Page 181 of At the Edge of Surrender

If he stood for the straight line of the law or if he stood for what might have to be done to set something right, legal or not.

Turned out, he was all about helping people, no matter the cost.

He wanted to know as little as possible, but he’d stand by us, whatever that looked like.

“Cash got a call from him, and he let me know the report had come through, which was also how Charleigh was able to get Emery here rather than her being taken to the emergency room.”

My heart locked in a fist. “And did the guy who saw it get a look at this motherfucker?”

The single shake of River’s head was sharp. “Piece of shit had gone stealth. Dressed in black with a cap pulled down low on his head. Didn’t leave a fuckin’ trace behind him before he disappeared into the woods.”

“Fuck.” It was a growl that ripped out of me, and I leaned againstthe wall and scrubbed my palms over my face, trying to keep my cool when it felt like I was being burned in hell.

“Who is this asshole? Some random in our town trying to nab one of our innocents?”

Nausea spun my stomach into disorder.

Knew the way these deviants worked. They watched for the opportune time when a girl was alone, and they stole her right off the street without warning.

River’s expression turned grim. “Doesn’t sit right to me. We’re too fucking remote and, not that it doesn’t happen, Emery is a little old for the typical trafficking demographic.”

“So, what? This was some random assault? Some backwoods miscreant looking for easy prey?”

He looked me square in the face. “Or she was targeted.”

My pulse careened. “You think it’s someone after us? Someone who knows?”

An old vendetta that someone had come to avenge?

“Don’t know that, but I do know she told Charleigh that she’d felt like she was being watched for a while now but had chalked it up to being paranoid.”

“Yeah, she told me the same thing last night.”

Uncertainty billowed through me, and I blew out a jagged sigh, wanting to race out and end someone without having the first clue who it was.

I couldn’t let it happen again.

That statement was eating me alive, and I squeezed my hands into fists and pressed them into my eyes like it could stop the assault of images that tried to invade. Mind conjuring the most horrid, disgusting things.

Had dedicated my life to ending it.

To never letting it happen on my watch.

Not ever again.

And here I was, feeling like I was getting sucked back into the most brutal time of my life. When I’d realized I’d come up on a dead end and there’d been no moving forward on the direction I was going.

“But she wrote it off as a grief reaction over her sister,” I continued on a sigh.

“She in trouble?”

Felt like I had a ball of barbed wire at the base of my throat. “Seems so.”

I looked at River. “How the fuck do you do it?”

“What’s that?”

“Love someone this fucking much?”

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