Page 18 of Final Reckoning

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After we clean up,she curls against my side under the sleeping bag. Her hand traces lazy circles on my chest, but I can feel the weight of her unspoken questions. “Ask,” I say.

“Ask what?”

“Whatever you want.” Since I’m planning on keeping her, it’s only fair she find out what she’s signed up for. “Wait. Hang on a sec.”

Grabbing my cell, I check the bars. Still nothing. That’s the only problem with this location; no one’s going to find us, but I can’t learn anything.

I’ll have to drive out of here sometime today until I find a signal. “All right. Go ahead.”

She starts with the obvious. “How did you come to be … doing what you’re doing? With Santiago.”

“I’m a cop. I went undercover two and a half years ago to get inside his organization.”

“That’s a long time,” she says quietly.

“Yeah.” She’s not wrong about how isolated I’ve been. It was by design, but even so I didn’t anticipate just how hard it would be.

“Did you volunteer?”

“Yeah.” I sigh and tuck her closer. “You know my family’s close.”

“Yes. I love that about them, even though I’m sure it has its moments.”

“Right. Growing up, my brother Brando and I were best friends with Lando and Romero. We were all the same age, two sets of twins, more like brothers than cousins.

“And then there was Gavriella.”

“Another cousin?” she says after a moment.

“Yeah. She was a year younger than the four of us. Tomboy, more interested in following us around than playing with dolls.”

“Did you let her?”

“Sometimes. We thought we were a bunch of little badasses, too cool to have a girl tagging along. But then we got a little older, and a little smarter, and started figuring out that girls were badasses too, in their own way.”

Quinn doesn’t say anything, just plants a kiss on my chest. It feels like acknowledgment and thanks and benediction all at once.

“Gavi and I talked a lot in high school. Dreams, goals, all of that. She wanted to be a science teacher.”

“What did you want?”

“Brando and I had pledged to join the military together after high school. And we did. We both made it into special forces training.”

She’s silent a moment. “And Gavriella?”

“The longer I was in, the further apart we got. There’s a lot that goes on that you can’t talk to anyone about. By the time I finally came home for good, I hadn’t had a serious conversation with her in years.”

“And you’d both changed.”

“Yeah. I’d gotten a lot harder. You have to, to survive. And Gavi …”

My voice trails off. This is even tougher than I thought it would be. Quinn reaches across me, finds my hand, and laces her fingers through mine.

“Nobody told me.”

“Told you what?”

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