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Chapter 22
Evelyn
I took a deep breath as we pulled out of the gate of the ranch. Anxiety burned in my lungs. Not for me, but for the people who were springing this trap on my behalf. Everyone had told me about a hundred times that there wasn’t any danger to them, but I wasn’t fully convinced. I didn’t think they were lying, but any situation involving Nathan in any way was more dangerous than they could anticipate.
Aspen’s head was in my lap where he sat between Lucas and me. He hadn’t left my side. Whenever he could, he was next to me or lying on me. This dog understood something wasn’t right, and it made me feel better.
The only times Aspen hadn’t been with me was when Lucas had stepped in. To sweep me upstairs into his bedroom. Or into the shower. When he was loving me. Like Aspen knew that I was safe with him.
Lucas reached across the cab and took my hand, weaving our fingers together without taking his eyes off the road. “You okay?”
I blew out a breath. “Not really.”
“It will be fine.”
Pressing my lips together, I said nothing. I wasn’t going to declare that things would be okay until I actually knew that they were. And we wouldn’t know until tomorrow.
“Did you know that this whole place was a glacier?” he asked. “Huge. It’s what made the mountains what they are now. However, long ago this would have been all underwater.”
“Really?” It was interesting, and I looked out the window at the towering mountains on our right. But my mind strayed a few hours south to the small city where our friends were driving and setting up the bait.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure that it was going to work. Nathan was smart enough to see a trap like that coming. But then again, he seemed to be getting more desperate, and they were right—if he was unhinged enough to want me by any means possible, this would be perfect.
“They’ll be okay,” Lucas murmured.
“I know... I just—yeah.”
They’d talked me through the plan a couple of times before having me call Lena and make plans like we were actually going to Missoula. Then after, Jude had gone in person to tell her why, not wanting to risk a secondary call to explain the trap no matter how much he’d beefed up the encryption.
Everybody was doing all of this for me, and they didn’t even know me. Why? We couldn’t do this forever. Eventually we’d either have to find Nathan, or I would have to leave. That was the end of the story. Because Resting Warrior’s family and friends couldn’t become my bodyguards for the rest of my life.
Lucas’s thumb brushed across the back of my hand. “What’s going on in there?”
“Just thinking about how this can’t last.”
“What can’t?”
I shrugged. “What you’re all doing. Nathan can play cat and mouse with us as long as he wants, and all of you can’t protect me forever.”
Lucas’s smile turned grim. “It won’t come to that.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re not playing on his terms anymore. For years he would chase you, and you’d run. You were alone and there was nothing standing in his way. He was circling you like prey. And now you’re not doing that. You have allies and barriers to stop him from getting to you. That’s going to drive him crazy. From everything you’ve told me, he’s a guy who wants things his way. The more he doesn’t get them? The angrier he’ll get. I know that doesn’t sound like a good thing for us, but it is.”
“Why?”
He squeezed my hand. “Because angry people make mistakes. Sometime soon, he’s going to make one. So even if he realizes that the phone call was a setup, it worked. Because he’ll realize that we’re playing him. All we need for him to do is show his hand.”
I chewed on my lip. But the anxiety I felt now was different from the outright terror that I usually felt around anything regarding Nathan. That was an improvement, at least.
Lucas took his eyes off the road for a second and looked at me. That look—I would never get tired of it. Like he saw me for who I was, wholly and completely. His eyes skimmed me before they looked back to the road, and his face was full of amusement.
“When I first saw you, I wondered if that was your natural color, but I didn’t know that you’re blonde.”
I startled for a second, then pulled down the mirror on the sun shield. Sure enough, the barest hints of my roots were showing. I hadn’t dyed my hair in a while. “Yeah, it seemed like a good idea when I was first running because I was naïve enough to think that making myself look different would keep him from finding me. But I kept doing it because I like it. It makes me feel like a different person than the one who fell for him. At least a little bit.”
“It’s not naïve. It was all you knew at the time.”
