Page 135 of One Last Promise

Scuffling and a smack, and then voices around her, and she opened her eyes to see police—probably police, because they wore tactical vests and gear, boots and helmets—and one of them had Rigger on the ground, his hand in a submission hold.

A man knelt beside her. “You okay?”

She blinked at him, tried to push herself up, her breath finally back, then rolled and ran to the edge of the railing. “Hazel!”

She rounded, and the man stood in front of her. “I gotta?—”

“She’s okay.”

He wore a helmet, a glass visor, and full tactical gear but . . . those eyes.

Thoseblueeyes.

And the dark skim of whiskers, and the way he suddenly, markedly swallowed, and . . .

“Tillie.”

She stepped back, her hand on the glass wall. Breathed hard. Shook her head.No . . . What?

He pushed up his visor, then pulled off his helmet. Short dark hair, wide shoulders?—

“Dad?” Her voice emerged broken, a whisper. “Dad?”

He barely nodded before she was in his arms, hers tight around his neck, so tight she might be cutting off his breath. His embrace pressed her into his hard-plated vest, but she didn’t care.

And then she wept.

He might have wept too, because his body shook as he held her. Someone cuffed Rigger and hauled him away through the smoke and fire and?—

Wait. She pushed away, breathing hard, her face a mess. “Hazel.”

“The little girl? Someone caught her.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Someone caught her. I saw it as we came over the wall—he was just there. A guy, a big guy. I don’t know how he knew, but . . . he was there and he just grabbed her. She’s okay, Tillie.”

She’s okay.

She’s okay.

And with his words, big guy all she could think was. . .Moose?

Somehow, she was nodding, and he put his arm around her. “Let’s get a corpsman up here?—”

“No more corpsmen, boss. Just the EMTs,” said one of the men, and then her dad laughed.

And it was like a promise kept, pouring into her soul, bringing life and light and more than she ever imagined.

And just like that, she was free.

Free of Rigger. Free of running. Free of fear.

Free to believe.

Her father seemed about a thousand timeslarger than she remembered him. Or maybe that was simply her heart exploding her vision. “I don’t get it. What are you doing here?”

“We’ve been watching Richer and his gym, waiting for a shipment. A couple days ago we got word that he’d brought home a little girl. We thought he’d expanded into human trafficking and were trying to decide when to move. Today he received a shipment of nearly four hundred thousand packets of individually packaged fentanyl disguised as protein powder.”

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