Page 86 of The Oath We Take

“A little. After you and Atom took off, she came over and asked if I had a contact number for Smoke, since they took her phone.”

“Where is she?” I ask Butcher.

“Managed to help her get hold of Smoke, and he okayed her staying at his place. Got Dice and a prospect covering her. But Smoke’s house is so out of the way, they’d never find it.”

That’s interesting. Smoke was dating Quinn’s sister when she went missing. He told me once that he knew it wasn’t a forever kind of thing, but it took him a long time to get over the fact he hadn’t been able to protect her.

I wonder why Quinn reached out to him. I heard she was one of the ones who had blamed him for her sister going missing.

Ember looks at me. “Were you serious about me staying with you?”

I nod. “Makes sense for tonight. I’ll make up the spare room for you.”

“Will there be more food this time?” she asks, putting her hands on her hips with a fake scowl.

I roll my eyes. “For fuck’s sake. You were fed. What do you want this time, a fucking cheese board?”

Ember bites down on her grin. “Cheese would be lovely. I’ll bring some white wine. I trust you have glasses.”

“Jesus,” Butcher says. “Ember, enough. Atom, just take care of her.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got her, Butcher.”

“You haven’tgot me,” she says. “No one does. I?—”

“Good luck,” Butcher says, raising one eyebrow before he disappears down the stairs.

27

EMBER

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been here,” I say, stepping into Atom’s home.

“Yeah. Well. Hope it looks better than the last time.”

There is still a lot of wood paneling and wide beams in the ceiling. The open-plan space has beautiful wide plank floors that have been refinished. And there’s too much taxidermy for my tastes. But the furnishings are soft and plush, the fireplace huge, and the view of the mountains spectacular.

“You’re right, it’s exactly the same, and yet better.”

He slips his Stetson off and places it on a hook, brim up, by the door. He once told me it was an old cowboy custom to store it that way, so the luck didn’t fall out of it.

“Glad you like it.” Atom slides my bag off my shoulder and leads me to the kitchen. “Weird thing about this place. I love it. I love the bones of it, the view, how far it is from the main ranch, and I want to stay here. I’m not much of a homemaker, but I’ve done my best. It’s just…I don’t own it. I don’t own the land it sits on. I can’t renovate it the way I want it because someone will get offended that the fireplace has been there a hundred years or the bear head on the wall over there was hunted by my great-great-great-grandpa.”

“I suppose it’s a bit like living in a museum in some ways.”

Atom touches my cheek. “Yeah. It feels like that. Preserve. Care for it. But don’t fuck around with it.”

“And you aren’t able to stay here and make it your own.”

He nods. “Exactly. It’s the impermanence. And worse, I only get to change houses when someone dies. It used to be the average age of a man in 1900 was, like, forty-six years old or something. When the ranch and this whole ‘pass it down to the oldest son’ bullshit started, a man didn’t live as long as my father and grandpa. If we were living back a hundred years, I’d already be running the ranch, and my dad and grandpa would be dead.”

“So, you’re in a holding pattern, like they use for airplanes in the sky.”

Atom nods. “Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. I’m worried about what Dad will leave me with. And I have plans that rely on the next few years rolling a certain way. Beer?”

I shake my head. “No. We need to get you into the shower.”

A sly grin graces Atom’s lips. “Are you gonna play nurse?”

---