Driving all the way to the Arch, the gateway to the west, in one day was insane. But John had insisted on it. He’d wanted to put as much road under them as possible.

In the compact car, which Hawk had pulled out of his ass—okay, his hidden garage on the back of the property—Emily had driven some, slept some, and for the last five hours, had held the fact that she needed to urinate. They’d barely made it into Missouri when John finally pulled over and stopped at the first dumpy motel he could find.

She cringed a little at the blinking sign over the two-story lodging.

But at this rate, she just couldn’t care. She needed a bathroom and bed, in that order, as quickly as possible. John reached across her lap and opened the glove compartment. He pulled an envelope out before snapping it shut. “Be right back,” he said.

Her foot tapped against the floorboard and she blinked against the harsh light that shone through the glass front of the building. “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she muttered. She reached for the last bottle of water she opened.

The lady behind the counter smiled up at John, and her mouth moved as if she had all the time in the world. “Come on. Come on. Come on. Yes, he’s handsome. Yes, he’s charming. Of course he’ll stand and chat with you and make you smile.”

Finally, sure she couldn’t hold it another second, positive as soon as she stood up she’d probably wet her pants, Emily got out of the car. She almost wept when, thankfully, she didn’t pee. She ran for the front door and slammed it open when it was lighter than she expected. “Hurry,” she demanded, feeling bad but not really caring anymore. “I need the key—please.”

John held out an actual key on a diamond-shaped green keychain.

She reached for it. “Room?”

“Ten,” he answered, a little too happily.

Back outside, she hurried down the line of rooms until she got to the one on the end. The door swung open, and she crossed orange shag carpet to the gold-flecked bathroom that had three off-white flower-shaped plastic decorations down one side. The door on the left opened to the toilet and a shower. Clean, thank God.

She didn’t bother closing the door, just sat and did her business.

As relief filled her and the sound of John coming in behind her became her reality, horror filled her. “I’m sorry. Don’t come this way,” she said. “I really had to go.”

She heard him drop his key on the table and their bags on the floor.

Finished, she stood and took a deep breath. “This is so embarrassing. I’m not usually so…um, I don’t even know what.” Leaving the bathroom was a necessity, but all of a sudden, she didn’t want to. “Don’t be an ass, Emily,” she reprimanded herself, which actually helped her foot move over the threshold.

John had come in and fallen to the bed in the middle of the west wall. And he slept. Not quiet sleep, though. He breathed heavily in the silence, almost a snore.

Quietly, she washed her hands.

She wasn’t the only one who’d suffered through their long trek from the eastern seaboard and into the Midwest. In a way, they were on the run and pushed into hiding by circumstances.

Behind them was an unknown, someone who wanted to hurt her or John.

But ahead of her was something as frightening—John’s family.

She only had to know John to know they were going to be healthy, well-adjusted, probably Christian people who should turn her around at the door but wouldn’t. A glance at John’s sleeping form had her considering how far she could get if she slipped out while he wasn’t looking. The keys were right there next to his wallet and that envelope from the glove box. So tempting.

One step. Two. And she was standing over the table, biting her lip as she fought with herself.

“Don’t even think about it, sister.”

Emily’s gaze flew to John, whose eyes were open and looking at her. Heat rose on her neck. “I’m not.”

“You were totally thinking about it.”

She shrugged. “I wish I knew what the hell I was doing, John. Why am I on my way to Idaho with you?”

“Because you like living more than being shot down in cold blood?”

“What if it’s you the shooter was after?”

He lifted a brow.

“What? I’m serious. We have no idea.”

John sat up with a sigh and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “First of all, I’m a nobody.”

“That’s not—”

“It is true in our world. I’m support, and I’m really good at it. I was a medic once and am a nurse now. Nobody, but nobody, shoots the medic. Right?”

She’d gotten caught up on the fact that he was a nurse. “Like, a real nurse? Two years or four?”

“Four years,” he answered slowly.

She knew she was staring, and that wasn’t nice. “I’ve never met a male nurse before.”

“Are you, a female sharpshooter, being a sexist?” He grinned.

Emily cleared her throat. “Uh, no?”

“You totally are.” He laughed. “Fine. My point is…no one knows me from a hole in the wall. I didn’t have my face smeared all over the news. And I didn’t shoot Hassan’s son.”

That was the knife, and it hurt more than she expected it to. “Ouch.”

He rose and came toward her. “As much as that hurts, letting Hassan or anyone related to him get to you will hurt a lot more. Got it?”

She nodded, knowing it was true. “It hasn’t been long enough for them to forget.”

“Have you forgotten Sandra and Tim?”

Tears threatened as shock settled against her breastbone. “You know about them?”

He nodded.

“Then you know I haven’t.”

“And you know that your face in the news might have caused a cluster, one I’ll regret for a long time.”

She frowned. “This isn’t your fault.”

“We don’t know what it is, which is why we’re going to go home and chill until we hear from Hawk. A week at the most. I expect it to be much less.”

“You aren’t worried?”

“No one knows we left except for Hawk and Malcolm. I trust them both with my life. No, my mother’s life. If there’s a leak somewhere, we’re going to find it.”

Talking about it made her stomach hurt again, but she nodded. “Okay. Idaho it is.” A giddy laugh escaped. “Idaho. Who the hell is from Idaho?”

