But it was what we had to work with.

  We had a handful of weapons and survival gear. We had help coming from the outside. We had our own instincts and training.

  I just hoped all of that turned out to be enough.

  And so help me God, when this was all over, I was taking down Charlie fucking Butler.

  Chapter 21

  Seth

  There was nothing calm about a night of switching off sleeping and keeping watch, but it was better than a firefight, so there was that.

  Though I’d never spent time in the military myself, I’d known many people who had. Especially fellow cops. One thing I’d heard from countless people was that the battles weren’t the worst part of being in a warzone. It was the quiet between the firefights. The stillness. The unsettling silence while everyone waited until the next bullet or mortar or scream.

  For the first time in my life, I understood what they meant on a visceral level.

  Brandon was asleep. He’d nudged me awake an hour or so ago because he was about to pass out himself. In another couple of hours, we’d trade off again. He’d stayed in the living room when he wasn’t walking around to check windows. I preferred to stay in here with him. Rational or not, it felt safer. Less like I was facing all of this alone, or like something might happen to Brandon when he was in this vulnerable state.

  Once in a while, I’d walk through the cabin to see if there was activity outside. Twenty or so minutes ago, tucked into the windowless bathroom and guided by the glow of an emergency flashlight I’d found, I’d changed the bandage on my arm. It still hurt, and it still oozed a little blood when I peeled off the bandage, but I didn’t see any signs of infection. That would have to do.

  After another walk around the cabin, I returned to the bedroom, where I sat in the darkness, a rifle across my lap, and listened.

  To Brandon breathing. To my own heartbeat. To the sounds of the forest. That last one—I’d always loved listening to the forest at night. It had been one of my favorite parts of staying at my dad’s cabin—the wind, the movement and calls of night animals, even the quiet sounds of the house settling. It was all peaceful and comforting.

  There was nothing peaceful or comforting about it tonight, and it wasn’t just the unfamiliar sounds of an unfamiliar place. Sure, the cabin creaked differently than my dad’s place and rain sounded wrong on the roof, but that wasn’t what bothered me. Hell, I’d probably be just as unsettled in my dad’s cabin. The issue wasn’t the building or the lighting—it was that unshakable sense of being hunted.

  Shuddering, I rolled my shoulders, wincing when the movement tugged at my wound. A chill ran down my spine. Though my knowledge of anatomy was far from impressive, I was well aware of how many landmines there were in the huma body. I’d been first on the scene after a power tool had malfunctioned and sent a chunk of metal into a man’s arm. His wife had been trying to put pressure on the wound while his son called 911, and I took over, putting my full weight on that towel to keep as much pressure as possible. Three minutes later, the ambulance had arrived. I found out the next day that by the grace of God, the man had survived. It had only been sheer dumb luck that I’d been two streets over when the call had gone out on the radio and I’d beaten the EMTs to the scene. Between my first aid, the medics immediately putting him into the ambulance, and the hospital being a mile and a half away, the trauma team had had enough time to save him.

  I’d never gotten a good look at the wound, but the medics told me later that the metal had torn open his brachial artery. Had he been alone, he could’ve bled out in under two minutes.

  Over and over, I wondered how close I’d come to meeting that same fate today.

  The bullet had grazed my upper arm. How close had it come to the brachial artery? I had no idea. Too close, as far as I was concerned. What if it had hit half an inch closer to my body? It was like that feeling of narrowly avoiding a car crash, when I was half an inch from swapping paint and maybe six inches from total disaster. Even afterward, as I left the scene safe and intact, I couldn’t stop thinking about what might’ve been.

  And I hadn’t been entirely safe or intact this time.

  I absently fingered the edge of the bandage as cold water trickled down my spine. I could’ve died today.

  My gaze drifted to the barely visible shape on the bed.

  Brandon could’ve died today.

  I’d worried myself sick for five months that something had happened to Andrew, and then God only knew how close I’d come today to watching something happen to Brandon.

  What if I’d had to hold his blood in his body and hope and pray someone with medical expertise showed up in time? Because we hadn’t been a mile and a half from a hospital this time. We hadn’t had an ambulance on its way. We’d been out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but hostile enemies nearby. In fact, there’d been more on the way to our location, and they probably would’ve finished off Brandon and taken me out too. We’d both be dead, and—

  Somewhere in the night, a familiar crack—quiet but sharp and distinct—jolted me out of my thoughts. The sound tickled those primal instincts that said I wasn’t the apex predator in this landscape. My nerve endings crackled as the hair on my neck stood straight up, and I held my breath, listening over my own pounding heart for more sounds. More context for the one I’d heard.

  A million scenarios exploded across my consciousness in the instant I’d heard the sound, my brain flailing for something familiar to lock on to and analyze to decide if there was danger.

  Finally, I settled on the answer: a stick cracking under weight. Moments later, another.

  I moved carefully through the darkness toward a window. Staying at an angle so I wouldn’t be visible to anyone peering in from outside, I scanned the landscape, which was almost pitch black except for the faintest glow of moonlight sliding through the rainclouds.

