Page 42 of K-9 Confidential

Two days later…

Dying in ashaft collapse hadn’t hurt so bad.

Granger tried to sit up in the recovery bed, but the mattress and pillows were too damn soft. He kept sinking down into the middle as if he’d been ordered to recover in the middle of a marshmallow.

The lights were too dim. His body kept trying to go to sleep on him, but he wanted to stay awake for updates from the team.

Two bodies had been recovered in the bowels ofSangre por Sangre’s headquarters. The third soldier who’d attacked him—the one intent on making his relationship with Ivy clear—hadn’t been found. Seemed the son of a bitch was good at dodging death. Though Socorro’s fearless leader didn’t seem bothered by Charlie’s description of her abductor, Granger was fairly certain the man Ivy and her partner suspected of killing those women all those years ago and the one Granger had knocked unconscious were one and the same. Which meant Socorro’s undercover source within the cartel couldn’t surface. At least not yet.

Scarlett had decrypted all of the notes written in the margins from the blueprints taken from Henry Acker’s office, including the cartel’s final goal: retrieving the massive amount of fentanyl pills confiscated fromSangre por Sangreless than a month ago. Turned out, the government had only been on the lookout for the pills because of a sample collected by Scarlett in a warehouse raid to save a DEA agent’s son. Six million dollars’ worth. Enough to putSangre por Sangreback on top of the drug hierarchy, so long as they were able to liquidate their inventory.

A knock registered from the door, and Charlie—in all her gauzed and bandaged glory—leaned against the doorframe. “Up for some company?”

“As long as it’s you.” Granger relaxed back against the pillow, taking in everything he could about her.

“This is killing you, isn’t it? Having to lay here and recover like a good operative,” she said.

She wasn’t wrong. “Doc had one of my teammates drag me back when I tried to leave. Said she’d sedate me the next time.”

“Patience has never been your strong suit.” She brushed a section of his hair off his forehead, exposing the gauze beneath her shirt collar. “Mine either. I think that’s why we get along so well.”

Her smile took his attention off the ache in his shoulder, but more, it gifted him a knot of hope. That they could move on from this. Together. “How are things in Vaughn?”

“Chaotic, but Acker’s Army has officially dismantled. Once I informed the residents my father was dead and why, there didn’t seem to be any interest for anyone else to step forward.” She skimmed her fingers down his arm, raising goose bumps in her path. “His legacy is dead, and the families of the people he hurt will be able to move on now. Just like we always dreamed of.”

“I’m sorry about your father, Charlie. I know a part of you still loved him,” he said.

“Yeah. Deep down, I believed him when he told me everything he did, everything he put us through, was meant to make us stronger, so we didn’t have to suffer like he did. That’s what fathers are supposed to do, right?” Her expression smoothed over. She was retreating again, holding herself back from having to feel the grief that came with losing a parent. In time, Granger trusted she would learn to deal with it, but for now, he’d let her grieve how she felt she needed to. “But at the same time, look at what happened to Sage. What happened to Erin.” She straightened. “Were they able to recover my sister’s body?”

“Yeah. Turns out that tunnel wasn’t the only one. Once the engineers were able to map out one that ran parallel, they managed to get the excavators in and clear out the collapse.” He’d been lucky. Just a few more seconds and Granger would’ve suffocated right along with Charlie’s sister. Lost forever. But she’d pulled him out. “She’s with the medical examiner in Albuquerque.”

“Good. I know what she did was terrible and hurt a lot of people, but she didn’t deserve to stay down there,” she said. “I guess I’m the one who gets to choose where she goes.”

“You have a place in mind?” he asked.

“She tried to get out of Vaughn her entire life. I don’t think it would be fair to take her back.”

“What about your safe house?” He twisted his torso toward the nightstand on the other side of the bed. The bullet graze along his rib cage didn’t like the movement one bit, but this was important. “Maybe this could be buried with her.”

He handed her Erin’s journal, the one she’d taken from her sister’s room the first night she’d come back to New Mexico.

“We used to write each other notes in a journal like this. In a special code only the two of us knew. Just in case Dad started snooping.” She flipped through the pages, landing on the last entry. “She kept it up. Even after I left, she was writing me notes.”

“Come here.” Granger brought her head to his chest, below his newest bullet wound. “She was going to kill you, Charlie. I couldn’t let her take you from me again.”

A line of tears glistened in her eyes.“I know. I just wish she hadn’t decided to let her anger and fear make her choices. Maybe then she’d still be alive.”

“Maybe,” he said.

The click of nails echoed down the hallway. A thud slammed into the recovery room door. The entire frame threatened to break under whatever had hit it.

“I’m going to take a wild guess that Zeus is here to see you.” Charlie pried herself from the edge of his bed and answered the door.

The bull terrier took the invitation without hesitation and launched himself onto the bed. Granger’s legs instantly regretted the added weight as he wrestled with the K9 one-handed. “I missed you too, buddy. I hope Charlie’s been taking good care of you these past couple days.”

“Well, he really took more care of me than I did of him, isn’t that right?” She scratched Zeus between his ears, and the dog seemed to melt.

Great. Granger was never going to be able to get out of this bed between the two of them.

---