John smiled, the light of an inside joke bright in his eyes. “Six generations of the Vega family in the northern mountain country, that sits on Ghost Lake, outside Coeur d’Alene. My family’s been there since before the Civil War. I think we can handle a little sharpshooter like yourself horning in on our territory.” The fake drawl made her laugh and shake her head.

“Fine.” Emily looked at the bed, which her new roommate was sitting on. “I sure hope you don’t mind sharing, John Vega, because I am too tired to worry about what your mama thinks about you sleeping with a sniper.”

Picking up his bag, he stopped in front of her and tugged on her ponytail. “Funny you should say that, but I think she’ll be okay with it. She’s been doing it herself for thirty years now.”

Emily’s mouth fell open. “Your dad?”

“Twenty years as a marine sniper.”

Her brain almost couldn’t take it all in. And then she laughed. “I’m seriously going to go to bed now and hopefully not wake up until at least seven. Then maybe we’ll have this discussion again, and it won’t feel like such a dream.”

“Night, Emily,” John said before he shut the bathroom door.

Coincidence? How could she believe in that kind of connection? She’d been alone for so long. Even her life in Harbor View seemed distant, unreal. Too easy to hand off those reins…

She’d never—in her entire life or career—had the kind of connection that she kept finding with John. To the point that she was starting to wonder if he was making stuff up.

* * *

After a restless night, John woke early. She’d slept at his back, unmoving, all night. But her presence there, the warmth of her body and the sound of her soft breathing, might as well have been the five alarms to the fire that had sprung to life in his blood—loud, screaming, and made to put a man into action.

He sighed as he opened his laptop and sent an email to Hawk.

No updates yet. No evidence of who the shooter might have been.

Team news was slow as well. Jamie had left for Belize. Marcus had traded in his truck for a Jeep. Tyler had gone back to work this week, and things seemed to be going well for him and Jenny. Hawk maintained he would keep their whereabouts to himself until he was sure. There had been some inconsistencies from the press. Two who spoke to Hawk claimed an informant.

John frowned. He couldn’t think of a single person from his team who would spill the beans. They were family. They argued sometimes. But never…

“No.” He shut his laptop and checked his watch. Time to catch a plane.

“I still think we should go back to Harbor View.” Emily sat, watching him, her brow furrowed, her legs folded in front of her and wrapped in her arms. “We’d have Eddie. It’s safe there.”

Heat rose on his neck at the sight of her, sitting there, looking so very darn tempting, so very not his to touch. His MO was to avoid close encounters—with women in general. The rules of waiting had been pounded into his brain too long for him to merely disregard them. He went on dates just fine. He liked the company of the softer sex, like the talking and the thought that went into it, especially after hours and sometimes days of being around males.

Emily was as far from the “softer sex” as he’d ever come across. Even the other women at Hawk Elite—the few—had soft edges and ways of doing things that were apparently female. This woman had steel in her spine. She was sharper, harder even than some of the guys.

So to see her sitting there, looking so…pretty, so very mellow and delicate, even a little uncertain, forced him to see vulnerability, no matter how sexist that was.

“Hello?” Emily tilted her head and unintentionally bared her shoulder when the collar of her shirt shifted.

He rolled his eyes and stood. “We have to go if we’re going to catch our flight.”

She rose, wearing only a very short pair of shorts. He quickly turned to give her privacy. “I’m going to throw my bag in the truck and check out. Get dressed.”

“Okay, Father John,” she said, a laugh in her tone.

He never let that nickname bother him before. This time it stopped him, and he turned back and saw the laughter in her eyes, yet it wasn’t condescending or cruel. And then she winked. He took her in with his eyes, her messed-up air and rumpled clothes, and bit back a serious moan. When his gaze met hers again, her eyes were wide, as if she was surprised.

That he was attracted to her? That he was a man and wanted her?

He let her see, because it was one thing when the guys ribbed him about being a priest, but when she said those words, it turned into something completely unholy.

“Right,” she squeaked, and hurried to the bathroom. “I’ll get ready to go.”

He slammed the door when he went out, thankful when the cold air hit his skin and cooled the heat within. He sent up a silent plea of mercy and wasn’t surprised when only the whisper of the wind was his answer. Some things didn’t need words.

Opening the trunk, he threw his bag in and then rounded the front to open the hood, where he checked the fluids. They didn’t have far to go today. The airport was only a few miles down the road. Something to do was better than going back in there right now. He needed a few more minutes to cool off.

Emily looked fresh when she emerged from the room with her duffel over her shoulder. Her hair was back up, this time twisted into a bun at her neck. The bag went into the trunk with his. “I’m ready when you are,” she finally said as she stood in the passenger doorway, waiting for him to finish up.

He grabbed his wallet from inside and looked around the motel room one last time. He flipped the blankets back to check for stray items and checked behind the bathroom door for forgotten clothes but found nothing.

He jingled the keys in his pocket. Time to go.

Excitement raced through his veins. Long time since he’d been back at home. Despite the close contact he maintained with his siblings and parents, there wasn’t anything the same as being there—back on the ranch, where he could get lost on the back forty or take the pontoon out on the lake for the afternoon. Hell, he’d be happy with the stupid little dinghy his brother had built when he was twelve.

The one that had the false bottom. The one that had stranded him in the middle of the lake when he was ten, treading water for an hour until his dad rescued him. John grinned. Oh, yeah.

Home was going to be a welcome reprieve.