Page 13 of Built of Second Chances

Tessa brought her legs up on the couch and wrapped her arms around them. Helplessness filled her. In the last few hours, her life had spun out of control for the second time.

This time would be physically easier. She wasn’t waking up from an eight-month coma. She wasn’t facing multiple surgeries, not counting the ones they’d done during those eight months. This time, Tessa knew she could walk. Knew she had the ability to become someone new.

She had skills she could use to make a new life. But she’d have to give up her Tessa persona. Her career. Her FBI consults. Even her turtles.

“Can you promise me you won’t run before I see you again?”

She looked up to see Flynn studying her. The warmth was gone and his expression was carefully neutral. “Why?”

He frowned. “I need some space and I need to think this through. Can you meet me at the dock at seven tomorrow morning?”

She stared back while she went through her choices. In the end, she nodded. It wouldn’t be fair to Flynn if she ran before morning. He needed closure. She’d give him that before she left.

Flynn nodded and headed to the door. He opened it and then bent. “It’s too cold to leave your cat outside.”

Without another word, he put a startled Ginger on the floor, closed the door, and left.

Flynn didn’t have a trail to follow, but it didn’t matter. Sam had explained the layout of the lake and the position of the lodge. As long as he kept the lake on his left, he’d find it. The alone time would do him good.

What the hell was he supposed to do?

Was he supposed to act as if he didn’t know her? That would be impossible. Better to make up a story that they’d met before. It was a big enough risk to have Sam and Tansy aware that Tessa was in Wit Sec. Letting in the other four who lived at the lodge was too big a risk.

They needed a story, even if it was only for a few days. He should have stayed at the cabin and hammered out the story with her.

But how was he supposed to stay when he was blistering with anger one moment then filled with tenderness the next? Hell, he’d wanted to scoop her up into his arms and hold her until they figured everything out. Much better to get the hell out and get his head straight. If that was possible.

Catalina Blanco. Alive. At Midnight Lake.

He should be thrilled and celebrating. Why wasn’t he? Because some small part of him didn’t believe in coincidences.

What were the odds that he would end up at a parcel of land in the middle-of-nowhere Vermont and meet up with his high school friend who was not only supposed to be dead, but was also the reason for his obsession with taking down the Pavic family and the reason he’d joined the FBI? His entire career, hell, his entire adult life, had been focused around the explosion that day.

Everything in him had changed and he’d switched from dreams of being a rodeo star and living out his life on a ranch to joining the FBI to pursue evil. His career was based on a lie.

Cat had never said much about her family, but he’d known she’d been scared to make mistakes. He’d seen more wariness than love when she’d talked about her father. That wariness edged into fear when she’d mentioned her uncle.

Was that all somehow part of a plot?

If he didn’t believe their meeting at Midnight Lake was a coincidence, did it mean that they were both being orchestrated somehow by the Pavics? How?

That required a bigger leap of faith than believing in coincidence. Was the truth at one end or the other, or somewhere in between? Did the Pavics know Cat had survived? Did they know she was now Tess? And if they did, did they know where she lived? And did they know Flynn was tracking them?

So many questions. Too many. He needed some answers. And the woman with the skills and the knowledge to help him was back in a tiny cabin with an orange cat.

Until he was convinced there wasn’t an underlying plot to discover what he knew about the Pavics, he couldn’t share what he was doing with her. The thought of Catalina being forced to become Tess in order to be turned into a mole trying to disrupt the FBI investigation made him ill.

It also made him realize he was inventing conspiracy theories that were more complicated than the programming Tansy had created to build her TeenySaurs. He was making himself nuts.

Flynn walked through the woods at an easy pace. It was at least a mile to the cabin from the lodge. And another two miles to the road.

If anyone wanted to take out Tessa, they’d have a way to go on foot. They’d have to go through the safety measures Sam and his buddies had installed around the property. And they’d have to find her without GPS or Wi-Fi. Not impossible seeing as the cabin was on the lake. They could use a plane like that arms dealer had done when he’d wanted Tansy’s tech.

Flynn blew out a breath. He wished he had a horse. Or a bull he could ride. Something to pull his concentration away from Tessa. That way his subconscious could figure out what to do and how he felt. His active brain was nothing but a mass of confusion.

He considered calling Nico Rivera, another partner in the Midnight Security business. Nico was a top profiler in the FBI. He was an expert at figuring out people and their motives. Flynn could really use his help, but he didn’t want to risk bringing in another person who knew Tess’s original identity.

His phone showed him it was after midnight when he finally walked into the clearing around the lodge. His friends were making a good place here. A place he was already part of financially. A place he wanted to test out. Find out if it could be home.

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