  A massive shadow moved between some trees. Then another. Farther in the distance, another stick cracked. I squinted a little, shifting my gaze slightly ahead of the moving shape instead of looking right at it.

  Finally, the shape and its gait resolved itself into something I understood.

  Closing my eyes, I touched my forehead to the cool wall and pushed out a long breath. I was definitely keyed up when it took me this damn long to recognize the sounds of elk moving through the night.

  On somewhat shaky legs, I returned to the place I’d been sitting. As my heartbeat steadily came down, I listened to Brandon breathing slowly and deeply a few feet away. I tried to focus on him rather than the wildlife or the threats outside.

  That, it turned out, wasn’t difficult. I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about him that I still couldn’t quite put into words. I wanted to be angry that he’d come back into my life and brought all this chaos with it. Directly or not, Marcus was dead because of Brandon—we knew that for a fact now. I’d nearly been killed because of him, and there was still no telling if either of us would make it out alive.

  But I believed him that he’d come back to Coeur d’Alene to make things right with me. I believed him that he wouldn’t have come if he’d thought the danger still existed, and that he wanted us to reconnect without all the lies. That he’d had no idea about Lisa or whatever the fuck her name was. Who she really was. That she’d been in Idaho at all, never mind in my house.

  I also believed him that he didn’t quite know who he was anymore. I didn’t know him either. In fact, today had proven just how little I knew him at all, and not necessarily in a bad way.

  The man I’d been dating for three years was cool under pressure, but I couldn’t picture him shouldering an AR-15 and facing down a threat like the one pursuing us now. He knew how to both maneuver himself and cover his partner with the kind of practiced ease that only came from years of training. He wasn’t fearless—fearlessness got people killed—but he was levelheaded and adaptable. When I took the reins and said I knew where to go or how to handle something, he didn’t second guess me. When I’d been down thanks to that goddamned flashbang, he'd made sure I was safely out of the line of fire until I got my senses back, even though that made him momentarily vulnerable.

  Looking back, I didn’t know how I would’ve expected Andrew to handle a gun or a situation like this. It just hadn’t crossed my mind.

  But today, I’d seen Detective Brandon Gaines in action.

  No, the man sleeping nearby was not the man I’d been trying to coax into moving in together. He was someone entirely different on so many levels, I could barely get my head around it.

  And I must’ve been exhausted and rattled and—hell, maybe a little bit concussed, because…

  I liked this version of him.

  A lot.

  It wasn’t that I was turned on by other cops, or that I thought a badass who could hold his own in combat scenarios was necessarily boyfriend material. There was just something mind-blowing about his levelheadedness. His calm, quick thinking under pressure. His willingness to listen instead of insisting he was in charge, and how he knew when and how he should take charge.

  I gnawed my lip as I watched him sleeping.

  An ex had suggested years ago that I had a competency kink. That it didn’t matter what someone excelled at—there was just something insanely sexy and attractive about a person being supremely competent.

  Apparently my ex had been right, and apparently that competency kink extended to a man who could take on a shitshow like this, keep his head together, and aim like a marksman.

  Or I was just grabbing on to whatever I could to keep from losing my mind before all this was over, which was a very distinct possibility.

  The bed creaked with a subtle motion. Then the sheets rustled as Brandon shifted around. My senses again went on high alert, but not for outside danger this time.

  The man I’d dated had always been a restless sleeper, and tonight was no exception. Like he often did, he went still and quiet when he first fell asleep, but after a while, he started murmuring into the pillow. Shifted. Twitched. Every now and then, his breathing would speed up in that way that said he was having a nightmare. I’d learned very early in our relationship how fast that rapid breathing could turn into a full-on night terror.

  I’d also learned how quickly I could soothe him. Despite how messy and tangled everything was between us, I didn’t hesitate. I put a hand on his shoulder so I wouldn’t startle him, then eased down beside him, ignoring my body’s protests and stroking his hair as I whispered, “Hey. It’s okay, baby. Just breathe.”

  Brandon inhaled sharply, his body rigid against mine. Then, little by little, he relaxed, released a ragging breath as the cable-tight tension melted out of his muscles.

  I didn’t dare stay like this for long, or else I’d fall asleep too. Once I was sure he’d fallen back into a deep, calm sleep, I made a slow escape—releasing his hand, loosening my arm over him, turning onto my back, and finally rolling onto my feet. Anything to keep from jarring him.

  As I took my seat again, I didn’t know what to think. About him. About anything.

  I still couldn’t make sense of this man. He was both Andrew and Brandon—someone I knew more intimately than I did anyone else, and a complete stranger.

  And maybe it was because I’d come so close to losing him today, it had jostled some stubborn something loose in me. All I knew for sure was that as he slept and I kept watch for any threats, I couldn’t deny a simple truth—whoever he was, I cared about him. I loved him. I missed the man I’d known. I wanted to protect both the lover and the stranger.

  I don’t know how you are.

  I don’t know how the hell we can make this work.

  But I know I love you, Brandon.

  Chapter 22

  Brandon

  To say the least, it was a rough goddamned night.

