Page 84 of One Last Promise

“You can trust me, Tillie.”

Her face crumbled. “Yeah. No. I?—”

He took a step toward her. Then another until the gun nearly pressed to his chest. Softly. “You can trust me. I will help you.”

And yes, Axel was right—his promises were going to get him into trouble. But right now . . . “Tillie, I . . . I think I love you. Or I want to. Ever since you first served me pie and told me that you’d make me a milkshake and then sat with me and made me feel like I wasn’t . . . I don’t know . . . that I didn’t have to . . .”

“Moose.” She lowered thegun. “I’m so scared.”

He reached out for her then and pulled her to himself and held on. Because, yeah.“Me too.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her head against his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He closed his eyes. “No more sorries. We’re going to figure this out.”

And of course, he added, “I promise.”

Shep had hoped that the rescue would flush the shock of seeing Colt out of his system.

He pulled up to the Tooth, the place dark and quiet, and let himself in. The big refrigerator hummed, but night bathed the place in shadow.

Shep set a jar of pickles and a ham sandwich on the counter, opened the jar, and didn’t bother to turn on the lights as he ate, thinking about Colt and his meeting that morning, which, given the rescue op, felt like a couple years in the rearview mirror.

The man had nearly blown everything when he’d texted Shep at Moose’s, asking him to meet in Copper Mountain before Shep picked up London and drove them back to Anchorage. The last thing Shep needed was London walking into the Last Frontier Bakery and discovering that his asking her to join Air One Rescue hadn’t simply been a friendly request.

He didn’t understand all of it, but Colt’s words this morning had stuck with him the entire drive down, and during the rescue, and had even followed him back to the Tooth.

“We got word from our operative in Europe that the Petrov Bratva is still looking for her.”

Colt had kept his voice low, and really, Shep didn’t understand quite what he meant, but he got the gist of it.

Danger. For London. Becauseof who she’d been.

And even that he didn’t have a full picture of, but she’d been important enough in her circles for people to want her dead. Which was why a year ago, Colt had given Shep her contact information and told him to reach out to her. She’d been working with a missionary group in Nigeria, so that was a surprise. But yes, reach out to the woman he couldn’t forget? No problem.

He should have asked more questions.

“Still ice climbing?” Colt had asked today in the bakery, grinning over his cup of coffee and cinnamon roll as if they might be old friends.

Shep recognized the roll as one from Moose’s mother’s kitchen.

“Nope. Nearly dying with you was enough.” Shep finished his coffee. “I need to bring her into the loop.”

Colt’s grin vanished. “Yeah. And then what? You tell her that all this time you’ve been spying on her?—”

“Not spying.Protecting.”

Colt held up his hands. “She can take care of herself. What we asked you to do was definitely in the realm of spying.”

“And this conversation is over.” Shep got up.

But Colt also got up. And suddenly wore the look of a former Army Ranger. “Listen, if she gets spooked, she’ll vanish again. It took my people two years to find her after the avalanche. She’d changed her name, again, and if it hadn’t been for her showing up at a humanitarian base I happened to be working security at, we never would have found her.”

“Why don’t you bring her in if she’s that valuable?”

Colt drew in a breath, his mouth pinching at the corners. “The more she believes that she’s started over, that she’s safe, that no one knows what she’s done and who she is, the more she relaxes. And then, maybe we get lucky.”

“Are you telling me youwantsomeone to find her?”

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