Chapter Ninety-One
Nathan
I woke up in the cheap El Paso motel room but it felt like a penthouse suite. Bree was stretched out next to me in a deep sleep, and, for once, I knew she could rest undisturbed. The thought filled me with contentment.
Bree was safe. Maggie was back with her mother, and all the other children were safe at home with their loving families. It was the first morning in a long time that I hadn’t woken up dogged by worry and incomplete missions.
When Bree woke up and rolled into my arms, I would have thought I was dreaming. Except her bare skin was like silk against me, and her sleepy warmth was very real. I felt every inch of her just to be certain.
“Good morning,” she said, opening her smiling eyes. “How are you?”
“Hungry,” I growled.
Bree giggled as we flung the covers over our heads and feasted on each other until we fell back deliciously exhausted but wide awake.
“How about now?” Bree asked.
“Relaxed,” I mumbled.
The memory slid into place. Maggie had bumped into me in the long hallway near the storage rooms. The guards were quick to pull us apart, but she had been too fast for them. The postcard was in my pocket when I was shoved into my room and told to wait.
“What is it?” Bree propped herself up on one elbow and worried over me.
“I remember meeting Maggie. She gave me the postcard. The next day, when I was getting my ID made, I saw a bulletin board full of snapshots. Maggie and all the kids were there. I stole her photograph so I could remember what she looked like,” I said.
“So, you really did take drugs across the border for the cartel?” Bree asked.
I nodded. “I took it straight to that bank. Then I went to find Maggie’s mother.”
Bree snuggled up and laid her head on my chest. “So how did the cartel find you?”
I cringed, wishing that portion of my memory had stayed blank. “I owed Adrian Juarez so much money that he thought it’d be funny to make me do a cash delivery as well. I put most of it in the safety deposit box, but I kept a little for myself.”
Bree lifted her head up again to study my face. “And what did you do with it?”
“I found a poker game. High stakes. The kind that Adrian liked to know about. He heard I was at the table and his men were on me within an hour,” I said.
“All the way up in Kansas?” Bree asked.
I screwed my eyes shut, still angry that I had been so stupid. “I had no idea how far of a reach the cartel had. I barely got away. I hot-wired a car and drove into Kansas, thinking they would give up. That’s when my car broke down.”
“And they found you on the side of the highway.” Bree shuddered and wrapped her arms tightly around me.
The memory barreled down on me as fast as their headlights had that night. Adrian’s men had rammed their car straight into me, knocking me across two lanes of the highway. They then dragged me to the shoulder and questioned me, but I didn’t give anything up. Instead, I succumbed to my injuries, passed out, and they left me for dead.
Once the memory faded back into the past, my heartbeat returned to a normal rhythm.
“If I hadn’t joined that poker game—”
Bree cut me off, her fingers tight against my lips. “No. You can’t play that game. It’s all in the past now.”
I kissed her fingers then pulled them back so I could talk. “So, if I can’t ask ‘what if,’ can I at least ask ‘what now?’”
Bree smiled but it was sad. “Now we wait for our trials to start.”
I sat up. “You forgot about my dishonorable discharge. First, I’ll get kicked out the Navy SEALs, my service record will be wiped, and then I’ll face jail time for everything that I did.”
Bree sat up and knelt, facing me. “Nathan, you can’t forget all the good things you did, too. Just think of all those children, all those families, that get to be whole again. Don’t you think that was worth it?”
I tangled my hands in her hair and kissed her sweet mouth. “It was. It was all worth it. I’m just sad that I’m going to lose you, too.”
Her beautiful eyes narrowed. “Who says I’m going anywhere?”
“You’re not going to sit around and wait for me to serve my sentence,” I said. “No way.”
Bree went still, then a wide smile spread across her face. “What if neither of us waits?”
I frowned even as my stomach did happy little flips. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,” Bree said. “We could leave tonight and make a run for it.”
“We?” I asked.
Bree punched me in the shoulder. “Yes. We know how to sneak out of a motel and disappear into the night. We know how to live on the run.”
“We could head for the coast?” I asked.
She answered with a bouncy kiss. “Please, Nathan. After all of this, you have to believe me when I say that I know you are a good man. What you did, helping those children, is all I care about.”
I took her hand and kissed it. “And you are all I care about. Is this what you really want?”
“Let’s run away together,” Bree said.
I laced my fingers through hers and kissed her hand again. “Ready when you are.”