Chapter 26

I am so horny that I’m legitimately worried about your safety tonight.

-Text from Cobie to Dante

Dante

The day went off without a hitch.

I found an RV that I liked—one that would fit us all perfectly.

Drake hadn’t magically appeared.

Rafe, however, had discovered some new information, though.

Rafe came by after we’d gotten home to explain a few things and discuss it with us.

He learned that Drake had been a military arms distributor of sorts. He was the one who held the merchandise that was stolen from the military until they found a buyer, and then Drake would deliver the merchandise for a cut of the profits.

However, the last shipment that Drake had obtained, he’d apparently stolen from the original thieves. They found the merchandise after I’d unknowingly led them to Drake’s fortress, which just so happened to be located beneath Cobie’s old place—the same place where he held me captive for months.

Once the merchandise was returned to the military, the government moved forward with officially charging Drake with conspiracy to sell military arms, theft and a bunch of other serious charges that would get him a hefty prison sentence once he was convicted.

Although not the sole person responsible for the theft of the merchandise, he was the only one they had been able to identify so far. So, until he could be found and questioned, he would be the only person charged in what they claimed was a theft of millions of dollars’ worth of U.S. military inventory.

Rafe had said that they also suspected that Drake had been involved in over two hundred similar thefts of retired military inventory over the last few years based on the similarities between the cases.

Which meant Drake was in a world of trouble when he finally did surface.

“Dante?”

I blinked at the clock.

“Yeah?”

My eyes were burning, and I wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing still up, but I was.

“I have a question.”

“Shoot,” I said, looking over at the couch beside me.

Mary was asleep on the cushion, curled into the arm of the couch as she hugged one of my tennis shoes to her chest. Why she had one of my tennis shoes, I didn’t know. But whatever. If it helped her sleep, I’d give her one of my steel-toed work boots to hold on to. Sleep was our friend around here.

I’d worry about all the dirt she got on her in the morning.

“I need to iron my clothes for tomorrow, and I have a problem.”

Tomorrow, we were going to a follow-up appointment with Cobie’s oncologist to do a round of tests that would determine if she was cancer free.

I blinked, trying to get the fog of sleep out of my eyes. “Yeah?”

“There’s a slug in my iron.”

I lifted my fist and rubbed my eyes. “There’s a what in your iron?”

“A slug,” she answered, confirming that what I heard originally was indeed what she’d meant to say. “I don’t know how it got in there, but it’s in the little reservoir where you put the water for the steam feature. I tried filling up the reservoir and pouring it back out, but the slug is too fat.”

I honestly had no idea what to say.

“Uhhh,” I murmured.

“And I don’t know what to do. This is a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar iron. Seriously, I can’t throw it away. It steams shit and everything. I don’t know what to do!”

She sounded somewhat hysterical at this point.

“Will it still work with the slug in there?”

“Yes,” she answered hesitantly. “But what if it dies?”

“Then use it for now, and when I’m not so tired, I’ll look and see if I can fix it.”

She snorted. “I don’t think you can. I’ve looked all over, and it seems like it’s all one piece. I don’t think there’s any way to get the little water container off of the actual iron. I’m still not sure how the little bastard managed to get in there.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

“You’re sure it’s a slug?”

In answer, she got up and walked out of the room. Moments later she was back with an iron that did, indeed, have a slug in it.

Hmmmmm. “Imagine that.”

Cobie rolled her eyes and put the iron on the table. “I keep thinking about putting salt into it. But I decided against that idea because it’d be just my luck that it would go in there and melt the dang thing. Some weird, gross, thick sludge will probably form in there that’ll never come out, and then I’ll lose the steam feature on the iron forever.”

I stared at her, blinking a few times but saying nothing in reply, because honestly, what could I say to that?

“How about we just buy you a new iron?”

Before she could reply, my phone rang.

I cursed and leaned forward to answer it before it could wake Mary up—who’d been more than fussy today. She had two teeth coming in, and she was not a happy camper.

“Yeah?”

“We have a multi-vehicle wreck on the interstate. They estimate over a hundred cars are involved.”

I winced. “Let me get Rafe here, and then I’ll head over. What mile marker?”

Once I received the mile marker from Travis, I hung up and immediately called Rafe.

Rafe answered, not sounding tired at all despite the late hour.

“Yes?”

“I have to go to work. Can you come over?”

I heard shuffling, then a female’s voice on the other end of the line as he left what sounded like the bed.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “I’ll be…”

“You always choose her over me!”

I didn’t know what to say to that outburst from the woman on the other end of the line.

Rafe said something viciously, and then I heard a door close.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I’ll be there in ten.”

Then he was gone, leaving me staring at the phone in surprise.

“What is it?”

“Rafe had a woman with him.”

“Janie?”

Was that hopefulness in her voice that I heard?

“From the sounds of it? No, I don’t think so. It sounded like another woman. Whoever it was, though, sounded jealous. She wasn’t very happy that I called and he was leaving.”

“Hmmm,” she said, sounding disappointed.

Ten minutes later I placed a goodbye kiss on Cobie’s lips as Rafe walked through my door.

After getting in my truck and pulling up my alarm app to ensure it was once again set, I walked out and never once thought that I was leaving my new little family with danger lurking around the corner.

Because had I known what was waiting for them, I would’ve never left.

I would’ve stayed.

I would’ve never done what I did next.