Page 68 of Danger Close
Ricky sat back and inhaled, gripping Marsh’s hand tight.“Yeah.That’s it.Stay with me, asshole.”
He didn’t need a miracle.
He just needed Marsh to choose them.
Choose to stay
And maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t done fighting yet.
Chapter Thirteen
The Ridge was quieterthan usual.Not peaceful—Ezra had learned there was a difference—but quieter.The kind of quiet that hummed under your skin, like a wire stretched too tight.
It had been a month since the farmhouse.
Thirty-one days since gunfire lit up the woods and blood hit the dirt and Ricky had lain in his arms and bled.He hadn’t admitted it to anyone, but he had nightmares about that moment.Vivid nightmares that had his heart beating from his chest, sweat pouring from his body, and him sitting up in bed gasping for air.Ricky knew.He was always there to murmur the right words, to stroke his skin, and pull him back into the bed, wrap him in his strong arms, and stop him from shaking.
They’d won that night.But every night Ezra faced a different outcome.
Because victory had teeth.And because life was never easy, and shit happened in the world whether you were a good person or not, the threat wasn’t over.Far from it.
The Ridge’s comms were riddled with updates—coded bursts from Kai, intercepted pings from burner phones out of Chicago, whispers from a safehouse in Virginia.The Albanian syndicate hadn’t folded.They were just regrouping.Shifting.Digging in for something bigger.More strategic.They wanted a foothold in the States, and they'd picked their battlefield.
It was going to be a long game, that’s for sure.
Ezra stood at the northern overlook and watched the sun starting to set over their land.The air was crisp, the sky brushed with violet and fire.Below, the Ridge buzzed with activity—training rotations wrapping up for the day, supply runs finishing, staff organizing dinner and drones being stored away for the night.
He sighed and glanced at his comm unit, remembering Blake’s latest update from the med center.Marsh was out of the woods physically, but emotionally?
A damn wreck.
They’d tried everything—physical therapists, trauma specialists, even a former SEAL who now ran a rehab center in Montana.Marsh had scared five of them off.Fired two and nearly broke one’s nose when they pushed too hard, barely escaping a lawsuit.
Blake said the problem wasn’t Marsh’s body.It was his will.He didn’t want to learn how to live with one leg.He wanted the one he lost back, and no amount of titanium or pep talks could fix that.
Ezra dragged his hand through his hair, jaw tightening.He was tension personified.He’d been running himself ragged for weeks—organizing intelligence with Bateman, checking on Sophia and the other kids, training new recruits, making sure Ricky had everything he needed to heal and process and stay upright.
