouldn’t make this theft look legit to the driving crew.

  After detaching the clip from the wire and replacing the side-view mirror cover to a near-perfect standard, she eased open the passenger-side door and pushed her bag into the footwell. She climbed over the seat and slid behind the steering wheel. A press of the button on the dash brought the Mercedes purring to life.

  She was going to miss driving this car. Undoubtedly, once she delivered it to the driving crew they’d replace the VIN and sell it on the black market. All the registration paperwork was tied to a shell company she owned that could never be traced back to her, thus maintaining her reputation for the criminals.

  The sleek two-door coupe slithered from its parking spot and down the aisle. She checked her watch; still on time. Barely. As she eased the car down the circular ramp, she wondered if maybe she should’ve stolen her Audi that was parked one floor away. Or the Subaru tuned for street racing in her condo garage. But as much as she loved the handling of the coupe, she was ready to move on from this Mercedes. One of the last passengers she’d had was a first date that had fizzled as soon as the tech entrepreneur’s eyes had lit up while asking her about her father. It wasn’t the first time a man was more interested in dating Eddie Shun’s daughter rather than seeing her as simply Stephanie Shun.

  All for the best, she sighed to herself. She’d gotten her thrills collecting the pieces to Frontier Justice and shooting at armed guards on a multimillion-dollar estate near San Jose during their very first mission. The first mission of this century, at least.

  And there was no way that date would’ve acted as lookout while she’d stolen her own car.

  She drove to the front gate of the parking lot, which lifted automatically, and slipped through, casually using her hand to obscure her face for the security cameras. Any guard there would’ve recognized her, but the whole gambit had to be airtight. If the information Frontier Justice had collected from police and FBI communications, as well as underworld rumors, was correct, the driving crew was tied to human trafficking run by the Seventh Syndicate, and those bastards didn’t miss a detail.

  One block away from the parking garage, the phone she’d bought and set up for this mission buzzed with a text from the head of the driving crew, Ronald Olesk. She’d never actually met Olesk, but had made contact through a friend of a friend of a friend. The message was simple. A time and address.

  “Son of a...” Tension rang in tight coils up her spine. She had ten minutes to get there. At this time of night, it shouldn’t be a problem. The real trouble was the address. It was a warehouse owned by her father.

  * * *

  THE LAST TIME Arash Shamshiri had robbed someone, he thought he was going to die. Maybe not that night, but he’d known that if he’d continued with that life he would’ve wound up with a bullet in him. Yet here he was, letting his muscle memory take over as he picked the lock to an office on the second floor of a warehouse catwalk.

  He’d already cased the patterns of the guards from an upper window. Dim lights high in the warehouse turned everything into a mosaic of black and green. He’d creaked the window open during a gust of wind that had made the whole building groan. Climbing across girders and down steel supports had been the easy part. Now he was on the same level as three of the guards, scraping his old lock picks against the tumblers and knowing any second there would be shouting followed by shooting.

  Luckily he hadn’t completely lost his touch and the lock gave way. The guards were at the farthest point of their rounds. He opened the door just wide enough to slide inside the office. Breathing slow in an attempt to keep his heart from pounding out of his chest, he crouched among the desks and file cabinets. Somewhere in this mess was the single piece of paper he’d been tasked to find.

  It was a test. He’d known that when the instructions arrived in a text from Ronald Olesk. But it was a test he couldn
’t fail. Arash knew how these gangs worked: prove yourself and you were in the door. Keep proving yourself and you gained their trust.

  Once those murderers thought he was one of their own, he could strike.

  But before he could think about revenge, he had to find the schedule for Eddie Shun’s produce trucks. The most up-to-date one would be on the top of any stack. From the way the broccoli and brussels sprouts were smelling on the warehouse floor, it was time to move them out. The drivers would probably arrive in just a couple of hours.

  He checked a clock on the wall. Damn, it had taken longer to get into the office than he anticipated. The text from Olesk had been very specific. Arash was to get to the location on foot. His ride away from the warehouse would be arriving at 3:40 a.m. and departing before 3:41 a.m. He had four minutes to find the piece of paper and get to the street.

  Panicking wouldn’t get this job done. He focused on the space. He’d been a truck driver before, making predawn deliveries while working his way through trade school. Manifests and schedules were always flying through these offices. The large desk at the center was the hub. He crept there and craned his head up to look over the surface.

  The first thing he saw was one of the guards walking past the safety-glass windows that made up one side of the offices. Arash froze and his pulse thundered in his ears. He knew if he ducked out of the way too quickly the movement would tip the guard off. The man’s silhouette continued past the windows, then around another stretch of the catwalks.

  Arash eased out a breath and refocused on the desk. Askew on one corner was a clipboard. Its grease-stained edges showed that it had traveled from the warehouse floor and back up to these offices. Keeping his eyes on the front windows, he stretched his arm out and snatched the clipboard back.

  The content on the page was illegibly dark. He had a very powerful flashlight in his jacket pocket, but that would surely alert every guard in the place that he was picking through their business. He got as low as he could and crept toward the front windows to let the warehouse light bring the text into focus. The date at the top was today and the shipping times were all laid out in a grid with truck numbers and cargo.