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I reached out and plucked the small frame from my night table before lying against Dash’s side again. It held an old picture I’d printed out from my archived photos. It featured Dash and me, Nix, Cece, Affie, and Missy, wearing our winter gear and our snowshoes, laughing at the base of Bear Mountain.
I trailed my finger over the picture. It captured my life, my loves, my world. Nix was gone. The sadness squeezed my chest, but I still had hope that I could rebuild my family and reunite with my sisters as I had done with Dash.
I hugged the picture to my breast. My gaze drifted out to the sky, searching for signs of a future I couldn’t see. Framed by the bank of windows, Orion’s Belt shone in all its majesty.
Were my sisters and I looking at the same sky at this verymoment?
“You should be resting.” Dash’s breath blew over the top of my head as his hand caressed my bare back. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”
“A little.” I tilted up my head and contemplated his handsome profile. “If only I had my mother’s talent to read the stars. Then I’d know, for sure, if they’re alive.”
He kissed my forehead and placed his hand over the picture I held. “I miss them, too.”
“I wonder where they are,” I whispered. “If they’re well. If they’re happy or lonely. If they’ve found their place in the world.”
“That’s a lot for one woman to wonder, especially one who should be resting instead.”
“Look who’s talking.” I planted a kiss on his chin. “You should be resting, too.”
“We’re both overthinkers,” he admitted. “There’s no rest for those who search.”
A few weeks after my terrifying birthday debacle, the winter had deepened its hold over Wyoming. Fortunately, the driveway up to Astor House had been cleared of snow and ice and Dash had come home from the hospital. The doctors had warned us that although his leg was beginning to heal again, he might have to grapple with a limp, perhaps for the rest of his life. This hadn’t fazed Dash. He’d told the doctors that he had all he needed: his cane, his team, and me.
As to my wound, it was healing well. It hardly hurt anymore. The best health indicator for us had been our lovemaking earlier today. It’d been yet another first for us, banged up bodies and bruised souls, finding joy and release in each other’s arms.
Even wounded, true lovers always found a way.
Like the CEO I was, I’d been keeping tabs of thedevelopments at the Astor Group even though I continued to do so disguised as Dash. Monique and Paolo were back to work. Dash was still not fond of either one of them, but we had a lot on our plate and we needed help. We’d given them a limited version of the events at Astor House. We told them Arthur had tried to kill us to inherit the Astor fortune, which wasn’t a lie.
Paolo had been mildly surprised, but Monique hadn’t. She’d reminded us she’d never liked Arthur and always suspected him of trying to wrong my father. In that sense, Dragon Lady had been right. Dash and I left out the part about the NWO, my father’s murder, and the poisoning attempt on me. Those details we kept to ourselves.
As to Jorge Rivera, the vials turned out to be positive for the substances that killed my father and sickened me. To this day, it was hard to believe that he’d joined Arthur, Drew, and the New World Order. Had Jorge been innocent or had he been set up? Had he died defending us or was he killed so he couldn’t spill the beans on the NWO? These were only a few more questions that, like so many others, still needed answers.
BB, Druid, and Elite were following up on the NWO and Li. It was a joint venture with Tracker Team, especially since Trev spent a lot of time at Astor House, on account of a certain adorable hacker who held his heart in her hands.
If the cyberattacks pummeling our systems and the letter we’d received in the mail shortly after the attack were any indication, Li and the NWO were as much in our crosshairs as we were in theirs.
The envelope had been mysteriously delivered to the Astor Group’s headquarters without a return address. Fortunately, Dash had taken precautions to detect this sort of threat. The missive had been detected, isolated, and studied in BB’s lab before it was opened. As expected, further analysis found no fingerprints or DNA, no helpful clues. The fine linencard held only a few sentences printed in an ornate calligraphy font:
No reprieve for the cursed. Consider yourselves dead. Speak my name and watch your world burn even faster. Have no doubt. Your seed will be exterminated from the earth.
Lovely chap, Mr. Li. We had a fix on him, but we had no evidence to connect him with Arthur as of yet, and Li remained put and well protected in his headquarters in Singapore. For now, we had him under close surveillance. We had lots of leads to follow and plenty of brainpower at work. We were determined to get him before he got to us or to my sisters.
The race was on.
Dash and I had decided to make Astor House Tracker Team’s base of operations. Once Drew’s explosives had been located and removed, the team had strengthened the automated defense system, implemented new anti-jamming protections, and added extra security layers.
It made sense. The house had never been a true home, but at least now it had a purpose. It was our fortress, the one place where Li and his minions couldn’t get to us. Since we didn’t know what to look for as of yet, we hadn’t found whatever it was that Li needed to retrieve, but the search continued. Meanwhile, Astor House was big, capable of providing comfortable living and working quarters for Tracker Team, and secured to Dash’s specs.
I also had high hopes for it. Perhaps someday, when winter ended and the gardens bloomed with roses again, we could transform this house into a home. It could happen, especially if my sisters returned, and little Daggers dartedthrough the grounds, rode horses in the forest, and swam in the lake, like we used to do as kids. I was sure that, from his place among the angels, Nix approved of my dreams.
Tracker team remained fully engaged in the urgent search for my sisters. Dash, me, the guys, and Mina, we were all working hard to find them. Speaking of Mina, we heard her squealing way before she arrived at our bedroom.
She was so loud that, by the time she burst through the doors like a human tornado, I’d managed to put on my robe and Dash had donned his pajama bottoms. He braced with his cane in one hand and his Glock in the other, ready, always ready.
“I got something.” Mina hopped in place, holding her tablet against her chest, looking like she might burst.
“What is it?” Dash set his gun down. “Is it enough to stage a mission?”
