Page 24 of Tormented Hearts

“I’ll go as your guard,” he broke over any arguments she may have. “But it will be tough.”

“I don’t care. I have to fulfill my father’s last wishes.”

“Then I’ll get a plan together. Speak to my team.” He needed time to ensure they could safely navigate that part of the mountain, let alone escape more threats. And no way in hell was he taking her into unfamiliar wilderness with only minutes of daylight left.

Or mercenaries still orbiting her.

They drove the rest of the way to the ranch in silence, and he parked in a line of Black Heart Security vehicles.

For a moment, neither spoke. Sinead stared down at her fingers looped together in her lap.

“I’ll go speak to the guys now,” he said.

She opened the door and jumped out. “Willow told me to come find her anytime.”

Even if he wanted to say more, he couldn’t, because she was gone in a blink, walking in a fast clip to the barn.

He killed the engine and sat with it for a minute, letting the plan take shape in his head—routes, gear, how far they could get in a day.

He climbed out of the truck and was halfway across the yard, sorting through satellite maps in his mind, when one of the veterans flagged him down from the direction of the barn.

“Hey, Hawk—can you give me a hand? The gate latch on the south pasture’s busted, and Veccio’s out picking up feed. I could use your muscle for twenty minutes.”

Hawk crossed the driveway to meet him. He hadn’t known Harkness long, but they’d hit it off almost immediately. The former Special Forces medic had taken a hit from an IED in Afghanistan, suffering burns over nearly thirty percent of his body. The visible scars—stretching across half his face and disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt—were severe enough to make Hawk wonder what the rest of them looked like. Harkness carried them with the same quiet confidence he carried everything else, never inviting pity and never accepting it.

Twenty minutes turned into an hour, the way ranch work always did. He and Harkness wrestled the old gate off its hinge and replaced the rusted latch with a new one. By the time they’d tested it, making sure it swung clean, the sky had gone the color of a bruise, purple bleeding into the orange at the ridgeline.

It felt good, though, getting his hands on something simple. A problem with a clear fix, not buried coordinates and a dead man’s puzzles.

He and Harkness reached the barn once more, and the scent of woodsmoke matched with the curl of smoke coming from the back.

Harkness wiped his hands on his jeans. “Guys got a bonfire going. You coming?”

He hooked his hand around his nape. “I don’t know.” He had maps to study, routes to plan, a woman who needed him to be sharp for what was coming.

He’d had one hell of a long day, including the near-death experience. Not to mention his ego felt like it’d gone ten rounds in the boxing ring with a heavyweight.

“C’mon, man. You’ve been ghostin’ us all week.” When Harkness smiled, the skin of his mouth pulled down, but he still knew how to use that smile to persuade people.

He almost said no. But his shoulders ached in a good, honest way, and the smell of woodsmoke pulled at a part of him he hadn’t fed in a long time.

“Ten minutes,” he said.

Harkness grinned, and they strolled around the barn to the firepit. Wood was stacked inside, the flames licking higher up the sides by the second. The pit was circled by lawn chairs and a few split logs serving as benches that the couples liked to cozy up on.

He and Harkness kicked back in lawn chairs and joined in the discussions that drifted from one of the new horses that needed an attitude adjustment to a new family moving into the nearby town of Willowbrook.

Gray Malone dropped to the bench near Hawk and passed him a beer without asking if he wanted one. Ayla sat on the opposite side of the fire, her hair as red as the flames, telling some story about Navy chasing a raccoon into the shed. Willow, curled against Dutch’s side, laughed at the story.

Even though the site of the snake bite felt stiff as hell, Hawk lingered longer than he planned. When he left the service, nobody warned him about the parts he would miss—a sense of belonging. Even though he didn’t exactly fit in with the Malone family or the guys in the training facility, and he moved on the outer edge of the group in the therapy program, he soaked up that feeling for a little while.

He sipped the beer and stared at the fire a while longer, turning the day over in his mind. He thought about mercenaries and ridge lines with no roads in—or out. He tossed around the idea of them taking horses in. He was skilled with horses, especially in the mountains. But the terrain was too rough for them.

Lastly, Hawk thought about how bad an idea it was to let her come.

The fire popped, sending sparks into the sky that was now fully dark. Stars pricked through the deep midnight blue. Very soon he and Sinead would be looking at those stars from the mountain.

He wondered where she was now, if Willow was here at the bonfire. Maybe Sinead was tucked away in some guest bedroom in the main house. He drained the last of his beer and stood, stretching carefully around the twinge in his ass.