Page 65 of The Hard Way

I grabbed hold of one of the supports and shook it with all my might. “Seems stable still. What do you think?”

Odin came and inspected it, then walked around and pushed on a few places I wouldn’t have thought of testing. “Yeah, that’s stable enough.”

I started to climb. “You have an engineering degree I don’t know about?”

“Actually, yes,” he said from below.

“Whaaaaat? Are you serious?” I looked down. “You have an engineering degree?”

“Mechanical engineering.” He grabbed a horizontal board and hauled himself up below me.

I continued on. “Wow.”

Halfway up, my muscles were starting to feel it. I was out of shape for this. Finally I reached it and pulled myself up.

The platform was metal lattice with wooden boards over most of it, except where they were rotted away, allowing a view of the structure and the ground below.

I brushed off some leaves and acorns, careful to aim them away from Odin, who was still coming up. It was a good perch, well supported, unlike the top, which, admittedly had been a questionable place to climb around on, even two years ago.

Odin arrived, and I moved over to make room for him. “There used to be a rail around this. In the olden days, I think people would stop off here on the way to the top,” I said. “Or maybe people who chickened out up top came back down here to get their shit together. While other people took their turn.”

He stood up. “Wow.”

I rose up next to him and gazed out the rolling hills. This was the view I loved, a view that stretched for miles, trees all brown with a mist of brilliant green—the budding of the leaves. The sky was a vivid blue.

“Wow,” he said again.

My heart expanded a little that he liked it. “Amazing, huh?”

“I never thought of Wisconsin as pretty,” he said. “It seemed like just cornfields. But this area—”

“It depends on where the glacier went through in prehistoric times,” I said. “The glacier flattened some stuff out and made the soil nutrient-dense, but it left places like this hilly.”

“So many trees.”

“We have a fuck of a lot of trees. Or I should say,theyhave a lot a trees.”

“This place is still yours, still part of you.” He traced his finger along my forearm, up and down, tracing a feather-light design. I loved when he touched me sweetly like that. He was usually the one bossing the others, delivering on the dark, sexy drama. It was easy to forget how tender he could be.

“When I used to come here…it wasn’t a death wish, Odin—not at all. It was more of a life wish. Like somehow, doing this, getting up all of that speed, it was about touching something greater.”

I looked over at him, expecting him to be still taking in the view, but instead he was staring at me.

I smiled. “What?”

“Because it showed you that you could fly.”

It was a startling thing for him to say, such an Odin thing, and so fucking true. I’d been a girl trapped on a sheep farm, longing for something more. With every breath I took in, now, I could taste that old longing.

And here I was, two years later, sitting with one of the men I loved more than anything. It would feel great if not for the dark reality at the edge of it all. What if we couldn’t solve this mystery? My guys hadn’t said it, but it wasn’t hugely likely that they’d find an amazing clue in Hank’s home. Hank was a crafty man. He’d probably thought things through really well.

I’d learned to fly, to soar, but I’d let my sisters fall. And maybe Odin, too. Letting him torture and kill Hank would hurt Odin more than it would hurt Hank. I don’t know how I knew this; I just knew it with every fiber in my being. If Odin went dark now, we might never get him back.

“What thoughts, goddess?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”