  Neither of us slept well despite our exhaustion. We were both too restless. Too jumpy. The slightest sound had us on edge. When I did sleep, nightmares kept me from staying that way for long. Seth tossed and turned. It was fucking miserable.

  And that was to say nothing of our bodies hurting from getting knocked around yesterday. As sore as I was when I dragged myself out of bed at dawn, I didn’t feel like I’d been in a car accident—I felt like I’d actually been hit by a car.

  “I’m getting too old for this,” I groaned as I sat up.

  “For the shitty sleep?” Seth twisted a crick out of his back. “Or the running around in the woods after driving off an embankment?”

  “All of the above.”

  He gave a quiet grunt of agreement and even a little amusement. “Yeah. This fucking sucks.”

  I bit back a remark about how it was probably going to get worse before it got better. Neither of us was awake enough for that dark truth. And I was pretty sure it was the truth, too; unless Will could pull a miracle out of his ass and express airmail the National Guard to our location, the next few hours were going to suck.

  “We should listen in,” Seth muttered as he got to his feet, creaking and cracking all the way. “See if the militia is on the move.”

  I nodded. “I need to call my handler, too.” Rubbing my lower back, I shuffled to the closet where we’d stashed our gear last night. I pulled out the faraday bag and returned to the bed.

  The radio waves were unnervingly quiet. We checked several channels, but… nothing.

  Seth peered at the silent radio as we listened to dead air. “Well, that’s… not ideal.”

  “No, it’s not.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “And I’m not sure if we should leave it on and risk them tracking us, or shove it back in the bag to be safe.”

  Seth pursed his lips. After a moment, he said, “Bag it. Let’s call your handler and then get moving.”

  I nodded, pretending my stomach wasn’t a ball of nerves over the idea of leaving this cabin. No, we weren’t safe here. They could torch it with us in it. Send in another flashbang (which would be way worse indoors than it had been outside). Surround us and wait us out. There were any number of ways they could make the remaining hours or minutes of our lives hell in this place.

  But I didn’t exactly relish the idea of wandering out into the woods again.

  I closed my eyes and exhaled. “I’m sorry, Seth.”

  “Huh? For what?”

  I turned to him. “I should’ve just let Will give me another identity and stash me somewhere. I never should’ve dragged you into this. Now you’re in danger, your housemate is dead, and—”

  The kiss that cut me off seemed to come out of nowhere. One minute, I was rambling and apologizing. The next…

  Oh, fuck.

  I slid a hand behind his neck and held on for a moment. It wasn’t a deep kiss, just a long one. Maybe because he wanted to savor it. Maybe to make sure he’d truly shut me up.

  When he drew back, his eyes were full of too many emotions for me to read. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “But I—”

  “You thought you were in the clear.” He stroked my cheek. “Anyone would’ve. And I’m… I’m glad you came back. It was hard, not knowing.”

  I swallowed. “But is this really any better?”

  “At the moment, no.” He kissed me again before pulling away completely and getting up. “But we’ll get through this. And when we do, I won’t have to wonder what happened to you anymore.”

  I watched him uncertainly. I wished I could be that confident that we were getting out of this. As for the aftermath, when he wouldn’t have to wonder anymore, I wanted to ask what that meant for us. Would we still be together? Or would he send me on my merry way like he had the night I’d first told him the truth?

  I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. This wasn’t the time. Questions about us and our future could wait until we’d both made it out of these damned mountains alive.

  I still wasn’t convinced we’d survive, but I was suddenly filled with renewed determination to do everything in my power to try. I needed us to get through this. Even if we got to the end and he told me that was where we parted ways, at least I’d know he was okay.

  Heart thumping, I slid my phone out of the faraday bag and switched it back on.

  Unsurprisingly, Will answered on the first ring, as if he’d been waiting for my call.

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

  “The plan is for you two to stay put.”

  “Stay—are you insane?” I scoffed. “You just want us to sit and wait for them to come and—”

  “I want you to wait for us to come extract your dumb asses,” Will interjected. “The cavalry’s on its way, kid, but if you start moving around, you’re as liable to get killed by the woods as the idiot rednecks.”

  I scowled, rubbing my forehead. He did have a point.

  “I know it’s not easy,” he went on. “But there’s a reason they tell hikers to stay put if they get lost.”

  “No shit.” I rolled my eyes and let my hand fall to my side. “Because if they’re lost and they keep moving, they’re less likely to be found. The problem is that most hikers aren’t being told to play freeze tag in the middle of a game of cat-and-mouse with heavily armed G.I. Joe wannabes. What the fuck do I do if they show up and firebomb this place?”

  “You boys armed?”

  “Of course we’re armed. But we’re not quite as armed as they are.”

  “Well, shoot back and keep shooting.” He blew out a breath. “Look, I’m not any more thrilled about it than you are, all right? These boys are on law enforcement’s radar for a reason. I don’t like it, and I don’t expect you to.” Another sigh, this one sounding more resigned than anything. “But I’ve got marshals and guardsmen on their way in right now who don’t have the manpower for a full-scale search of the North Cascades.”