Page 41 of Lose Me In The Shadows

“Okay,” she said, slowly. “So, Maya it is.”

She held out her hand for her new identification, but Conor withdrew it.

“We’ll hold onto it,” he said. “From now on, it needs to be like it was when I broke you out. You do exactly what we tell you to do, when we tell you to do it. You won’t get far on your own. I mean it,Maya. I don’t want to have to go after you again; if I do, I’ll be angry. And even though Luke doesn’t have full use of his right arm yet, I’m sure he can figure out an apt punishment with his left.”

He looked at Luke; Luke glanced away. Conor ran a frustrated hand through his hair and continued. “We’re going to be carrying out hits sometimes, but one of us will always be with you—”

“Like a babysitter?” Kara interrupted, aware she was being snarky as fuck and not giving a shit. Luke was acting like she had killed his dog, when all she had done was maim the jackass.

Deservedly.

So yeah, she was being bitchy, but the way he was ignoring herhurt.

“Like a bodyguard,” Micah interjected. Even his usually calm-in-the-eye-of-the-storm face looked irritated. “You’re going to be on the run with us, baby.”

“The one thing we didn’t want, remember?” Luke said.

“What the hell does that mean?” she asked.

The other two men glanced over at Luke sharply, like they, too, were concerned.

Luke finally spoke up. “We didn’t want you to live a life in the shadows with us. That’s what we were trying to avoid.” His laugh was some mix of sad and angry. “Guess it was pointless.”

Micah rubbed his forehead; Conor tugged at his hair again. Kara’s stomach dropped to the floor. Before she could press him further, the plane tapped the ground with a short jerk before taxiing to a stop.

A moment later, Billy appeared. “Sorry for that landing, doll. Not my best work.”

All three men growled.

Billy put his hands up. “Okay, okay, no flirting. Got it.” He winked at Kara. “They’re super light and easy, aren’t they?”

Kara forced herself to laugh. “Like whipped cream.”

“You’ll be getting our whipped cream later,” Conor muttered. It sounded half-assed, like his heart wasn’t in the joke. And how could it be? So much was weighing on all of them: Kara’s trauma, Conor’s guilt, Micah’s refusal to apologize for kidnapping her, and Luke’s sour ass mood and anger at both himself and her. Yes, they’d progressed in their relationships with each other, but there was still so much damage between them—and a huge unknown lay ahead. They weren’t safe. And no matter what Conor said, it was, in part, her fault. Her recklessness had helped get them here, after all. Fate had done the rest. Kara wanted to have a talk with that petty bitch.

Conor unbuckled and rose from his seat before helping Kara out from hers and grabbing her wrist in his hand. Like he didn’t trust her not to run. The cognitive dissonance of Conor apologizing but being unwilling to let her go was hard to wrap her mind around.

The stars were out when they disembarked onto the tarmac, Tetons looming darkly in the distance. The sign for Jackson Hole Regional Airport was lit up, but the place was empty. It had only been what, a week since she’d last seen them? It felt like eons. And it hurt her chest, being back in a place she loved, but not being able to go back to the cabin that had begun to feel like home, despite her best efforts to resist.

And they couldn’t go back, because of her.

She was allowed to be angry. What she did had been warranted.

But, if she were honest, it still made her sad.

A large black SUV was parked about 100 yards away, a tall man and a slightly shorter man standing in front of them, arms crossed.

Billy jogged over to them, leaving Kara to be tugged along by Conor, who still held her wrist in his hand. Micah walked on her other side, Luke behind them, so she was flanked from all sides. She couldn’t help but feel warmed by the sense of protection they provided. She wasn’t getting through them, sure, but no one was getting through them to her, either.

Giving into her desires, she reached out for Micah’s other hand. He took it immediately, and his big hand wrapped around her smaller one made Kara feel exponentially safer.

They reached the two strange men. Both were tall, with dark hair, but the taller one was lankier, with short, curly hair and piercing grey eyes, whereas the shorter one was lean but more muscular, with blue eyes and hair that was longer and artfully tousled—like he had a hair stylist on call. “Luke, looks like that shoulder’s healing.”

“Thanks to the Doc,” Luke said behind Kara, so close she could feel his chest brush her shirt. He reached around her to shake the taller man’s hand. “I didn’t say thank you.”

So the taller one must be “The Doc.” He didn’t respond to Luke, just stared at her with his unfathomable grey eyes. Kara started to feel uncomfortable.

“And let me guess,” Mr. Perfect Hair continued. “You must be Kara. I have to say, I’ve been waiting to meet you for a while. Because of you, I’m owed a lot of favors.”

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