Page 14 of Ready or Not

It was nearly impossible to keep myself from asking Merrick to track her through the website, but I’d been planning to find a way to get her to meet me before she gave birth. I wavered a lot, but the thought of her being alone with Kate and no other help absolutely killed me.

“Do you think he’ll try to fight me for custody?” she whispers, sounding genuinely terrified.

Or maybe I’m picking up on her emotions in the bond.

It’s impossible to tell.

The level of connection is unexplainable if you haven’t experienced it for yourself.

I spent years scoffing at my dads when they tried to describe the link. It really is one of those things that you can only fully understand when you feel it for yourself.

“That would be impossible if he’s dead or chained up in the basement,” Holt says, climbing into the nest. He crawls up the mattress and snuggles in at her backside.

“We have a basement?” Vale snorts. “Murder is probably not the answer here. At least, not until I get my multitude of questions answered.”

“You can’t be saying shit like that.” Holt grinds against her ass. “You’ll make my dick hard.”

“Did you know?” She tilts her head to look at him over her shoulder.

“No, not until right before I came back into the room.” He sighs heavily. “Merrick was looking into what I mentioned about the guy possibly being a plant. I don’t know all the details, but he caught the connection. When I went to handle the phone call about the gate, he called before I could make it back into the room. That’s when I found out.”

Her eyes squint as she studies his face. She finally huffs a heavy breath and nods.

“I’m willing to take a lie detector test,” Holt says, nuzzling her cheek from behind. “I’ve told you before. I’m not in the business of lying just to keep the peace.”

“Do you think he had some emergency or got called away on work?” Her head shakes. “No, if he could come here tonight, then that’s clearly not the case. He also didn’t seem to be very happy to see me.”

“Shh,” I murmur, kissing her forehead. “Let’s get a good night of sleep, and we can talk all this through in the morning.”

I will myself to purr.

It doesn’t magically happen.

“I don’t know how I’ll sleep after all this,” she whispers. “At least Aurora is okay. We also need to go visit the closest hospital and do the tour. I did one in DC, but…”

“We’ll set that up.” Holt cuddles into her from behind and starts to purr. If she wasn’t so upset, then I’d be damn annoyed that he’s managing it when I can’t force my system to relax enough to do it.

Under the circumstances, I’m actually grateful to have him with us.

I also intend to find out more about their suspicions that Andrew planted someone in her life.

We’ve seen it before, but I got hyper-fixated on the stalking aspect and profiled him in my mind like a stalker.

He’s way more than that.

I get why we don’t let agents work on cases for people they’re close to.

You get too wrapped up and miss things.

Or I did, apparently.

I’m not sure why it never crossed my mind that the one-night stand could have been a plant to try to learn her schedule. It really should have. I’m better trained than this.

I cradle her even closer and lie awake until she falls asleep.

I don’t just trust that her eyes are closed. I wait long enough for her anxiety to filter from the bond. That’s when I know she’s truly asleep.

“I need to talk to Garza before she gets the chance,” I whisper to Holt.

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