Flynn’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it. “Echo, with an update.”
“Stay here. Watch Hazel, update Tillie. I’ve got this.”
“Dawson—”
“Trust me.” He smiled at her.
It landed in her gut, a rock.
Flynn watched him disappear through the automatic doors into the storm, chasing a desperate man who held his own daughter’s life in his hands.
She pulled out her phone with trembling fingers. Echo’s text was brief but reassuring: Team safe. Planning overland route with sled dogs. ETA tomorrow evening if weather cooperates.
And in the parking lot, Dawson pulled out in Moose’s truck.
Flynn’s blood turned to ice.
Please, let no one die today.
“Hazel,” she said, crouching in front of her. “How about a candy bar?”
CHAPTER 6
LONDON
She’d miss this.
Children burst from warm cabins to greet the sled dogs as they thundered into the Clearwater community.
Their joy caught London off guard.
The way a successful mission hit you when you saw faces light up with hope, with relief.
And it didn’t hurt to see the way Shep’s eyes crinkled with a sort of inner peace.
She hated taking him from this. Four years. Rescues and close calls and late-night debriefs that somehow became family dinners. And here she was, asking Shep to walk away from it all.
Selfish much, London?
Watching him now—snow dusting his shoulders as he handed wrapped packages to eager children—her chest tightened. Maybe she should hang up her other hat, dive into this life, let go of the reins of the Black Swans…
But that life mattered too. Maybe too much.
And she could admit that their last little adventure—chasing a traitor across Europe, stopping the kidnapping of the first daughter, and thwarting a terrorist takeover of an AI program—might have put them over the edge.
Or, maybe just ignited something inside her that she couldn’t deny.
She loved being a spy.
No. She loved being a spy with Shep.
So maybe them leaving was about wanting him all to herself. And frankly, why not. He sat behind her, his legs around hers under a blanket, her body against his, stalwart, secure.
He’d become so much more than just the man she loved. A partner.
Home.
The wind had died to a whisper after four brutal hours of riding on a dogsled, bundled up like a Christmas package herself. Ice crisped her eyelashes, her scarf, her toes and fingers fat with cold by the time they’d arrived at Clearwater Village.
